De-Cluttering Your eCommerce Store

De-Cluttering Your eCommerce Store

I recently read the wonderful book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. In the book, Kondo gives some great perspective on de-cluttering and how much it can have an impact. I realized that in the same way, de-cluttering can be very useful in online spaces as well.

Sometimes less is more when it comes to designing eCommerce websites. Cramming as many items as possible on your homepage can do more harm than good. Here are a few tips on how you can de-clutter your homepage to give your customers a more user-friendly experience.

 

Only One Banner or Slideshow With A Purpose

Having multiple sliders with all of your products on your homepage will only make it harder for your potential customers. Sure, large sites like Amazon.com use multiple sliders on their homepage, but they use algorithms that populate those sliders with specific items targeting that specific customer. Using sliders with a hodgepodge of all of your items will make things more difficult for the customer.

I suggest you stick to one category in your slider or slideshow, such as “Sale Items”, “Clothes”, “Books”, etc. with the option to see all of the items in that category.

 

Be More Specific

I once visited an online clothing store built with shopify. It had a fairly decent homepage with some products and a few “See More” buttons. When I clicked the buttons to view more of their catalog I was dismayed to see that they had organized things by very broad categories. “Shoes”, “Pants”, “Shirts”, etc. This wouldn’t be a problem if they only had a dozen products, but this store had hundreds of products. When I clicked the “Shoes” category, they had pages and pages of shoes that ranged from children’s sandals, to adult athletic shoes. I didn’t buy from the site because I didn’t feel like sifting through thirteen pages of shoes to find a pair for me.

It doesn’t matter if a results page looks slightly empty with certain categories. It will still be better than having a page full of products that the customer isn’t looking for.

When organizing your products, think about how retail stores organize their products. A store that specializes in atheltic wear, for example, will have things in categories that coincide with the activity. If you ask the shopkeeper “Where can I find the running socks?” the shopkeeper won’t say, “Somewhere in the back next to the hiking boots”, if you came in looking for running socks, the shopkeeper would most likely direct you to a dedicated running section of the shop.

If a customer went to a similar online shop looking for running socks and you have every kind of socks in the same category, the customer will most likely look elsewhere.

A big factor in the popularity of online shopping is convenience, if your site is disorganized and full of clutter, you will eliminate some of that convenience and lose customers.

 

My Shopify store is a mess. What do I do?

Don’t fret, we know making lots of changes and tweaks to your Shopify store can be tedious. That’s why we are here to help! Along with our Maintenence and Small tasks from our Shopify experts, we are now offering a Monthly Maintenence and an Unlimited Monthly Small Task service! Head over to our services page to see which of our services is right for you!