A Comprehensive Guide to Ecommerce Website Architecture
Ecommerce website architecture is one of the most imperative factors to consider when a company plans to grow digitally and sell online. Ecommerce websites have rare chances of reaching their potential through SEO if the site is difficult to navigate and buy from and facing an organizational crisis. Therefore, having the right website architecture is necessary. Understand it in terms of a house: if the foundations are not strong, the whole structure will crash down eventually. No one of us wants to happen it – especially when we completely depend on it.
Let’s have a supermarket analogy that will not function long-term if products are not properly aligned. The same applies to your eCommerce website, if there is a mess, the search engine will not consider it. And, if it takes a too long time to find the desired products, customers will just leave your website. Google doesn’t consider a website having irrelevant information to inform the users. It means you cannot depend on ranking boost as Google doesn’t consider that you’re eligible for the greater reaches of the SERPs.
If somehow a customer finds your website and it is not properly structured, he will leave it without thinking twice and move ahead. So how do you build a website architecture as per the search engine guidelines to grab potential customers?
Optimal Website Structure Helps with SEO
When Google crawls your website, it ensures whether your website meets all imperative guidelines. It determines two things: first of all, what it offers and how it appears information when a user searched for relevant keywords. A consistent website structure enables Google to understand what all about your site is and where to find important information.
Avoiding Page Cannibalization
Ecommerce website architecture usually comes up with some SEO challenges. Google sometimes tangled with duplicated content. If you have an eCommerce website for selling products remotely, such as plastic water bottles. As all products are different, but it’s tough to write anything unique. As a result, Google will not know which page needs to be ranked. Therefore, it’s important to define the page’s importance.
So how would you decide which page to select? That would be none other than the category page. If you have a category page for a plastic bottle company, you’re required to optimize the category page for all relevant keywords. To avoid the hassle of product clashing, repeat this procedure for every category page.
Step 1: Guide Users about What They are looking for
A good website architecture should have concise and clear navigation. Your potential customers buy from you, so make the process easy for them. Below mentioned navigation factors are important and affect eCommerce SEO.
Main Menu
Every website has a main menu page, and it is specially designed for the customers to know about the company. Avoid adding multiple categories to this page as it becomes confusing for Google and customers as well.
Additional Menus
Even a mid-level store is too large to fit all the categories into the main menu, and you’re required to ensure that your customers can find them easily. For this purpose, an additional drop-down comes in. Try to keep additional menus as easy and logical as possible.
Search Bars
These search bars are helpful. All stores have a broad range of products, and when a customer is unable to find its desired products – a search bar helps them to find it out.
Home Page Structure
A homepage is a page where the user lands first, and it’s a hub of a website. It should include all the important factors that push users in a direction they need to go. If they are looking for some latest products, popular products, or promotions – you need to display them on the home page.
Step 2: URL Structure
A URL structure should always follow the natural flow. If it is all over the place, it is not useful especially when your website is packed with different categories and products. When it comes to selecting the URL structure, Google recommends some structures:
- Create URL with a natural and logical flow
- Use hyphens instead of spaces or underscores
- URL length should be 70 characters
Step 3: Filtered Navigation
An eCommerce store can sell thousands of products in various sizes, colors, and prices. Filtered navigation assists visitors to navigate this information efficiently. It is an easy way for customers to find the product they are looking for with just a single click. Keep in mind that filtered navigation is not always search engine-friendly. If not done properly, it can create different URL combinations and repeated pages. For user-friendly filtered navigation, an eCommerce website should:
- Choose URL parameters that are essential for bots to index all pages
- Decide which parameter will give relevant information and resolve duplication issues
Step 4: Breadcrumbs
In website jargon, breadcrumbs map the user journey into the website. With breadcrumbs, we can:
- Decrease the number of clicks a user requires to navigate to a high-level page
- Improves the searchability of different sections and pages
- Mark the location of the user on the website
- Creates natural and logical site links
Step 5: Pagination
You have three options to display products on your website: pagination, load more, and finger-numbing scrolling into the infinity option. Today, most eCommerce website architecture use pagination as their go-to option. It allows users to separate website content into smaller parts that eliminate the repetitive clicking and take right to the products they’re looking for.
Step 6: Canonical Tags
These tags inform search engines which specific page they need to look at. Ecommerce websites usually have multiple options with similar content inside. It is a method of selling the same product in various ways, such as color and material. Placing canonical tags guides the search engines where to put focus to search the value. These are used for product pages, but it’s a great idea to use them on product pagination and variations.
Final Words
An eCommerce website structure helps in making the business effective when selling online. Neither marketing promotions nor advanced SEO techniques are enough to make the online store successful as it is complex to navigate. Instead, a smooth website is necessary to achieve the goals, grab customers, and generate sales.
