Question
My Web-Site/estore is Suzie-Q's House of Collectibles & Treasures, I am selling antique and vintage collectibles of all kinds, I do not want run-of-the-mill categories so I've been trying to think of my ecommerce categories as rooms in a house or places in a neighborhood. Example: The Dusty Old Attic
The Local Tavern and in my index/welcome page having it set up to match certain items with the rooms/locations.
What I'd like to know from all of you is, A. What do you think? Good or Bad? and B. Room/Location Ideas and what you think you would find in them?
Thanks here for such a great forum!!
Answer
Originally Posted by *suzie-qs*
My Web-Site/estore is Suzie-Q's House of Collectibles & Treasures, I am selling antique and vintage collectibles of all kinds, I do not want run-of-the-mill categories so I've been trying to think of my ecommerce categories as rooms in a house or places in a neighborhood. Example: The Dusty Old Attic
The Local Tavern and in my index/welcome page having it set up to match certain items with the rooms/locations.
What I'd like to know from all of you is, A. What do you think? Good or Bad? and B. Room/Location Ideas and what you think you would find in them?
Thanks here for such a great forum!!
My PERSONAL opinion is, "Dusty Old Attic" does not describe any items, nor does "The Local Tavern".
I like the names you choose, and they might be great for a brick-&-mortar store, but online, folks need to be able to find WHAT sites sell what. (And from experience, they don't like wading thru pages and pages of stuff to find what they're looking for. If they can't find it quickly, 99.9% of the time, they'll go elsewhere.)
Let me give you an example:
Say I was in the market for purchasing a "vintage toaster".
Suzie-Q's House of Collectibles & Treasures - Vintage Toasters category would probably be a good bet.
Suzie-Q's House of Collectibles & Treasures - Dusty Old Attic category ????
You COULD keep those "category names", but you'll just have to work even harder at optimizing your individual products and pages. I always recommend the "worker smarter, not harder" method.
If I were to go visit your site, and see two categories named as above, I wouldn't really have a clue as to what it was you were selling or showing in the second example. (Does that make sense?)
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On the other hand, it's a cute idea. You might think about using it visually rather than by text.
For example, if you're Home page had a big picure of a victorian house cutaway, then you could make each room a link....kitchen for kitchen stuff, bedroom for bedroom items. It would take some creativity...and you'd have to be sure to use popup descriptions or something over the rooms....but it would be very memorable for your viewers.
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That's what I have in mind,
Click below for how I plan on introducing it...
http://www.suzie-qs.com/testpage.htm
Mind you, this is only the idea layout not the final product. It's a work in progress.
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The only thing I can say is "think like a search engine" and that includes all meta tags, url's and text!!!!!
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I know about meta tags, I haven't set them up yet. On the sparedollar board is a good topic about being search engine friendly, that I have bookmarked it's been separated(sp?) into 3 parts and I refer to it regularly, but what I want is something like jayne suggested as the entryway into my store, and start with not-so-common main categories-more common sub-categories-to more specific sub-sub categories. So if I say: I take them on a "tour" to The Dusty Old Attic where there's Antique Art-sub categorized into something like paintings, picture frames, emphemera, etc., Antique Pottery & Porcelain with sub categories like English, American, German, etc. wouldn't that work??
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From my experience, the further away (more clicks) your item page/s is/are from the home/index page, the lower the PR (page rank) and most likely, the further back in the search engine results you'll be.
Best to keep everything as close to possible to "home".
(I'm not certain how that applies to eBay or an eBay store, though.)
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You shouldn't make things more than one click from the front page.
Two clicks if you must and the information is not vital.
I wouldn't put your merchandise more than one click from the door. Even then, you want your hot items and sales right on the front page.
The idea is to grab your customer at the first page. For example, if they see a great sale on a must have item on the first page, then they will explore the rest of the site looking for (1) more bargains or (2) more items to take advantage of combined shipping.
I'm very vague on what the stats are now, but it used to be something like 70% of the people who go to your site will not look past the first page. 60% of them won't even scroll.
That doesn't mean you can't use the house idea. It's a cute idea. But you need a space--down the side or across the top--with thumbnails, merchandise, sales info. A great example is Amazon. Ever notice how much they cram into that inch-high navigation bar across the top? And the little graphic that emphasizes a particular category? The "gold box" special in the corner? That one-inch bar probably makes them more money than anything else on the front page....except maybe the search box.
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The thing about this discussion is you can make the cutest, prettiest website on the world wide web but if it's not search engine friendly you have wasted a whole lot of time and effort.
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Do you think it's possible to make something like that search-engine friendly? How would you go about it?