How to build Link Structure of your E-Commerce website & get it right?
Are you sure, your eCommerce website structure isn’t costing you customers?
Surprising though it may seem, but it only takes about 50 milliseconds for the users to form an opinion as to whether they like your website or not. Simply; whether they will stay or bounce off.
Although it is commonly said that “don’t judge a book by its cover’’, yet the eCommerce websites are constrained to an absurd level of snap judgments that fosters the perception of credibility.
Apparently, websites are judged ruthlessly.
For the visitors, a surplus of good options definitely drives the prices, whereas the level of tolerance for a poor website structure brings it down.
As 77% of agencies believe that a poor website User Experience is a vulnerability for their clients, hence, you might have been through instances when you’ve got overwhelmed with how to organize your product pages.
Because a well-designed website structure and optimized product pages are a key aspect for an enriched website user experience and to retain website visitors.
However, If you’re skeptical as to what this demands and how it can help you enhance your customer conversion rate, keep running through this article.
Why is eCommerce site structure so essential for your CRO?
Your Fashion eCommerce website development structure depends upon how you organize your website navigation, user flow, user experience and help customer reach a conversion and goal as per your business requirements.
That said, the best fashion website structure encompasses elements such as a clean navigation bar and internal links following a clear cut goal setting for the visitors of your website.
The rule of thumb should be to offer not more than 3 clicks from the homepage to the product
Let’s look at it practically.
Refer to the image below for the difference between the Falt Architecture and Deep Architecture.
On the left, flat architecture composed of a homepage, 8 category pages with 6 product pages with each category.
Whereas, on the right, the deep architecture comprised of a homepage with four category pages, then two layers of sub-category pages, and just one or two product pages along with each sub-category.
Of the above-mentioned architectures, the flat architecture could be referred to as our rule of thumb to define a perfect eCommerce website structure.
Why so?
Just because the flat architectural hierarchy enables seamless navigation for the users without the need of 6-7 clicks. It would be a lot easier for the user to find relevant information for a specific product quickly while keeping the frustration of a bad user experience at bay.
Also, from an SEO perspective, due to the lease page rank dilution, the flat architecture enables the pages to get more ranking juice from each other.
The more clicks your users will have to visit the lower pages, the more link juice will get filtered. Meaning, less juice will be left for the deeper pages, and Google crawler will find it more difficult to index.
Key takeaway: On the whole, an ideal structure setup establishes that:
- All the products are merely 2 clicks away from the homepage
- Every page of your website should be easy to crawl and navigate
- It must be easy and fast for the customers to find out the exact information they are searching for.
Tips for an effective eCommerce website structure
Having a robust eCommerce web structure is essential for better customer engagement and conversion rate.
1. Emphasize designing a hierarchical structure of your website
The practical management of a website makes an enormous influence on conversion rates, website traffic, and product sales.
There is a need to have a fashion website design involving a proper organization of all your category and subcategory pages. You must follow an active top-down strategy during the course of website designing and development.
As discussed above, for a 3 click approach you could follow the below-mentioned structure:
This approach will also complement SEO that will help Google to index your web pages more efficiently and further assist website visitors to find the products they’re searching for.
It must be noted that the better designed and optimized the product pages are, the more likely they’ll be featured in SERPs, which will allure more organic traffic from search results.
2. Plan URL structure keeping in mind the hierarchy
After the perfect execution of the hierarchical structure, begin planning for URL structure accordingly.
Keep it simple.
For instance, the URL for a category page looks something like:
Similarly, the sub-category page should look like:
For more clarity, let’s see an example from a renowned fashion brand; KiKi Love
They have use Collections as a category and dresses as a subcategory for easier navigation.
3. Effective and strong internal linking
The strong link architecture of your eCommerce store helps in improving the overall Google indexing and also will enrich the individual page rankings of the content.
For enhanced onsite visibility and presence, a strong internal link architecture is a prerequisite that can expedite seamless navigation from one page to the other.
Also, a strong interconnection between different pages of your website ensures all your pages are effectively indexed by your search engine crawlers for boosting your website rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Link your category and sub-category pages with each other while making sure that there are no broken links in between for improved outcomes.
4. Explanatory homepage with a strong header
Setting up a menu on the homepage is vital that effectively link to all the categories and the subcategories of your websites.
The chief reason behind a strong header and detailed homepage is to offer new visitors to your website to have concise navigation. You should not rely on the back button for your visitors to navigate to the previous menus.
Look at how Pirouzi Official has designed structured their homepage for enhanced user navigation.
The menu lists the categories as “Men”, “Women”, and “Footwear”. And when you scroll over each of them you will see subcategories as shown in the image above.
5. Leverage breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs could be really helpful as the site developers can easily retrace the visitor’s steps from the home page to a particular page or location of their site.
For example, renowned eCommerce Myntra uses:
The breadcrumbs play a fundamental role in reflecting the structure of your eCommerce site and supervising the search engine bots while indexing the website content.
As a consequence, it helps in determining the SEO activity of your site for more excellent online visibility and search engine rankings. Despite that, it can also benefit in enhancing the internal link structure for more reliable navigation of visitors throughout the eCommerce site.
Now that you are familiar with how to create an effective website structure for your eCommerce website let’s understand what it can pay you.
Benefits of an aligned eCommerce website structure
Enhanced Traffic
As website structure complements SEO, which further helps a website get a lot of organic traffic.
Having the top position in the SERPs has various associated advantages like increased clicks. Consequently, the optimized title tags and description are contributory factors for the click-through rate and enhancement of the quality traffic.
Enhanced Sales
As we all know, sales are exactly why anyone would want to optimize their website.
Therefore, by having the right website structure and an optimized website with the right SEO strategies, you can effectively take the path that the website visitors would convert and the sales will always go up.
Enhanced site usability and happy customers
You might have had a dream to make it easier for your customers to happily navigate through the website, reach the points that you want them to reach out to.
Yes, an effective Website Structure is a boon to accomplish this dream.
SEO compatibility together stimulates both the users and the search engines to navigate your website effortlessly.
Finally
Once, you can master all these tips and implements them to have an effective structure for your eCommerce site, a sound high ranking and robust website can undoubtedly heighten your conversion rates and product sales.
The best website structure for your eCommerce store you could possibly create is actually more simplistic than you may think. For website visitors, nothing is more appealing and contented than a simple and clean design with fewer web pages.
If only the visitors can immediately find what they’re looking for, you can eventually win one of the most arduous battles that online businesses face.
Leverage the above-mentioned tactics and knowledge of site structure and SEO practices to create the best, and most prosperous, eCommerce website for your esteemed customers.
Since 2004 Netgains has been building fashion e-commerce website & running effective fashion digital marketing campaigns for fast-growing as well as established fashion brands. Our expertise in fashion eCommerce ensures that your brand and products are delivered to your customers in a way that makes them buy. Get in touch today!
