Ecommerce website development UK site architecture considerations
Visitors to an eCommerce website must successfully and smoothly navigate themselves across the entire website to result in conversions. You can achieve this feat through an eCommerce website development UK site architecture consideration that enables information organisation so that users spend less time searching and more time making decisions. The most crucial information required to promote the product or services must be considered when you decide to develop the site architecture. Customers must focus on the information presented on the site or be directed to the most significant sections in the website according to brand positioning. The process of a new site design structure or the optimisation of an existing one must be able to provide these recommendations to the visiting users.
Ecommerce website architecture – an overview
The process of planning, developing and designing an eCommerce site information uses website architecture to improve the usability and structure. First, a series of website topics are categorised, starting from the broader ones and ending with the narrower ones. Then a map of the site’s structure is drawn. At the same time, additional elements such as URL structure, navigation and breadcrumbs are defined.
Thus, your content is organised in such a way by the site architecture that both visitors and search engines can easily find them. A bad eCommerce website development UK site architecture will only lead to problems and complexities over some time.
Composition of an eCommerce website design
Some essential points in the customers’ journey have to be included when you develop an eCommerce website. First, describe a functional task or a customer journey map (CMJ) across all user groups. The personas should help pinpoint the most accurate product or service that your customer is looking for.
Cannibalisation of the page
Ecommerce websites contain a spate of information with complex page maps that are unfathomable, especially in the backend. The situation presents some SEO challenges as well. Duplicated content and similar product information can throw Google off guard. This results in confusing page rankings. Therefore, every page has to be defined to prevent your products from fighting against each other.
Structure of the URL
Not many pay attention to this – but the URL structure should be natural. It does not help if the structure of the URL is haywire and packed with categories and products. Use hyphenations, spaces, and underscores where applicable and keep URL structures below 70 characters.
Breadcrumbs
When users begin their journey deep into the website, they are in a disaster zone. Therefore, you must map every user navigation and preference. Breadcrumbs are used to minimise the number of clicks and improve discoverability across different sections and pages. The users’ location is visually identified on the website as natural site links are generated.
Pagination
Most eCommerce websites use pagination to isolate the website content. This way, they are dissipated in smaller chunks reducing the number of clicks required for the users to get to where they want. For instance, rel=’next’ and rel=’prev’ for search engines to know that pages are interlinked.
There are other strategies as well, such as the usage of canonical tags and filtered navigation. However, you can achieve a good eCommerce website development UK only with useful architecture considerations.