How to categorise products for an online marketplace

by Arshiya Dey on 29/09/2017
How to categorise products for an online marketplace
When you walk in to a supermarket looking for lemons and can’t find it because it was kept near the Apparel section, it is certainly not the experience you had expected. Similarly, when customers come looking for products on an online marketplace and cannot find it within the first few search results, their inclination to buy from the marketplace reduces drastically. For example, when a customer searches for hair colour but the search result shows hair combs instead, the customer will lose interest and drop off.

To help avoid bad customer experience it is important that you categorise your products accurately. Some suggestions mentioned below can guide you achieve accurate categorization:

1) Know your product category: Some online marketplaces like Amazon, simplify it for you by already creating category buckets. These buckets are further simplified, eg; Baby Products is a category by itself and then there is Baby Apparel, Baby Food and Baby Shoes, all under the Baby Products category.

To categorise your products for an online store on Amazon, you must first register yourself. Once registered, you can pick the category you wish to sell from and list your products accordingly.

2) Be precise and specific: Your product title and other details should be to the point and it should accurately match the product features. For example, if you sell denim jeans, you title should also mention if it is slimfit or skinny fit. Also, avoid adding too many descriptive words in the product title. Eg; A product title that reads,’’ Stylish Jeans’’ is less likely to be clicked as compared to,’’Navy blue denim jeans, skinny fit’’. If you don’t have the resources to build a team for this, you can outsource your operations to an ecommerce services provider like Browntape.

3) Know your customer: Before you select the category for your products, try to understand how your customer would search for it. For example, a brush can mean a toothbrush, a floor brush or a hair brush, but you must optimize your products to be shown under the brush category if you sell a brush. Even if that means you sell a paint brush.

To learn more about various other tricks of online selling, please go through the archive of all our blogs.
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