According to recent research, some 50% of potential online sales are lost for the simple reason that customers are unable to find what they are looking for on a website. A primary contributor to this can often be the fact that a site’s taxonomy, or the manner in which categories and their underlying products are organised, is arranged in the interests of a brand’s merchant, not its customers. Hosein Moghaddas, VP & MD International of GSI Commerce, advises retailers on how to ensure customers can find what they’re looking for in a matter of clicks, not hours.
Be it online shopping metrics or subscription details, online retailers have a veritable gold mine of shopping information at their fingertips. However, too often we see examples of website layouts that clearly do not appease their customer base.
Take the example of online fashion shopping tagging. Referring to product categories as overtly as “knits” or “wovens” means little to an average shopper struggling to find a polo shirt on a site. What follows are four tips to identify where your site can be improved, taking on board the most important feedback of all: that of your customers.
1. Act upon what your analytics are telling you
Customer shopping data should form the basis on any analysis of how well a site’s taxonomy is performing, and where attention should be focused. Bounce rates, exit rates and category conversions – all of these can indicate whether a site is well received with your target audience or not. Likewise, click-stream reporting and search term analysis can provide insights into what might not be working and what customers may be finding hard to locate.
The key is to ask yourself, are you seeing a large amount of search queries for terms relating to a popular product category? Are you seeing evidence of pogo sticking from category to category? Think about it. If you were a customer searching for a specific department on a website and had to invest additional time searching for it, there is absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t jump ship to another website where the layout was clearer.
2. Talk to your users
Yes, your analytics can tell you that there is a problem, but it can’t always tell you what the cause of the problem is. This is a very basic example of where usability testing provides guidance. No major overhauls of website organisation should go ahead without the approval of who matters most: your customer base.
Ensure the sample group you select accurately represents your target audience segments and frame your studies based upon the feedback you have. Also, consider how to yield the responses you need. Without providing any information ahead of time that might encourage bias, techniques such as card sorting exercises are a great medium for them to tell how they would group your products.
3. Consider knock-on effects
Whether you’re implementing large or small scale changes to your website, there are inevitably going to be touch points that will be impacted by the changes you make.
Previously established search redirects could need modification, and any attribution strategies you have in place must follow the grain of navigational changes you have made; especially in cases where you have multiple classifications assigned to objects. In short, consider the bigger picture before making incremental changes.
4. Keep your finger on the pulse
The mistake that many brands make is assuming that the glut of the work is done after a taxonomy review is completed. This is rarely the case; a website’s fingerprint is constantly evolving.
There will always be a new slang term cropping up among your customer base,a new product assortment or a rise and fall in popularity of a certain category. Any forward thinking retailer will be constantly assessing the market for the latest trends, and adapting their content appropriately.
The bottom line is, taxonomy reviews do not and should not follow a complicated routine. Contrary to some opinions, your customers are entirely aware of the shopping experience they want from your website, so the golden rule is enabling a process which allows them to tell you as simply as possible, leaving you to make intelligent decisions for how your brand is represented online.
By Hosein Moghaddas
VP & MD International
GSI Commerce
www.gsicommerce.com/
