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Whether you’re selling B2B or B2C, having a clear and searchable website is one of the best ways to improve eCommerce revenue. Site navigation can help site visitors easily find their desired product creating an easy conversion. By using clear product categories and optimizing product listing pages and product detail pages with keywords, specifications, and features, you can increase average order value and increase the likelihood of repeat customers.
Category hierarchy is the process of setting up site structure and product page breadcrumbs using product categories and attributes to help visitors navigate across the site. Category hierarchy allows for streamlined searching and increases browsing across a site.
Take Viking Supply Net, for example. Viking came to Briteskies looking for assistance in creating their online Magento eCommerce website. Supply Net is an eCommerce channel of Viking Group which sells thousands of fire protection products including single-point solutions for various fire-protection needs. With close to 100,000 products in their online catalog, breaking down the items into segmented categories allows them to present their full catalog to site visitors in a more user-friendly, searchable, navigational format.
Thanks to the filters on the lefthand column of the category pages, visitors can narrow their 
search results and find applicable items according to their needs. Utilizing various filters such as Category, Temperature, Brand, and Finish Material, Supply Net’s visitors can easily navigate around the site and find the product they need without having to know specific SKUs or other unique identifiers.
In addition to finding the product they are looking for, by working through the product filters customers are exposed to the wide range of categories and filters that the Supply Net site carries.
For example, a visitor may come to the site looking for fire sprinklers. After navigating through the Sprinkler category page filters, the visitor learns that Supply Net not only makes Standard Coverage Sprinklers, but Spray Nozzles as well.
Supply Net can now use its navigation as a tool to help customers find the items they want in an efficient manner, as well as an effective opportunity to increase cross-selling across the site.
In B2B, many companies are yet to adopt category hierarchy citing that their customers are aware of their products and already “know what they want”. However, even with repeat customers, needs change and the value of a relatively simple task of setting up categories can result in increased average order value and customer retention. By alerting customers of your full product category, site visitors are more likely to browse multiple categories and product pages creating the opportunity for increasing online revenue. Beyond the increase in online sales, a successful category hierarchy will highlight the additional value your company offers as an already preferred vendor with a “one-stop shop” feel to it.
In addition to traffic conversion, category hierarchy and structure helps search engines like Google, Bing, and Firefox scroll your website and index the pages. A well thought-out and organized navigation is usually an indicator of a high level of site crawlability and will be rewarded by search engines with a higher search ranking for your pages.
High SEO rankings help drive organic searchers to your pages increasing your site traffic and impressions with a higher probability of boosting conversion rates and sales.
In this example, Viking is increasing its SEO by using navigational breadcrumbs, listing product categories, and including content on its category pages.
Whether selling in B2C or B2B markets, category and product navigation is a high-impact way to increase online revenue exponentially. Regardless of whether you have product navigation set up in your ERP or are just starting to create the structure, now is always the perfect time to start tackling this project. Category hierarchy will lead to an improved shopping experience for your customers and a higher likelihood of visitor-to-customer conversion rate.
If you think you have too many items, too many filters, that your items are too unique, or your customers don’t care about buying online – I can assure you that isn’t true.
Reach out today to discuss how best to start organizing your online product catalog and start increasing revenue by using eCommerce as a tool.
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