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Planning for Ecommerce - Products
Oct 04 2011
In any 'real world' shop, the products being sold play a huge part on how the shop is set up. Clothes need rails to hang from, electronics need power supplies, toys need spaces to demonstrate and try out, and food stores need fridges.
On top of that, tills need to be set up to know what to do when certain products are bought together, 3 for 2 offers, free gifts, gift wrap, and paying by vouchers all need their own rules.
So it is with your website, and why, without planning, you can end up with a website that just won't show your products off at their best.
One of the first activities we engage in with new clients is what we call "product modelling". Put more simply, this means "what do we need to know about each of your products in order to sell it online"? It can be a long process if you sell a wide range of different types of products, but in reality, most niche retailers sell products which can be described in the same way.
Let's look at a typical example of the types of products sold on a fashion site:
Men's clothes:
- Shirts
- Trousers
- Shoes
Women's Clothes:
- Tops
- Trousers
- Dresses
- Lingerie
Most fashion websites give you the choice of size and maybe colour on each product page, but what's going on behind the scenes? 16 in a men's shirt size means something very different from 16 in a women's dress size. Each of the different attributes need to be understood for each product. An attribute is a piece of information that helps build up the picture of the product.
Attributes might include the following:
- Collar Size
- Waist Size
- Chest Size
- Colour
- Brand
- Fabric
Anything that helps you choose between two products can be considered an attribute of that product.
Once your product database has this information against each product you can use it in a number of ways. Most obvious is to show the customer the attributes of each product so they know exactly what they are getting. This camera example shows each of the atributes of the product that are available.
So why not just put all this in the product copy? Having a structure to this information means you can use it in other places too.
By holding price, colour, and size in the database we can build navigation that helps guide the customer more quickly to the products relevant to them. See how the guided navigation on this page helps guide you to the relevant product much more easily than just the category menu at the top of the page.Information about your product can also affect other parts of your ecommerce operation.
- The weight of your product can affect your delivery costs.
- The size of your product can affect the VAT you have to charge (children's sizes)
- The price of your product can affect whether you insist on a signed for postage service
Understanding exactly how your products are made up and the effect on the other parts of your business is key to deciding whether your ecommerce site can use some off-the-shelf software or needs something bespoke, and how services like delivery might be affected.
It will also help you in the first steps of designing your product pages, your product categories, and your in-site search results.
