The Definitive Guide to Ecommerce Category Trees: Strategy, Build, and Future-Proofing

Strategic Planning (Factors to know before building).

There are four important factors to consider before building your tree.

Factor 1: Get clear on your success criteria

Before you begin with the actual data, you need to know what it means for you to be successful. This ensures you take
the right steps that will actually get you to those goals.

“A goal properly set is halfway reached.”

– Zig Ziglar

We recommend getting the whiteboard out at this stage, and really getting clear on your end goals.

Most likely, this will simply be to make more sales, but you may find that you have particular ranges that you want
to sell more of, or you may be going through a product launch or seasonal promotion and want to prioritize those on
top of simply making more sales across the store.

Factor 2: Identify your key products

These should be your money makers, your most popular items and the products with the highest profit margins.

Especially if you are a manufacturer or it’s your own brand. It could be the cornerstone product for your purchase –
for example if you are selling Jeep accessories, the ‘Lift Kit’ is likely a cornerstone product.

Your cornerstone products should be available within three clicks. Customers are most commonly looking for them, so
presenting them upfront will lead to more conversions, while leading customers deeper to purchase more.

Keep a note of these, and prioritize them when you build your tree.

Factor 3: Stick to ‘Three Clicks To Buy’

You don’t want to force customers to ‘stumble over’ your smaller products and complete category listings to find the
products they want.

There are a lot of short term memory studies out there showing that we can hold between five and nine items in our
minds, but anything over that and we tend to become overwhelmed.

To avoid decision fatigue, ideally you want your items to be easily located within ‘three clicks’ from where they
begin. This isn’t an option for all items, particularly if you have a larger inventory, but should apply to your key
products.

Factor 4: Would this make a good landing page?

When building your category pages, consider how this page would perform if you were to use it as a landing page for
PPC, SEO or email list traffic.

Would you send traffic to this page? If you did, how would it perform?

If you think it would perform poorly, you need to reconsider the content of the page.

Do you have too many types of product here? Do you not have enough? Should you add a little copy at the top to set
expectations? Could you add breadcrumbs or related categories for customers to navigate to if this page isn’t right?

Here’s an example of a category page that works well as a landing page:

New customers are very likely to stick around and check out their products, which is the primary goal of a landing
page.

Now that you are aware of these four factors, you’re ready to start prepping your data!

Data Preparation (Keyword research and mapping)

Now that we’ve covered some guiding principles in post 1,
let’s get your data organized for building your tree. This will be more of a challenge for larger inventories, but
also of greater importance. The more products you have in store, the more essential it becomes to get that data well
organized, and allow your customers to navigate to their desired products as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

Mapping your product data to categories

First, let’s map those part numbers to product categories, so we can get an overview of what’s going where. Create a
spreadsheet with ‘Part Number’ or ‘SKU’ in the first column, then ‘Primary Category’ and ‘Secondary Category’ in the
second and third column. One of the challenges setting up your categories is when you have different products that
come with the same part number. This is a topic we regularly discuss with manufacturers, as we believe they could help
us all by breaking down the ‘part type’ product data a little further. For example, in automotive there’s generally
only one part type for Tonneau Covers, but within that you have hard folding tonneau covers and soft rolling tonneau
covers, which deserve a different category in store, but they aren’t separated by the original data (usually the more
detailed breakdowns appear in the product title, attributes and description). Another example is bumpers, which come
as only one part type, but to create a successful Ecommerce category navigation you will need to separate front and
rear bumpers. You might find this in your industry and niche, such as T-Shirts with externally affixed tags vs.
T-Shirts with tags printed inside. These may carry the same part number, and yet you’ll need to split them into
different categories, because the position of the tag is something your customer will want to know (and choose) before
they make their purchase. You may need to create a new spreadsheet column between ‘Part Number’ and ‘Primary Category’
and input your own in-house SKU. Then map those SKUs to your desired categories, such as ‘Front Bumpers’ and ‘Rear
Bumpers’.

Products with multiple purposes

While mapping your categories you may find that some products have multiple uses. A good example of this is the
lighting category. Within automotive alone, you may need lighting in the general ‘Lighting’ category, and also need it
in the ‘Recovery’ and ‘Towing’ categories too. Non-automotive stores may have other uses for lighting, including
indoor, outdoor, weatherproof, portable, emergency lighting and so on. A huge advantage of running an Ecommerce store
over brick and mortar is the opportunity to put products in multiple categories, making them easier and faster to
find. I remember one time at Home Depot I was looking for one particular type of finished redwood lumber. On this
particular occasion, I was shopping in a Home Depot that I don’t usually go to. Since the layout of the store was
different to the store I was used to, the lumber wasn’t in the place I expected it to be, and I couldn’t find it.
After walking up and down the aisles and asking several employees, it took five guys and a computer check to
eventually come across this redwood lumber in the garden section, where they had a fencing display. As fencing wasn’t
the reason I was looking for the lumber, I didn’t look there first, and so it took a lot of searching to find it.
Remember that once you are in a brick and mortar store, the effort and pain it takes to go to a different store is
very high, so customers are more likely to stick around in the store searching for what they need. With Ecommerce it’s
not like that. A customer can bounce to the next store with one click, and may never come back. Luckily, we can avoid
this issue altogether by placing the same item in multiple categories. So whatever your customer’s reason for
searching for the product, they should always find it quickly. If you have more than 2 or 3 ‘Secondary Categories’,
just create new columns on your spreadsheet to accommodate them, such as ‘Secondary Category 1’, ‘Secondary Category
2’ and so on.

Recommended / related products

At this stage, also take time to figure out your cross-sell and upsell products. Make a note or spreadsheet entry for
which products and subcategories should be recommended to customers who are browsing in certain areas of your site.
It’s not only a great way to keep customers rolling through your product lines, rather than bouncing out to find what
they need on a competitor site (if they think you have nothing more to offer, they may just stop browsing) but it may
also encourage them to purchase items that they had not considered before, increasing your average cart values. UK
Ecommerce giant Staples do a great job by recommending other products in the same line (in this case, more paper)
along with related products, such as envelopes and folders:

Create a new column or two on your spreadsheet called ‘Cross Sell 1’, ‘Cross Sell 2’ etc to show which categories
that item should be cross sold into.

Product groupings

Finally, get clear on how you will group your products. The size of your inventory and the range of your products
will be a defining factor here. If you are selling everything under the sun in the automotive industry, then you will
be breaking it down into larger groups, such as: Accessories -> Bumpers -> Front & Rear -> Color ->
etc. But if you were a store specializing in bumpers, then there is no need for the larger groupings, and you dive
right into the more specific groups such as: Front bumpers -> Size -> Color -> etc. Or: Brand -> Model
-> Color -> etc. All these groupings will be treated as ‘categories’ that will become landing pages for you to
drive traffic to via SEO, PPC or other sources. This is an exercise you can carry out in a separate document, on paper
or on your whiteboard with your team. Just make sure the overall strategy of your product groupings makes sense at
this point.

You’re ready to build your category tree!

Now you have your data prepared, it’s time to put it into action and build a high performing category tree that
boosts sales.

Phase 3: The Technical Hierarchy Build (The actual structural logic)

Now that we have our information prepared to get the best results, let’s start building your category tree.

Think of the following sections hierarchically.

Your main categories will be at the top of the tree, and they will be fewest. Under that will come your
subcategories, levels 1, 2 and perhaps 3, and will number higher than your main categories. Finally, you will have set
of filters that narrow down the search to the very most specific details of the product.

When it’s done, it will look like a Christmas tree, thinnest at the top, and widest at the base, like this

An example of how your Ecommerce category tree should start to look. Less main categories, more sub- and
sub-sub-categories.

Main categories

These are your biggest, broadest product groupings. The idea of these categories is to quickly display to new
visitors the total scope of what you stock in your store.

If your potential customer is looking to pick up a rear bumper, and your main categories are bumpers, floor mats,
lighting and a other cosmetic automotive accessories, they’ll dive right into ‘Bumpers’ and find what they need in a
couple of clicks.

However, if you have that same set of main categories on your site, but this time your customer wants to pick up some
electronic components in bulk, and you do stock them, but ‘electronics’ isn’t in your main category list… they’re
going to bounce to your competitor immediately, because they think you only do cosmetic accessories.

Now you’ve missed a sale.

Your ideal situation here is that every major product grouping has a ‘main category’ allocation right at the top of
the tree.

They should simultaneously outline what you do and do not stock, and intuitively lead your customer down the right
path to find what they want to buy.

REI do a good job of breaking down their main categories, within the wider range of ‘Outdoor Gear’

The clear breakdown of REI’s main categories clearly sets the boundary of what they do and do not stock.

Subcategories

This is where you break down your main categories into specific groups of products from which customers can compare
and select the products they want.

We recommend that you stick to 1-2 levels of subcategories, to stay within the ‘3 clicks to buy’ framework. This will
vary if you have especially large inventories.

To use an automotive example, this is where you break down your ‘Bumpers’ main category into front bumper and rear
bumper, and your floor mats into a list of brands or soft vs. hard (depending on how you choose to present your
range).

A clothing store might break down their T-Shirt range into v-neck, long sleeve and short sleeve, or their jeans into
skinny fit, bootleg, straight cut and low rise.

In general, the subcategory level is too early to go into things like size and material, as listing all those
variables in your main navigation would be far too overwhelming for most shoppers.

Your goal is to draw customers to the right product grouping, then allow them to play with size and material options
to isolate the exact product they are interested in.

Web Shop Manager client Jack’d Offroad do a great job of breaking down their main categories (in this example,
‘Drivetrain’) into more manageable subcategories

Break down your main categories into clear subcategories make products easier to find, compare and purchase

’Feature’ categories

Your feature categories are unique groupings that fall outside the normal range of attributes that you use for your
main and subcategories.

Examples of this are sale or discount items, limited edition ranges, best sellers and new in stock.

You won’t want to use all of these as you may risk confusing your audience and devaluing your product range. Choose a
few that are most likely to work well for your business.

It might be useful to place them in the main navigation, right next to your main categories (such as ‘Discount Items’
to catch people who are shopping for a bargain) or you may wish to place a few permanent links, such as ‘Best Sellers’
or ‘New Items’ in the top bar or footer.

Placing them in a permanent, visible, yet non-intrusive spot such as the top header will create familiarity with your
regular customers, who are likely to routinely check back to see what you are offering there.

Herb.com permanently display their specials, best sellers and new items in the top navigation bar, to train
customers to check back regularly for deals.

This works for seasonal lines, such as Xmas and Halloween, and you can link directly to the category from banners on
the main page, or include them in the navigation.

Pottery Barn, a leading Ecommerce store well-known for their split-testing and high conversions, place featured
products prominently in the drop down menus.

Displaying featured categories in the drop down menus works for Pottery Barn, who are dealing with very large
inventory.

Filters & Tagging

Product filters really dig down into the specifics of your product attributes.

Let’s say we have already attracted our buyer into the category ‘Bumpers’, and they chose to continue on the search
into ‘Rear Bumpers’, which they know they need.

When they reach this section, they most likely still have many questions about which product they want to buy and we
can help them answer those questions with filters.

Often appearing on the left side of the screen, perhaps as drop down menus, check boxes or slider bars, customers can
easily refine their search using the parameters you set.

Zappos, who are dealing with a huge inventory, use checkbox filters on the left of their category page screens.

Zappos using checkbox filters to organize their large inventory into manageable product groupings.

In the image above, Zappos use several ‘product specific’ filters such as features, strap or handle style, closures
and pattern to narrow down the search for Carry On Luggage, which in total has 444 items.

You may choose to offer filtering of maximum price, minimum price, size, color, brand, model, age, application,
style, customer rating or any other attribute that applies to your product range.

Our hypothetical customer can choose to refine their search in rear bumpers using color and price, because they know
their budget and color of their car.

This will bring the number of applicable products in category down to a manageable number, which the customer is able
to compare, contrast and make a purchase decision.

Here I narrowed down my Zappos ‘Carry On Luggage’ search to four items, using just two check boxes: small and
burgundy.

Offering search filters on category pages makes it easy to narrow down a large volume of inventory and make a
purchase decision.

If your customer feels they have narrowed the search down too far (perhaps they don’t like any of the options, or
there is not enough of a range in that narrow of a search) they can easily re-adjust the filter parameters, perhaps
increasing the maximum price to see what products are available if they spend a little more.

Had we provided all these options as subcategory options, the customer would most likely have never gotten down to
product level on their purchase journey.

How do I make sure my tree is performing at the highest level?

Check out our next and final post in the series, where we take a look at some ways to make sure your newly built tree
is tuned in and optimized for high performance.

Have questions building your tree? If you need help, let us know in the comments below!

Phase 4: Launch & Maintenance (URLs, breadcrumbs, and going live)

Fine-tuning the system: getting the most out of your category tree

Fine tuning the system: common issues to look out for

Now that you have your basic outline for your category tree set up, let’s look at a few potential problem areas, to
make sure you get maximum performance from your navigation right off the bat.

Understand your platform’s limitations

Not all platforms are created equal, so find out where your platform under-performs and what options you have to
improve. You may be able to code the changes yourself, or you may wish to switch platforms. The considerations may
vary slightly from niche to niche, but I will give you some examples from the automotive industry. Ideally, a platform
for an online retailer selling automotive accessories should have:

1) A system with a ‘Year / Make / Model’ lookupmdp-year-make-model-lookup.pngAll Web Shop Manager client websites are
fitted with ‘Year / Make / Model’ lookup to easily find the right parts for your exact car. This allows people to
search through the categories and find products relevant to their specific car. This is very effective for all large
inventory stores. If this aspect is sticky, all the better, as people can access it from anywhere on site. If there is
no ‘Year / Make / Model’ lookup feature, you can either implement your own (which may be expensive) or use your
vehicle names and specs as categories themselves.

2) Sidebar attributes / facet navigationdriver-mods-sidebar-attributes.pngWeb Shop Manager client site DriverMods.com
using sidebar attributes to filter large inventory Describe the details of the product (such as color, size and
materials) and allow products to be filtered using these criteria. You wouldn’t want to create a category for every
color (for example, ‘tan car mats’) as it is not a category people are likely to be looking for and it would clog up
your navigation. Allowing faceted filtering in your sidebar will allow people to check other products with similar
attributes while they browse. If you don’t have this feature, you can either create a category for each attribute
(increasing the size of your navigation greatly, potentially overwhelming customers) or just accept that your items
aren’t browsable by those criteria.

3) Product groups (aka. Product series) Also known as ‘collections’, this feature allows you to group certain
products whenever you like. This could be for a flash sale, to highlight a range you want to promote or for seasonal
products. Examples may include a Spring Collection, Black Friday ‘Crazy Deals’ or a product specific sale, such as
‘Bumpers Spring Sale Promotion’. Rather than send traffic to a category that may have several thousand SKUs (eg.
‘Weathertech Floor Mats’) you can display a smaller selection from within the category, such as the ‘BAKFlip G2’,
which would bring up perhaps 4-5 products. From that narrowed down selection it’s much easier to compare features and
benefits before you put your vehicle fitment in, and ultimately make a purchase
decision.sears-fitness-real-deals.pngSears grouping together all their fitness items that are on sale. A much smaller
selection that showing ‘all fitness items’ or ‘all sale items’ together.

‘Too broad vs. Too specific’

I like to give a ‘three bears’ analogy when it comes to getting the scope of your category tree just right. It’s
important not to overwhelm people with information. It may seem logical to present all options to your customers at
once, so they can most quickly find what they need, but it will actually confuse them. Too hot! If
you are too specific and list too many small categories right off the bat, you will be ‘too hot’, and customers are
likely to turn away due to overwhelm. Resolve this by removing some categories from the navigation and allowing them
to be filtered as attributes on the product and category pages. Too cold! If you don’t provide enough
overview of your product range in your category tree, you will be too cold. Customers won’t be able to get an overview
of what you’re selling, and may not even know that you sell what they want. Resolve this by ensuring all of the major
product groupings on offer in your store are listed in the ‘top level’ of your category tree, known as your ‘main
categories’. Just right….You have it just right when you provide a good overview of your product
range, which is easy to browse quickly, isolate the category area you want and get down into the subcategories and
product pages to start making purchase decisions. This is why we advocate a ‘three clicks to purchase’ methodology,
and in general advise keeping subcategories to 2-3 levels deep at most. This will vary from store to store, so you
will have to use your industry and customer knowledge to get your best results.

Dealing with large inventories

If you are dealing with large volumes of inventory and SKUs then your task of categorizing and filtering is
especially big, and especially important. You will need to utilize cross-selling and related categories more than in
smaller stores, and your filtering system will need to be especially dialled in.

Maintaining your tree over time

We now have your tree built, and that’s awesome – you are already huge strides ahead of where you were before, and
the conversions and sales should begin rolling in. But the work isn’t done yet. You need to test, refine and improve
your category tree over time. You will do this with A/B testing and heat mapping, which we will be teaching you about
in an upcoming blog. This helps you find out where people are clicking, how they are browsing your site so you can
determine clearly what is working and what is not. Once you know this, you can make changes and iterate to keep the
parts that get results and change the parts that don’t, until you are fully optimized. Look out for a blog post coming
up on that.

Over to you!

There’s only so far we can lead you on this journey, and now the time has come for you to take action and put
together your high performance category tree. Your customers and bottom line will thank you for it when you do! To
make sure you stay on track while creating your category tree, here’s a quick recap of the steps you need to take:
[Action Steps Box]

Action Steps (Recap)

Step 1: Get clear on these four factors

1.1) Get clear on your success criteria 1.2) Identify your key products 1.3) Follow the ‘3 clicks to buy’ guideline
1.4) Ask ‘would this make a good landing page?’

Step 2: Prepare your data

2.1) Map your product data to categories 2.2) Define products with multiple categories 2.3) Define recommended /
related products 2.4) Define other product groupings

Step 3: Build your tree

3.1) Main categories 3.2) Subcategories 3.3) Feature categories 3.4) Filters & Tagging [/Action Steps Box]

Further study

If you’re interested to learn more, check out my video on YouTube where I go into these topics and more. You may view the
presentations I was invited to give at the SEMA car show in Las Vegas through my automotive strategic vault a collection of industry-proven success and branding guides.

We hope you enjoyed this series! Is your category tree up and running yet? If you need help,
let us know in the comments below!