food for thought on the home page design

[♥bruyndoncx]

personally with a broad range of products, i tend to agree, and have been thinking about taking that route and loosing most of the product boxes

https://econsultancy.com/blog/67394-why-ecommerce-retailers-should-never-place-products-on-the-homepage/

[♥14steve14]

I must confess to partially agreeing with NOT having products on the front page. The choice of product that is on the front page can, and will, affect what the customer buys. I have featured products at the top of the first page, and when a product is here, I sell more of it. I do regularly change those products. I do also list new products on the front page, but lower down, and these are changed when new products are added. This box can become a bit 'samey' if a new range of products are added with multiple choices. If oscommerce had better stock control on the attributes, then some of these listings would be unnecessary. But we have to work with what we have got.

 

Listing all the categories on the front page does work. I makes customers do something. If sub categories are also listed under the main categories it shows customers what is also available before they click away from the page. I personally like sites that do this. Its a bit like a mega menu seems to work better than a standard drop down menu.

 

After that's been said, the main aim of a cart software, and online store, is to get people to buy things. If they cant see them, or find them, they will not buy them. Making it easy for customers is what really needs to be done. Whats the best way of doing that has been discussed for years. Good product images and descriptions will help. As will having cross sell items on the product page. But nothing will stop lazy customers from just going somewhere else. Many customers never get to see the front page of many sites, so its really a case of deciding what is best for your customers.

[MrPhil]

These days, most potential customers are probably going to arrive via search engine links (deep links) directly to a product page, rather than to your home page or to a category page. I would be most concerned about "how do I let them know about all the other stuff I sell when they're on a single product page?" You need good, inviting (but unobtrusive) navigation to categories, etc. from any product page. You don't want to distract too much from the task of buying on the page they arrived on, but you do want to let them know there's a lot of other things you offer. At the least, you want a prominent and easy way to go up a level to the category for this product. A product page is no longer their final destination, but often their entry point into your store!

 

Those who come in via the Home Page probably typed in your store name after hearing or seeing it somewhere, in hopes that you might carry what they seek. They may not have a firm idea of what they're looking to buy, and so need some help drilling down through categories. I don't see anything wrong with showing one or two "new arrivals" or "best sellers" or "on sale" items, so long as you're careful not to overwhelm the rest of the content, and especially that you don't distract from the category navigation and search. You don't want visitors to get the impression that's all you offer, and so they leave.

[greasemonkey]

@@bruyndoncx another very good link Carine.

 

After I read the other article you posted the other day here - I created a proof of concept "sticky" add to cart product info content module for 2.3.4 BS (which I'm having issues with... I'll post that in a separate thread).

 

I've also created a short while back - based on an old module a index content module to display main cat image tiles on index.... I'll post it shortly as well... I'm sure it needs some work (that I could use help with....).

[Dan Cole]

@@MrPhil

 

 

These days, most potential customers are probably going to arrive via search engine links (deep links) directly to a product page, rather than to your home page or to a category page.

 

Excellent point Phil and I agree...thinking about those who might type in my store name and actually land on my home page.   They are likely people referred by existing customers or are perhaps existing customers themselves and showing them what is new etc seems appropriate to me.

 

Looking back at the comments on that article it looks like lots of folks are questioning the soundness of the advice given.  Seems we are not alone. :-

 

Dan

[♥kymation]

@@greasemonkey  There are already modules that display the top-level categories as images -- see below. If one of these doesn't do what you want, let me know what you want to change and I'll try to help.

 

Regards

Jim

[burt]

I believe it depends on the store, a store selling say 2 or 3 items is good to have it on the homepage.  A store selling 1000s of items...maybe have 1 on the homepage (star buy, super reduced, we love this because xyz type of idea)...perhaps a really "in your face" search input?  Along with some deep links to categories and sub cats ?

 

A long time ago I worked on a site where they had just two products, but about 5 different colours for each.  

They had some really cool ideas, one of which was a super-simple homepage:

 

centered logo

<hr>

big image of product 1 | big image of product 2  [ both linked to product_info]  

These two images were put into a "film strip" kind of effect.

 

That's it, nothing else!  It looked super cool, and they did well.

 

Here's another idea;

1/ have a really bare homepage for visitors

2/ load the homepage up for customers - maybe based on recent purchases?  maybe based on questions you ask them about their preferences

 

Anyway, it's an interesting discussion.  Throwing some ideas out there...

 

What I do see on almost all osc shops is "information overload"...columns of infoboxes, header, footer, new products, featured...and so on.  It's mostly not easy on the eyes...

[greasemonkey]

@@kymation Very nice Jim. Good to know someone with skills made a version... lol...

 

I've just finished the add to cart sticky content mod.... I'll post in sec.... please provide feedback.