Tackling Those Taxing Taxonomies

Categorizing products is easy; however, making those categories customer friendly is not. A customer would not want to walk through a store hunting down a box of nails or a spool of cable; similarly, they won’t take kindly to having to scroll down tens of pages and click a few hundred times before locating what they are looking for. There is a difference between categorizing products and making them easy to find; the role of ecommerce taxonomy is to combine the two. Let’s look at the most basic item in taxonomy, product categorization, with the example of a box of nails, as we all know what they’re for. As obvious as it may be, an online store placinga box of nails only under “nails” is not a good idea. They should also place it under a general category like “fasteners”, and depending on their purpose, sub-categories like “carpentry fasteners”, “masonry fasteners” and “glasswork fasteners”. And if the nails are for a nail gun, they should have it under “nail-gun accessories” or maybe “pneumatic nails”; preferably with some indication of what sort of nail gun they would work with. 

Parent Categories: Parent categories or general categories like “fasteners” from the example are a very important part of the taxonomy. “Fasteners” for example lets customers know that they are likely to find nails, screws, adhesive tapes, etc. under it. It helps bring immediate focus onto the kind of thing the customer is looking for.

Sub-categories and Purpose-categories: Once you’ve assigned the parent category, you need to decide if you want to apply only a sub-category, a purpose-category or both. A sub-category would be the general name of a product, while the purpose category would be the usage-based name of the product.

 From the above example, “nails” would be a sub-category of “fasteners”, whereas “pneumatic nails”and “carpentry nails” would be purpose categories for the product. A good idea would be to assign both to the product and list “nails” in an easy to access place (like the navigation bar) and list the purpose categories either under “nails” or on the “fasteners” index page.

Accessories category: Products that must be used with other items can be grouped under the appropriate “accessories” category as well. So if we take “nail-guns”, to link “pneumatic nails” to it would require a structure like this – Power Tools ≫ Nail-guns ≫ Nail-gun accessories.

Recommendations/Related category: The recommendations category is less of a category and more of a function. You taxonomy software should allow you to link relevant recommendations and related products for the product being viewed. This means that, using the example, “pneumatic nails” of the right type and measurements should be shown when the customer is viewing a “nail-gun” as a related product, and vice versa.

 Although categorization is just a basic element of taxonomy, it has many benefits to the online store: 

Simple search: Good taxonomy makes it very easy for visitors to search for their preferred products. Natural navigation: Navigation becomes intuitive for the visitors as they’ll be able to find the product

under the sub-category/purpose category they expect. Successful sales: Applying the recommended/related category to the product makes cross-selling and

up-selling more successful because the product recommended is always relevant to their needs. Taxonomy is not a stroll in the park, but an investment that will really help improve the online experience for visitors and customers on your online store. It’s important to have a dedicated team to handle taxonomy that knows what the best approach to segmenting your products is. Also see more info @ http://www.unilogcorp.com