Product taxonomy is essential for ecommerce companies. Organizing a product portfolio in a logical way takes time and effort, but the payoff is worth it. When you get it right, a well-organized product taxonomy and effective site search come together to create a seamless user experience. As a result, shoppers engage more with the site, get relevant search results, and see personalized recommendations. In the end, these efforts increase sales.
Product taxonomy is a simple way to organize a company’s products in a logical order. This makes it easy for customers to find and navigate the products they’re looking for when shopping online. By using product taxonomy, businesses can easily define, manage, and track their products from start to finish, streamlining the process for everyone.
To create a clear and organized product taxonomy, categorize products and assign specific attributes to each category. This helps improve customer experience and makes shopping simpler.
Automated product information management systems can help you create a clear product taxonomy. Using a PIM, you can ensure that your product taxonomy is consistent and accurate across all channels and platforms.
A clean and structured product taxonomy has several benefits.
- Customers can navigate through products intuitively, which simplifies their search process.
- Customers find and buy products faster.
- Your SEO efforts pay off, increasing your site’s traffic and visibility.
How to Create a Product Taxonomy for an Ecommerce Website
Creating a product taxonomy for an ecommerce website can be a daunting task. If you’ve never done it before, it can be unclear and confusing. Typically, the process involves several steps.
First, determine your product categories. To do this, map out your main categories, using as few as possible. The goal is to keep them simple while maintaining a clear organization. For instance, rather than having separate categories for black shoes and white shoes, create a single “shoes” category. This approach makes things easy to manage and keeps everything clear.
Next, group similar products into categories and assign attributes to the products in each category. This helps organize products in a way that makes it easy for customers to find them.
Finally, organize your products in a logical hierarchy to make them easy to find. Create categories and subcategories that fit together in a way that makes sense. This is often referred to as an inverted pyramid model, which helps create a simple and intuitive way to view all your products.
Also, consider automating the process with a Product Information Management system. A PIM system can help categorize products based on attributes, streamline updates, and ensure consistency across different channels.
A Few Tips If You Have a Large Ecommerce Store
Understand Your Products
Gain a deep knowledge of your products so you can clearly showcase them to customers. This knowledge is essential for building a clear and comprehensive product taxonomy.
Create a Clear Category Structure
Create a clear and easy-to-understand product taxonomy with well-defined categories and obvious product features. Organize the taxonomy in a logical way, so customers can easily find what they’re looking for.
Leverage Customer Behavior Data
Start by understanding what drives your users. Analyze customer behavior data to identify their needs and preferences. This information helps you develop a product structure that suits them perfectly. The result is a product taxonomy that truly works.
Use a Hierarchical Structure
Set up a hierarchical structure with broad categories and intuitive subcategories. Start with general categories for the different products your brand offers, then add subcategories and attributes to make it easy for users to find specific products.
Regularly Review and Optimize
Keep your product taxonomy up to date by regularly reviewing it with user data in mind and making any necessary changes. When setting up categories, think about how users search for products so you can make items easy to find and buy.
How to Maintain a Product Taxonomy Over Time?
1. Maintain Detailed History Notes
For each term in the taxonomy, maintain detailed history notes. This way, you can track changes, understand why modifications were made, and keep a record of past versions. By doing so, you’ll keep new team members informed about term changes and ensure the taxonomy’s evolution is transparent.
2. Conduct Yearly Reviews
Reviewing the entire taxonomy at least once a year is also crucial. This yearly review helps maintain the taxonomy’s integrity and relevance, giving you a chance to evaluate the taxonomy as a whole and make any necessary changes.
3. Establish a Communication Process
Establishing a clear process for regular communication of taxonomy changes to all users is another crucial practice. This involves sharing updates on new, deleted, merged, and split terms, as well as upcoming changes. This keeps them informed and engaged with the system.
4. Review Changes Regularly
To keep the taxonomy relevant over time, reviewing all changes to it is essential. This helps avoid ad-hoc reactions to user requests and ensures the taxonomy stays accurate and reliable by putting all changes through a process. This process is what maintains the taxonomy’s integrity.
5. Understand the Consequences of Poor Maintenance
If an ecommerce store doesn’t maintain a product taxonomy, it can have several negative consequences. Without a well-organized taxonomy, customers may have a hard time finding products, which can be frustrating and cause them to give up. This can lead to lost sales and lower customer satisfaction.
Poor product organization can also damage brand loyalty. When customers struggle to find what they need, they may view your brand as unprofessional or difficult to shop with, which can erode their trust and loyalty over time.
Poor maintenance of the product taxonomy can cause problems in internal operations. It can lead to inaccurate reports and poor decision-making. This, in turn, hurts the ecommerce store’s performance. To avoid these issues, follow the practices described above. This will ensure your product taxonomy stays relevant, accurate, and easy to use.
Product Taxonomy Helps With Product Discovery
Product taxonomy plays a crucial role in product discovery. This leads to a better customer experience and guides shoppers to the right products. It enables merchandising and personalization, simplifies navigation, and improves SEO.
Category Navigation
Organizing products into categories and subcategories makes it easy for customers to navigate an online store. This structured hierarchy helps users browse and find relevant products in specific sections.
Merchandising
Effective product discovery strategies rely on merchandising, which means placing products in strategic spots. This includes highlighting bestsellers, new arrivals, or seasonal items that align with user research. By showing related products, customers get to see more options, making it more likely they’ll find something they like.
Personalized Recommendations
Product taxonomy makes personalized recommendations possible. By considering customer preferences, demographics, and past behavior, it suggests products that fit individual tastes. This approach increases the chances of customers discovering products they might have otherwise overlooked.
Improved SEO and User Experience
A well-structured product taxonomy improves SEO, making products easier to find through search engines. It also helps create a positive user experience by directing customers to their desired products with precision.
Challenges of Implementing a Product Taxonomy
Implementing a well-structured product taxonomy can pose several challenges for eCommerce operations.
Omnichannel Mapping Complexities
Connecting to marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart requires extensive mappings of specifications, categories, brands, and other details. The issue is that these sites don’t share the same standard categories, so you need to match them manually. This is a continuous process that can be time-consuming and challenging.
Repetitive Mapping
Without transparent exchange mechanisms between PIM systems, organizations risk repeating the same mapping work over and over. This inefficient exchange of mappings can result in redundancy and inefficiencies when managing product taxonomies.
Resource Constraints
The scarcity of well-trained ecommerce specialists can pose a challenge as these professionals are continuously overloaded with increasingly complex management tasks. Organizations may struggle to find and retain skilled individuals who can manage their product taxonomies efficiently.
Maintaining Consistency
It’s a challenge to keep taxonomy mappings consistent across different channels and platforms, especially when taxonomies are constantly changing and updates are frequent. Accurate product categorization requires ongoing effort and attention to maintain.
To tackle these challenges, companies can use smart mapping techniques, set up a common language for mapping, use PIM systems to automate tasks, and aim to agree on worldwide taxonomy standards.
How Product Taxonomy Can Boost Sales
A well-planned product taxonomy has a significant impact on ecommerce sales. By breaking down products into clear categories, it simplifies the shopping experience. This makes it much easier for customers to find what they’re looking for. Shoppers feel more confident in their purchasing decisions. As a result, easier navigation leads to more sales.
A solid product taxonomy is essential for making informed internal decisions. It provides precise statistics on your entire product catalog, making your reports more accurate. This enables businesses to base their decisions on hard data when it comes to product features, promotions, and inventory management.
A well-organized product taxonomy also increases the average order value. By making it easy for customers to discover similar or related products, ecommerce businesses can drive sales and revenue.
Lastly, a well-structured product taxonomy improves SEO efforts. It makes it easier for search engines to guide potential customers to your products. As a result, you can expect more visitors to your website and a higher chance of making sales.
How Product Taxonomy and Site Search Complement Each Other
Product taxonomy and site search work hand in hand to improve the user experience and drive sales on ecommerce websites.
Improved Navigation
A simple product taxonomy makes it easy for users to browse categories, so they can find what they need quickly. Site search complements this, allowing users with specific product preferences to find exactly what they’re looking for.
Enhanced Product Discovery
Product taxonomy helps users browse and discover products within specific categories, while site search is ideal for those who have a clear idea of what they want. By combining both, businesses can cater to a broader range of customer preferences. Some people prefer browsing through categories, while others like to use search terms.
Personalized Recommendations
Site search tools can understand user intent and provide personalized results based on past behavior or preferences. When integrated with a well-structured product taxonomy, ecommerce businesses can offer relevant product recommendations that align with customer interests.
Optimized User Experience
By investing in both product taxonomy and site search optimization, businesses can create a user experience that seamlessly guides customers to their desired products. This approach not only boosts customer satisfaction but also increases the chances of conversions and revenue.
Improved Site Search
Product taxonomy greatly improves site search functionality in several ways. It provides a clear hierarchy of categories and attributes, which helps to improve search relevance. By linking search queries to taxonomy categories, customers receive more accurate and relevant results.
It also helps organize products into logical categories and subcategories. When you combine it with site search, users can browse through these categories using search terms, making it a lot easier to find products.
Ecommerce businesses can personalize search results for users by organizing products based on attributes like size, color, and brand. This helps users find products that match their choices.
A well-organized product taxonomy also enhances search engine optimization. By clearly labeling and organizing data, search engines can better understand the website’s content, resulting in higher visibility in search results and more organic traffic.
Final Takeaways
By putting a well-designed product taxonomy in place, ecommerce businesses can improve the user experience, boost sales and conversions, and make informed decisions based on data that drive overall success and growth.
- A simple and organized way of categorizing products makes it easy for customers to navigate the website and find products. This enjoyable shopping experience reduces their stress, making them more likely to return and shop with the brand again.
- By helping customers find relevant products, it drives higher conversion rates. Additionally, it increases the average order value as customers discover new products. Clear categories and easy-to-use search tools result in increased sales and revenue.
- A robust product taxonomy not only benefits customers but also helps ecommerce businesses in making informed decisions. By studying customer behavior, tracking product performance, and making adjustments to taxonomy structures, companies can optimize their inventory, enhance reporting accuracy, and secure a long-term competitive edge.
Photo: @ Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash