-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Archives
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- March 2011
- November 2010
Categories
Meta
Tag Archives: store
Is Your eCommerce Website Ready for Back to School?
The post Is Your eCommerce Website Ready for Back to School? appeared first on HostGator Blog . Winter holidays may be peak money-making time for online stores, but don’t overlook the back to school season. Parents and students spent more than $82 billion on back to school purchases in 2018. That’s more than shoppers spent on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day combined. Today’s back-to-school must-haves include much more than jeans and school supplies, which means your eCommerce site may have a bigger audience than you think for back-to-school offers. And just about any business can offer a back-to-school themed deal. The National Retail Federation says that back to school (defined as shopping for K-12 students) and back to college spending will hit record highs this year. The average household with K-12 kids will spend $696 on back to school. The average household with kids in college will spend $976. Want your online store to capture some of that spending? Here’s how you can get your eCommerce site ready and for back to school and back to college shoppers. Do You Have What Back-to-School Shoppers Need? If your store sells kids’ clothes, shoes, backpacks, or school supplies, you’re probably already on top of your back to school marketing game. However, electronics are also hot sellers for back to school. More than half of shoppers for K-12 kids said they’ll buy at least one new electronic device for back to school this year. The top electronics items for K-12 kids are computers, cellphones, and calculators. The back to college market includes even more categories. School supplies, clothes, and shoes are all big categories for these young adults. So are personal care products and food—more than 70% of students surveyed said they’ll be stocking up on these items when they do their back to school shopping. More than half of back to college shoppers also plan to pick up some college-branded gear (which can be anything from shirts and hats to décor and gifts), electronics, and furnishings. More than a third of back to college shoppers—presumably parents—plan to stock up on gift cards, too. Can You Offer What Back-to-School Shoppers Want? Let’s say your store doesn’t sell any of the items mentioned above. You can still ace back to school season. Here are a few ideas to help you brainstorm your own offers: Gardening supply stores can offer deals on seeds and tools for teachers who want to plant school gardens. Online travel agencies can offer weekend packages for parents who need a little kid-free time after summer full of family togetherness. Pet supply shops can run deals on treats and toys for companion animals whose pals are at school all day. Board game, sporting goods, and toy sellers can promote deals on items that families can enjoy together on the weekends. Stores that sell any sort of cleaning products have a perfect tie-in. Back to school is the perfect time for a deep cleaning of the house and car. Understand the Back to School Shopping Timeline School shopping season starts sooner than you think and lasts longer than you may realize. About half the households surveyed in early July by the NRF said they’d already started shopping. And the big sale event that budget-conscious back to school shoppers wait for has already passed this year. Amazon Prime Day and its competitors’ sales draw a lot of attention from parents, teens, and college students. However, the other half of households surveyed at the beginning of July hadn’t started shopping yet, because they’re waiting for the best sales. If you want their back-to-school business, you’ll need to serve up a great sale. What Makes a Great Back to School Sale for eCommerce Sites? Price. Now’s the time to offer coupon codes and flash sales on your site to appeal to parents and teens—and to stay competitive with your competitors’ deals. Most back to school shoppers are price sensitive, a trend that’s persisted for years. However, tweens and teens are spending more of their own money on back to school purchases. That may translate into a few more splurge items (the average teen is kicking in about $36). Show some deal love to the teachers who shop with you, too. Teachers often spend out of their own pockets for classroom supplies—a big expense on a typical educator’s salary. Most major retailers offer special back to school deals like coupons, freebies, and extra rewards program points for educators. Your store will be more competitive if it does the same. And you don’t have to sell school supplies to make a teacher deal work. You can give them a deal on whatever you sell. Free shipping . There’s no way around this one. The NRF survey found that “90 percent of K-12 and 85 percent of college shoppers plan to take advantage of free shipping.” Already offer free shipping? You’re good to go. If you don’t, now might be a good time to start. One popular approach is to offer paid shipping for your fastest delivery option and free shipping for slower delivery. These budget-conscious shoppers generally won’t mind waiting a couple of extra days in exchange for free shipping. Before you add free shipping to your store, you may need to adjust your product prices. Factor in your expected shipping expenses, so you don’t lose money on those orders. Now is also a good time to review your online store’s shipping guidelines to see if they need updating before the holiday rush. Promotion. Create a campaign for the parent and young adult segments of your store’s email list that shows off your best back to school offers. Update your store’s blog with news about new back to school items or upcoming flash sales, and then share those posts on social media. You can create coupon codes for your email list and social media followers , too. Nearly 20% of internet users say they always use coupons when they shop , and another 26% use them “very often.” Give them what they’re looking for. Post Back-to-School Steps Review your site traffic and sales numbers to fill out your back to school season report card. Make notes and put back to school prep on next year’s marketing calendar. Then take a breath and start getting your online store ready for the holidays . Good luck! Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading
Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost
Tagged ecommerce, holiday, hostgator, hosting, house, national-retail, online, register-domain, school-shoppers, school-shopping, store, year
Comments Off on Is Your eCommerce Website Ready for Back to School?
The Best WordPress WooCommerce Themes for eCommerce Sites
The post The Best WordPress WooCommerce Themes for eCommerce Sites appeared first on HostGator Blog . Selling products online has never been easier, even for the smallest of businesses, thanks to WordPress-compatible eCommerce tools like WooCommerce and free themes to customize your store’s appearance. Whether you’re still in the planning stages or want to update your online store, it can be a challenge to pick the right theme from so many options. Here’s a look at some popular eCommerce themes for WordPress, along with a quick overview of WooCommerce for WordPress, to help you find what you need. Setting Up an Online Store on Your WordPress Site A lot goes into building an online store : product categories, search tools, inventory tracking, color and size options, a way for customers to pay, and shipping options. And those are just the basics. WordPress doesn’t provide these functions automatically, so you’ll need to install an eCommerce plugin to get started. One of the most popular eCommerce plugins for WordPress is a free, open-source program called WooCommerce . It’s used by small store owners and major brands around the world because it integrates so well with WordPress and because there are so many ways to customize it. For example, you can add support for different payment methods, email list management, and merchandising with extensions from the WooCommerce library. Want to sell memberships or subscriptions? There are WooCommerce extensions for that, too. (Many but not all WooCommerce extensions are free.) Best WordPress WooCommerce Themes for eCommerce Themes give you another way to customize your WooCommerce store by changing its appearance and creating the user experience you want your customers to have. These are our picks for the best WordPress themes for eCommerce, and they’re all compatible with WooCommerce. 1. WooCommerce Storefront Storefront is a free theme built by and for WooCommerce. It includes schema markup for SEO, and it has a responsive design to so it looks good and works well on all kinds of devices. Storefront’s developers built it for fast loading and easy use. You don’t have to use WordPress shortcodes to customize Storefront, and it’s compatible with lots of payment, shipping, and SEO plugins. When you want to update your store’s look, you can use the WordPress customizer with Storefront. You can also switch to one of Storefront’s child themes. Each of the 14 child themes (free to $39 each) is tailored to a different type of business, like food, fashion, books, toys, and vacation lodgings. Storefront is a good choice for both: Non-tech people. Because it’s tightly integrated with WooCommerce, you’re unlikely to run into compatibility issues that would require coding skills to fix. And Storefront is compatible with the new block-based Gutenberg editor in WordPress . Tech people. If you’re happy to write your own code, Storefront and WooCommerce’s open-source foundation make it easy to build your own extensions to customize your store. Storefront’s not the only free WooCommerce theme out there. Let’s look at a few top choices from other publishers. 2. Astra Like Storefront, Astra is WooCommerce compatible and uses schema markup to help your store’s SEO. Astra’s developers recently released a free library of blocks you can use with WordPress’ new Gutenberg editor to customize your site without coding. Astra is very fast—it takes less than 0.5 seconds to load, using standard WordPress data—and it only uses about 50 KB of resources. That means your store pages will load fast and keep your shoppers from bouncing before they see your awesome merchandise. Astra also has a library of pre-made starter sites. You can use the Astra Starter Sites plugin to install one and save yourself a lot of time on store design. Upgrading to Astra’s pro or agency packages ($59 to $249) gives you access to more starter sites. Astra is a good choice for: Shop owners with lots of mobile customers. The store’s light weight and fast load times make it a good fit for m-commerce. People who want to a pre-designed site. Astra’s starter site library gives you instant site options. 3. eStore Another popular theme for WooCommerce, eStore is responsive, SEO-friendly, and designed to help your pages load quickly. If you’d like your customers to be able to make and share wishlists from your store—a feature that can earn you more conversions—eStore is compatible with the YITH WooCommerce Wishlist plugin . This theme has a couple of cool design features in its free version: the ability to color-code your product categories, and a template that lets you feature all products in a collection on a single page, as well as in their categories. The pro version ($69) gives you more options for customizing eStore’s appearance, with the addition of Google Fonts, more header and color choices, and testimonial and product tab widgets. eStore is a good choice for: Store owners who want wishlists. YITH Wishlist and eStore work well together. Sellers who regularly feature new collections. The eStore product collection template makes those displays easy to update. 4. MetroStore Like eStore, MetroStore supports YITH Wishlist and provides product-collection page templates. It’s also compatible with YITH WooCommerce Compare , a plugin that lets customers select and compare different items in your store. Comparison charts can help increase your store’s conversion rate, especially if you sell appliances, tech products, or other items whose specifications and features are big factors in your customers’ purchasing decisions. MetroStore’s free version also lets you add video backgrounds to your full-width banners—a pretty cool feature if you have a brick-and-mortar store, fashion shows, or product demos to showcase. The pro version ($55) lets you import demo pages to your store in a single click so you can set up your shop faster. Upgrading also gives you offers and team members sections for your store. MetroStore is a good choice for: Stores that sell tech, appliances, or tools. Support for the YITH WC Compare plugin lets your customers create comparison charts. Store owners who want to use video in their store design. The video-background banner makes that possible. Choosing a WordPress Theme for Your eCommerce Site Before you choose a theme, it’s a good idea to explore their online demos on your laptop, tablet and phone to see if they’ll give customers the experience you want them to have. Then you can download the free versions of the themes you like best to try them out with your own content before you go live. After you debut your new theme, track metrics like bounce rate and conversions to see if your new theme is helping customers find what they want or whether you need to make adjustments. Ready to get started? Start building your eCommerce store today with HostGator WordPress hosting . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading
Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost
Tagged astra, customers, ecommerce, hostgator, hosting, online, online-store, store, storefront, vodahost, web hosting, yith
Comments Off on The Best WordPress WooCommerce Themes for eCommerce Sites
The Top Mobile-Friendly WordPress Themes—and What Makes Them So Good
The post The Top Mobile-Friendly WordPress Themes—and What Makes Them So Good appeared first on HostGator Blog . When it comes to getting traffic, building an audience, and making sales, mobile is basically everything now. More than half the traffic on the web comes from mobile devices, Google now uses mobile-first search indexing, and the value of purchases made on smartphones and tablets this year will total $117 billion. If you plan to build a website , you need to choose a mobile-friendly WordPress theme from the thousands available. That can be a bit overwhelming. To narrow the field and get a better understanding of what makes a great mobile-friendly WordPress website theme, we looked at a few of the most popular ones— Astra , GeneratePress , Hestia , and Sydney —to see why so many WordPress users choose them. What to Look for in a Mobile-Friendly WordPress Theme As you shop for a mobile-friendly theme for your WordPress website, keep an eye out for these key features. 1. Responsiveness is a must Whatever theme you choose must be responsive in order to display properly on mobile devices. That’s because a responsive template adjusts to the visitor’s device type by, for instance, changing from a two-column desktop layout to a single-column format for smartphones and resizing page elements to make them fit. This is a basic requirement for any mobile-friendly website . You can see how the Sydney theme adjusts from desktop to tablet to smartphone by reducing margins and, on phones, moving from three columns to one. However, responsiveness alone isn’t the only thing to look for in a mobile-friendly theme. Many other elements go into a truly mobile-friendly site design, and a good theme will support most or all of them. 2. Appearance matters for usability The best mobile site designs keep smartphone and tablet use conditions in mind. Think about how many times you’ve had to find a patch of shade to read something on your phone’s screen while you’re outdoors, or maybe you’ve had to adjust your device brightness or zoom in because the text was hard to read. Readable mobile design is clean web design , with uncluttered backgrounds, enough contrast between background and text for easy reading, and fonts that are large enough and simple enough (think sans serif, not script) for users to scan on a phone, even outdoors on a sunny day. Look for a customizer tool that will show you what your changes look like as you make the edits. Each of the themes mentioned in this post has a customizer utility and/or is compatible with Elementor, a popular free front-end page-builder plugin for WordPress that includes tools specifically for mobile design editing. 3. Google Fonts compatibility helps in several ways Astra and Sydney both support Google Fonts. This matters for typography options, because there are more than 800 font families in the Google Fonts directory. It also matters for your budget, because Google Fonts are free. And it matters for that all-important mobile page speed . Google uses caching and compression to deliver its fonts fast in the smallest files it can , so your typography won’t slow down your site and cause visitors to get impatient and leave. 4. Navigation is key to a good mobile user experience Good themes make it easy to get around your site on a mobile device with taps and touches, instead of relying on mouse and keyboard input. They also have a relatively flat site architecture with as few sub-levels as possible so visitors can go from your homepage to whatever product or post they’re looking for in as few taps as possible. Hestia and Sydney offer the simplest design approach, with a single-page site layout for mobile. That means visitors can find what they want without having to navigate between pages. Great mobile-friendly themes also include features that encourage visitors to stick around and interact more with your site. For example, Astra’s Pro version makes it easy for shoppers to find what they want in a WooCommerce store —sales bubbles, dropdown cart, and quickview tools all reduce your visitors’ need to move from one screen to another as they gather information and shop. 5. Performance is critical for search results and user experience Google says 53% of mobile users will bounce if a site takes longer than three seconds to load, but the a average mobile site load time is an agonizingly long 15 seconds. So even the most elegant, simple mobile theme has to be fast and lean to be worth using. Bigger files take longer to load, which is why the best themes proudly proclaim how few resources they need. GeneratePress takes up less than 30KB with a default WordPress installation, while Astra uses less than 50KB and loads in half of one second. Both of these themes use Vanilla Javascript rather than jQuery to avoid render-blocking issues that slow down load times. 6. SEO friendliness helps your site get found Google’s moving to a mobile-first index for search results, but having any old mobile site isn’t good enough. The best themes for mobile are designed with SEO in mind and make it as easy as possible for search engine crawlers to find their way around. Hestia has an SEO-friendly structure, while GeneratePress and Astra have built in the schema.org structure that’s required for rich snippets to display in search results . All three of these themes as well as Sydney follow best practices for coding, which also helps with SEO. 7. WooCommerce compatibility helps you optimize your store WooCommerce is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress , and most popular themes are designed to be WooCommerce0compatible. Mobile-friendliness is crucial for online stores now because, by the end of 2018, half of all online orders will come from mobile devices , and more than 60% of all e-commerce traffic already comes from phones and tablets. Creating a mobile-friendly shopping experience for your customers can reduce cart abandonment , increase revenue, and encourage customers to keep coming back to your store. The Pro version of the Astra theme includes a WooCommerce module with grid view, gallery, and infinite scrolling options for your product catalog. Hestia and GeneratePress are also WooCommerce compatible. Choosing Your Mobile-Friendly WordPress Theme As you’re searching for your ideal mobile-optimized WordPress theme, ask yourself how each one you look at stacks up in each of these areas. Take your time, read user reviews, explore each theme’s demos, and download a few and try them out before you make your decision. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading
Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost
Tagged astra, budget, fonts, google-fonts, hosting, store, sydney, web hosting tips, web-design
Comments Off on The Top Mobile-Friendly WordPress Themes—and What Makes Them So Good
How to Create Shipping Guidelines for Your Online Business in 5 Steps
The post How to Create Shipping Guidelines for Your Online Business in 5 Steps appeared first on HostGator Blog . Your new online store may have the coolest design, the greatest products, and the most reasonable prices, but does it have the one thing shoppers really want? We’re talking about a great shipping policy—one that gives your customers free options and fast options and provides delivery tracking—can seal the deal with today’s e-commerce customers. Here’s how to create shipping guidelines that can help your store compete. 1. Give Your Customers Multiple Shipping Options People are particular about shipping when they shop online, and they like to have choices. A 2018 international survey of e-commerce shoppers found that half have ditched an online shopping cart because they didn’t like the merchant’s shipping options . It’s a good idea to offer at least two options—a free option for people who aren’t in a rush, and a faster, paid option. Depending on what you sell, where your inventory is stored, and where your customers are, you may also be able to offer local same-day delivery through a third-party service. 2. Calculate Your Shipping Costs The most complex part of creating your shipping guidelines is comparing rates from different shippers and figuring out what shipping will cost, so dive in and get it done first. Your shipping costs will include not only the rates you pay to the carrier but also the cost of packing material and time spent handling and packing the orders, printing shipping labels, paper and ink for labels, etc. All these costs should be built into the shipping charges your customers pay or built into your product pricing if you’re offering free shipping. To keep your shipping-related costs as low as possible, spend some time with different carriers’ rate tables and package classes. See who offers free boxes and envelopes for flat-rate shipping. Compare the rates for those containers with what it would cost to provide your own packaging and pay based on weight. A lot depends on the weight of your products and how far they must go. You’ll also need to figure out the costs your customers will pay at checkout, and it’s almost mandatory to offer some sort of free shipping option, because shoppers expect it. “75 percent of consumers surveyed expect delivery to be free even on orders under $50 , up from 68 percent a year ago,” according to the National Retail Federation’s data. That doesn’t mean every customer wants free shipping every time, though. The same survey found that 35% of online shoppers are willing to pay more for faster, more convenient delivery options when they need them. Whatever you choose to offer, you don’t want to lose money through your shipping choices. Keep in mind that most carriers raise their rates at the beginning of each calendar year because demand is so high. That means you’ll need to review your shipping policy and product pricing each fall—those rate hike announcements usually appear during or just before the holiday season, so don’t miss them amid the holiday rush. 3. Set Up Shipping Security Best Practices If you offer same-day or next-day delivery, make sure your payment processor provides thorough screening for transaction fraud , especially if you sell expensive or rare but popular items. Faster shipping options are popular with scammers because they can sometimes get their merchandise before the bank or the merchant discovers their payment fraud and stops delivery. Always track your shipments, no matter how small. Why? If the item is lost, you’re out the purchase price, and if the customer charges back the purchase through their card issuer, you’ll also have to pay a chargeback fee to your payment processor , which can run anywhere from $20 to $100, depending on the size of the transaction. Tracking keeps your customers happy, cuts down on inquiries to customer service about deliveries, and gives you a way to prove your packages are delivered. Finally, work with a shipper who won’t re-route packages from your store without consulting you first . Scammers sometimes use an unsuspecting consumer’s card and delivery address data to make a purchase, and then call the shipper directly to have the item sent to their lair instead. The result for your store is a loss of merchandise, the value of the sale, and a chargeback fee. 4. Plan for Holiday Season Shipping Changes The holidays are the peak season for most retailers, and they’re crunch time for shipping carriers, too. Every e-commerce store owner needs to keep tabs on holiday season shipping surcharges and timetables to avoid getting stuck with unexpected shipping costs, delayed deliveries, and unhappy customers. Most carriers announce their peak surcharge rates at least several months in advance. You can search your carriers’ sites for surcharge information and use it to adjust your pricing and shipping deals during the holiday season. For example, UPS peak surcharges during the 2018 holiday season ranged from 27 to 99 cents per package, depending on shipping speed and date. If you’re planning a holiday special that cuts your profit margin on a popular item in order to sell more, make sure holiday shipping surcharges won’t push your deal into money-losing territory. Shipping windows and cutoff dates are important for store owners and shoppers alike. Once your shippers publish their cutoff dates for the season (the last dates by which you can ship an item for delivery by Christmas Day), you can add the time it takes to process and pack orders to come up with your store’s cutoff dates. Post them on each page of your site during the holiday shopping season. 5. Share Your Shipping Policy After you decide on your shipping policy, feature the basics on every page of your site along with a link to the fine print in plain English. Put it up high on the page so visitors don’t miss it. And if you have a special shipping deal, include that information, too. Nike does this by promoting its free-shipping offer in exchange for customers’ social media info and/or email address. “Free Shipping for Members. Want it faster? Upgrade for two-day or next-day delivery. Join now.” And just in case shoppers miss that message at the top of each page, Nike also includes a free-shipping dropdown info box on each product page. Set Up Shipping for Your Online Store You can create shipping policy notices on your store pages easily with Gator Website Builder’s drag and drop tools. Gator also gives you a choice of e-commerce templates, coupon tools, inventory management, and other features to help your store run smoothly. Be sure to add an SSL certificate to protect your store from hackers and data thieves, and to help your store do better in customers’ search results. See how easy it is to get started with Gator now . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading
Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost
Tagged christmas, create-shipping, holiday, holiday-season, online, online-business, payment, shipping-costs, shipping-policy, store, web hosting
Comments Off on How to Create Shipping Guidelines for Your Online Business in 5 Steps
How to Create Product Categories for Your Online Store
The post How to Create Product Categories for Your Online Store appeared first on HostGator Blog . There are so many things to get excited about when you’re setting up an online store—your website design, your cool product videos, your social media marketing plans, your product categories. Yes, your product categories. What may seem at first glance like boring labels are a tool that can help you get found in searches and guide your customers through your site to buy what they’re looking for. Here’s how to make those labels work harder and smarter. 1. Create Categories that Make Sense for Your Customers Set up your categories based on how your customers shop. This seems obvious, but you’d be surprised. For example, if your store sells clothing for everyone, customers will expect your main categories to be women’s, men’s, and children’s clothing, each with subcategories like tops, pants, skirts, dresses, shoes, and outerwear. But if you have certain subcategories that your store sells a lot of, you can not only have them as subcategories, you can also elevate them to top-level categories of their own to boost visibility and help customers find those popular items faster. Here’s an example. Lands’ End sells clothing for women, men, and kids, along with home goods and bags, and all of those are top-level categories on its homepage navigation bar. Within the clothing categories, the brand has a solid reputation among its target market for swimwear and school uniforms. The site design could force customers to drill into the clothing categories to find those items, but it saves them time by including them as their own main categories in the nav bar. What if you’re selling something that’s a little harder to sort through? If you sell parts or supplies of any kind, you may have a lot more main categories and subcategories than the average clothing retailer—and that’s okay. Again, the key is to think like a customer as you group your items. Here are a couple of ways to do that. Online needlecraft supplier KnitPicks organizes its nav bar categories to match the way crafts shop. These customers go looking for yarn or needles or patterns or maybe a kit. All those main categories are above the fold. But sometimes yarn shoppers need yarn that’s a specific color, weight, or fiber content. Setting each of those variables up as subcategories would make the menus enormously long and not very useful. So, the site gives shoppers two options. Scroll down the homepage and click on the icon for the color, weight, or fiber they need. “See more” under the yarn tab and use the sidebar navigation tools. Dropdown filters for weight and fiber keep the other subcategory options visible above the fold. Another retailer with a lot of products takes a different approach. AutoZone categorizes its inventory by parts, accessories, tools, and other top-level categories that make sense for the DIY auto maintenance customer. But “auto parts” is a huge category on its own and could quickly become unnavigable. AutoZone has done something like Lands’ End. When customers mouse over “auto parts” they get a pop up subcategory menu that features the most popular subcategories (with their most popular subgroups) on one side and an alphabetized list of all the subcategories on the other side. 2. Use Keywords to Name Your Product Categories Once you’ve got a handle on how to set up your categories, name them with care. Use keyword research to see which terms people search for the most before you commit to anything. Why? You want your categories to appear higher in those searches. Knowing how many people each month search for, say, “handknit baby hats” versus “hand knit baby hats” can help you choose more popular category names. It almost goes without saying that category names are not the place to get wacky and creative. Naming your baby hat category “lids for tiny kids” is cute, but it won’t help customers or search engines find your store, and it won’t help you make sales. 3. Make Your Category Pages Pop Shoppers who are truly browsing through your store—like someone who’s buying a gift—and people who aren’t sure exactly what they need will appreciate it if your category pages include useful or fun information. Target, for example, creates an online browsing experience for its patio furniture category by segmenting its products into collections, followed by links to each subcategory—all enhanced with product photos. Meanwhile, REI includes “helpful advice and inspiration” on its camping and hiking product category page to help new outdoorspeople and gift shoppers decide what they need. If you include relevant keywords in your category page content, it can also help with your store’s SEO . 4. Be Consistent When You Categorize Your Products Category filters (to refine category results by color, size, or something else) help customers find what they want quickly, if you’re consistent about tagging every product in your store with the proper categories and attributes like color and size. Otherwise, when customers use category filters to search for a “women’s brown leather belt,” all your relevant products might not show up, and you might miss out on a sale. And if your store offers dozens or hundreds of women’s brown leather belts, add more filters (size, width, hardware color) to help shoppers narrow their results to a manageable list. Analyze Your Product Categories for Success Featuring popular product subcategories is a great tactic if you know what they are. If your store is new, or if you regularly add new types of products, you may not know exactly what’s hot. You can (and should) regularly review your sales to see which categories are strong sellers. It’s also a good idea to set up Google Analytics to get insights about how your visitors move around your site. Are they following your category trees from homepage to product, or do they bail out halfway through? Are they using your elevated navigation tabs for popular subcategories? Do their clicks lead to conversions, or do they leave without buying anything? You can use all this data to refine your subcategories, decide which ones to make into top-level categories, and make other improvements. Ready to set up your store? Gator Website Builder helps you get started quickly and easily, with drag-and-drop site design tools, e-commerce functionality, analytics, and more than 200 mobile-friendly, customizable templates. Be sure to add an SSL certificate to protect your customers’ data , keep your site safe from attacks, and get better SEO. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading
Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost
Tagged auto-parts, category, clothing, cool, customers, product, sales, store, vodahost, web hosting, your-store
Comments Off on How to Create Product Categories for Your Online Store