The Ecwid Blog>Online Merchandising: How to Layout Products in Online Store

Online Merchandising: How to Layout Products in Online Store

Posted de Anna Koneva, Ecwid Team

Have you ever wondered why grocery stores place milk at the back of the store and chocolates near the checkout counter?

Simplu: placing essentials at the back of the store encourages shoppers to walk around and browse other products. Placing small items (like chocolates) near the checkout counter encourages impulse purchases.

This is all a part of the science of store design. The right store layout can boost sales, improve loyalty and help customers find what they want faster.

Your online store isn’t any different. The organization and layout of your products have a big impact on what (and how) customers buy from you.

În acest articol, we’ll show you how to layout your products to maximize sales and conversions.

3 Things to Consider When Selecting a Product Layout

Product layout might sound like a straightforward problem when you first approach it. in orice caz, like most things in e-commerce, the complexities emerge once you dive into the details. Există trei lucruri pe care trebuie să le luați în considerare atunci când alegeți un aspect al produsului:

1. Alegere

Alegerea este o sabie cu două tăișuri pentru magazinele de comerț electronic. Lipsa de alegere înseamnă că limitați oportunitățile. Prea multe alegeri, in orice caz, și vei lăsa vizitatorii confuzi.

Aspectul eficient al produsului este în esență un proces de echilibrare a acestei dualități. Acesta este: dând impresia de alegere din belșug, păstrând în același timp site-ul ușor de utilizat și de navigat.

Stiinta spune acea luare a deciziilor este o problemă mentală. Când vă confruntați cu cumpărătorii cu prea multe opțiuni, sunt susceptibili să nu facă deloc o alegere.

Deci, cum depășiți această problemă în aspectul magazinului dvs?

O soluție este utilizarea imaginilor prezentate care duc la produse suplimentare. De exemplu, observa cum Made.com folosește imagini separate pentru întregi categorii de produse (precum „mobilier de grădină”):

Gândiți-vă la asta ca la un teaser pentru a atrage cumpărătorii.

Ideal, veți dori să vă păstrați produsele cele mai vândute sau cele mai dorite în primul rând.

Prin urmare, înainte de a începe procesul de layout, enumerați următoarele:

Următorul pas este să folosiți aceste informații pentru a construi un meniu de navigare bine organizat. Observați cum Amazon organizează produsele în categorii în meniul său.

Acest lucru îi va ajuta pe cumpărători să găsească ceea ce își doresc fără a-i copleși cu prea multe opțiuni.

Dacă magazinul dvs. Ecwid este adăugat la un site web, puteți adăuga un meniu de navigare adăugând o bucată de cod:

Here are the instructions for Ecwid stores added on WordPress și Wix site-uri web, de asemenea. Pe site-ul Ecwid Instant, meniul orizontal este disponibil numai.

2. Informații despre produs

Iată un alt act de echilibru pe care ar trebui să îl efectuați atunci când selectați un aspect al magazinului: afișând informații despre produs.

Doriți să oferiți clienților informațiile de care au nevoie pentru a face clic și a face o achiziție. În același timp, you don’t want to overwhelm them with too many details – at least not before they are on the actual product page.

Modelul tău mental în această situație ar trebui să fie acela de a ușura luarea deciziilor și de a stârni interesul clienților. Intreaba-te pe tine insuti: ce informatii minime clienții mei trebuie să facă clic pe un produs?

Veți descoperi că acest răspuns variază de la magazin la magazin și de la produs la produs.

De exemplu, observați cum Amazon vă oferă doar patru puncte de informații pe pagina categoriei: numele produsului, Preț (inclusiv reducere), rating și disponibilitate Prime:

In Ecwid, you can add similar ratings and reviews with the help of the Stampled.io app.

Though this information is necessary for a large retailer like Amazon, for smaller businesses like Sand & Stone Jewelry, ratings aren’t as important. Hence, the category pages only show product name and price.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of giving away too little information in category pages. The best way to avoid this is to interview your customers and ask them what information they use to make purchase decisions.

3. Store design

How you’ve designed your store will have a big impact on your product layout.

An e-commerce store will typically have three key pages:

What products you choose to showcase on each page-type will decide what products your customers end up buying.

De exemplu, note how Amazon promotes its own products on its homepage if you haven’t signed in:

It’s common for stores to promote latest offers on the homepage. Make sure to align these offers with your target audience. BestMadeCo, de exemplu, runs a Father’s Day promo keeping in mind its largely male clientele.

Focus on:

Whether you decide to highlight your best sellers or new arrivals, Ecwid allows you to create a category for featured products on the homepage and name it according to your needs.

6 Best Practices for E-commerce Product Layout

While you can certainly create a unique layout scheme for your e-commerce store, it helps to follow a few best practices.

1. Push top products and offers above the fold

The ‘above the fold’ area is the screen real estate visible when customers first land on your site. De fapt, this area accounts for 80% of all viewer attention on most sites.

Given the kind of attention this space gets, it’s a good idea to place your top products above the fold. This can include:

Pe Target.com, de exemplu, you’ll see the latest offers at the top of the page:

If you have a lot of offers, consider adding a slider, like this example from Walmart. Also note the promotions running below the navigation menu:

Some fashion retailers eschew conventional layouts in favor of promoting a brand image. Pe ASOS, de exemplu, you get a brand image with an option to ‘Shop Men’ or ‘Shop Women’.

This tactic works when you’re trying to promote a brand vision with a lookbook. Most retailers, in orice caz, will do better with a conventional product-first above the fold layout.

Follow the same idea on category pages: push your best-selling and top-rated products above the fold. De exemplu, check out Amazon’s category pages:

2. Mix horizontal and vertical layouts

There are essentially two ways you can layout your products on any page: horizontally or vertically.

A horizontal layout remains static. There’s a button at the edge of the page to scroll the listings further.

This example from Amazon illustrates things better:

In Ecwid, recently viewed products are also shown horizontally. You can choose the number of items to display them on top or at the bottom of your storefront.

Related products is another horizontally-oriented section. Products in this group are set up individually for every product page that allows to target your customers with highly relevant additions to their orders. You can display them on product pages and on the cart page.

În contrast, a vertical layout doesn’t have these scroll buttons. In schimb, you see more and more products in a grid-like alignment as you scroll down. Like this:

Ideal, you should use a mix of both these layouts:

3. Follow convention and user expectations

There are situations when you’ll want to be unconventional with your design. The product layout isn’t one of them.

Your product layout is meant to orient users when they land on your site. A conventional layout ensures that they find what they want and don’t get disoriented.

Conventions, desigur, vary from sector to sector. in orice caz, there are a few things you must consider:

Use a grid layout

In a grid layout, products are arranged in equally-sized rectangular boxes, like this:

This layout has long been the convention for e-commerce sites. Not only would your customers already be familiar with it, it is also good for displaying products. Further, it scales well – you can display just one box on small screens, or expand to several boxes on larger ones.

When using this layout, make sure to keep the boxes equally sized. As this case study shows, using equally sized boxes can increase revenue per visitor by as much as 17%.

If you sell with Ecwid, that is not a problem for you – Ecwid has an equally sized grid that automatically adapts to different screens.

Show navigation at the top of product listings

Another convention you should follow is to place your sorting options at the top of the page.

Customers have come to expect this placement and will naturally look here when they land on a category page.

Orient customers with breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are navigational elements that show users their path from the homepage, like this:

Adding them to the to top of the page helps orient visitors. It tells them what page or category they’re in and how they can go back to the homepage.

4. Focus on visuals, but don’t forget the text on product pages

Pe net, the only way to show your products is through visuals. This is why large product images are known to boost e-commerce conversions.

in orice caz, while visuals are important, your layout should also have room for descriptive text. Good copy not only describes the product, but also helps sell it and your brand.

De exemplu, consider how BestMadeCo uses strong copy on its homepage to sell a recently launched product. The layout helps the text play off against the image perfectly.

Product copy is particularly important on product pages. Your layout should give customers all the key information they need to make a decision right above the fold. This should include:

This is an example of how not to layout products. The product page has no copy at all – it’s difficult to make a decision.

As with most things, Amazon’s layout is perfect here, giving customers everything they need to make a decision.

5. Add product recommendations and related products

On product pages, you have two goals:

For the latter, you should have a recommended or related products section. You can place this either after the product information or before it.

Amazon does this particularly well. Notice the related products and “also viewed” listings below the fold:

If you have multiple products in the same collection, make sure to display them as well. Here’s a good example from WorldMarket:

Related product listings don’t always have to be visual. You can also show related searches to direct customers to items they might be interested in.

Experiment with different layouts for related/recommended products. Try placing them above the footer, below product description, etc.

6. Experiment with mouseover details on category pages

One way to improve click-through rates is to offer additional details when a customer moves his mouse over a product image on category pages.

De exemplu, this site shows product details and an add to cart button on mouse hover:

The purpose of this tactic is to give users key information at a glance. It works best when you expect users to browse through a large number of products quickly, such as in clothing stores. It might not work for other categories, but you can still run a few split tests and see the results.

In Ecwid, puteți activa butoanele „Cumpărați acum” pe listele de produse pentru a vă ajuta clienții să răsfoiască rapid (si cumpara) produsele dvs.

Când un client face clic pe un astfel de buton, magazinul dvs. nu va deschide întreaga pagină de produs. In schimb, clientul dvs. va vedea o fereastră pop-up cu opțiuni de produs:

Dacă produsul dvs. nu are opțiuni, va merge direct la cărucior.

Concluzie

Când vine vorba de aspectul produsului, cel mai bine este să respectați convențiile și să urmați ceea ce fac deja liderii de piață. Catalogați-vă produsele în detaliu, clasificați-le temeinic, then organize them out in a standard grid layout.

The best practices shared above will work for most stores across sectors. Try them at your own store!

About The Author
Anna is a content creator at Ecwid. She loves big cities, pasta and Woody Allen's films.

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