The use of categories and subcategories is extremely important when trying to create a well-organised, professional electronic product catalogue. Not only does categorisation help sales reps navigate the catalogue more easily and show customers exactly what product they\u2019re looking for, you also avoid scrolling tediously through one endless page in your search.<\/p>\n
There has also been quite a bit of research about the effects of giving customers too much choice. Choice overload (sometimes called analysis paralysis) is a state in which customers are either unable to or struggle to make a purchase because there is too much information for them to process all at once. However, being faced with a lot of choices isn\u2019t inherently a bad thing because people tend to show more interest where there are a lot of products. However, this interest doesn\u2019t necessarily lead to buying.<\/p>\n
But wait, this doesn\u2019t mean you should shrink your inventory, you simply need to organise your products better to avoid choice overload. Separating a large inventory into more manageable bite-sizes makes choosing easier and makes it more likely that a customer will place an order.<\/p>\n
Creating the perfect category hierarchy is easy once you know how. Start off with your main categories (also called parent categories) and then create subcategories for each parent category. The following tips can help those creating new catalogues, and also established sales reps, to organise products effectively:<\/p>\n
*<\/strong> \u00a0First off, decide in which parent category a product should fall by asking,<\/p>\n –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat is the product?\u201d *<\/strong> \u00a0Start broad and then go narrower. For example, separate products into very broad categories like \u201cMen\u201d and \u201cWomen\u201d. These two categories can then be divided into subcategories such as \u201cShirts\u201d, \u201cTrousers\u201d and \u201cShoes\u201d.<\/p>\n *<\/strong> \u00a0Create subcategories when there are 30 products or more in a specific category to ensure customers can easily navigate your electronic catalogue.<\/p>\n *<\/strong> \u00a0It\u2019s okay to have the same or similar subcategories in more than one parent category as long as they are placed there for a purpose.<\/p>\n *<\/strong> \u00a0Categories need to be mutually exclusive \u2013 if you pick one, you shouldn\u2019t be able to pick another and they should also not be combined. Having unique parent categories helps to support exploratory product browsing and to better find what the customer is looking for exactly.<\/p>\n *<\/strong> \u00a0Choose category names that can be understood by the majority of customers who will encounter them. The simpler the better.<\/p>\n *<\/strong> \u00a0Think about creating a \u201cWhat\u2019s New\u201d or \u201cJust Arrived\u201d category that changes regularly. Customers who buy from you on a regular basis will particularly find this helpful as they are already familiar with what you have and want to see what has come in since your last meeting with them.<\/p>\n *<\/strong> \u00a0Similar to the above mentioned categories, food providers or seasonal businesses can have \u201cIn Season\u201d categories.<\/p>\n *<\/strong> \u00a0Avoid miscellaneous categories, it creates confusion as many people don\u2019t really know what miscellaneous products truly are. This type of category can also feel like an afterthought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The use of categories and subcategories is extremely important when trying to create a well-organised, professional electronic product catalogue. Not only does categorisation help sales reps navigate the catalogue more easily and show customers exactly what product they\u2019re looking for,…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3614"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6845,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions\/6845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onsightapp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n–<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat can the product be used for?\u201d
\n–<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat type of people will use the product?\u201d
\n–<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat necessity does the product fulfil?\u201d<\/p>\n