Presenting More Information in Your eCommerce Catalog

There are two primary reasons for having comprehensive information on every product detail page of your eCommerce catalog. The first reason is technical; you want search engines to see the information you’ve presented and return it as an option for someone who is shopping. Having an SEO plan and bolstering your product copy is an excellent way to get more people to your site. 

The second reason to have extensive information on your site is to help the customer and convince them that they should buy from you. This means giving them everything they need...and then something they weren’t even aware they needed. Let’s take a look at how all of this information can improve your eCommerce business model. 

Reviews 

There are some circumstances in which you don’t want to show the reviews of a product, but in most cases the reviews should be a visible part of your product detail pages in your eCommerce product catalog. 

Reviews can be a part of your entire site, not just an individual page. They might show up on the home pages in order to give customers an overall favorable impression of your business. They might also show up on category pages or subcategory pages so that customers have confidence with your knowledge of a specific category. Reviews can also be product-specific, of course. You'll have the choice to not allow reviews without the user being logged in, and only let them review if the module verifies a purchase of that item. Of course, all of this can go through a human approval process to ensure there are no blatantly false reviews. Integrity can also be improved via community flagging.  

Even the most complex review problems can be mitigated. Take, for example, a C2C eCommerce platform where two different sellers are offering the same product. Sometimes the product itself might suffer because of a customer’s experience with the seller. Since the selling experience shouldn’t affect the product itself, steps can be put in place to ensure these reviews don’t make it to the site. 

Many clients will also incorporate related items and suggest additional items or similar options. This might be a different version of a product that is by the same manufacturer or products in that category or subcategory tree. 

As an example, let’s consider a standard item from one of Clarity’s clients: a hopper. A hopper is used to store shavings that are kicked out from a piece of equipment such as a lathe, and it can have many permutations and add-ons. The hopper might have a variation that has casters so that it’s easy to roll around. It might be possible to change the coding on the hopper so that it has different coding selections. Maybe there’s one with a lid that’s removable, or conversely one where you can open the lid and have it stay attached. Potential upsells and add-ons that are very helpful to the user that they will probably need for certain product types. It's very important to be able to show a nice, easy-to-use interface to be able to offer these options as well. 

In addition, Clarity also recommends being able to use the analytics and machine learning from the tracking that's built into the platform. For example, we use the product detail page to track what the user is doing in the analytics software that's built into the platform itself. This data is fed back into the system and delivers options based on items recently viewed by that user (or by other users searching in a similar fashion).  

Clarity Can Build What You Need

If you’ve been researching SaaS or off-the-shelf eCommerce software, you’ve probably found that even the top B2B eCommerce platforms in each area still lack many of the options mentioned above. The “made for every business” software just doesn’t offer the customization that many clients need, especially as they expand. 

Clarity has a primary goal for our clients: provide exactly what they need. We build custom eCommerce platforms that are client-specific and deliver the options they require, perform CRM and ERP integration from their current system, and give them the ability to easily expand in the future. No matter how specific your business’ needs, Clarity has almost certainly handled something like it before.