A great website is a critical factor in the success of any ecommerce business. When the website is a company’s main ecommerce marketing tool for selling products, it must function well. As broad of an idea as this may seem, you can easily achieve a functional and efficient website with an ecommerce marketing strategy that begins with essential basics - a website with clear, user-friendly architecture.

1. Organized and Canonical URL Structure

A well-organized URL structure is the first thing you must consider when planning clear architecture for an ecommerce website. A simple and logical URL structure, along with easy-to-use navigation, makes the site easier for visitors to use and Google to crawl.

Clear and concise URLs should be logically written and include keywords, hyphenated phrases rather than layer upon layer of subdirectories, and preferably fewer than 70 characters.

Site architecture that supports ecommerce marketing efforts should also include canonical tags used as necessary to indicate which pages should have preference for crawling when some may have similar content. This is especially important when choosing faceted navigation to simplify searching and filtering.

2. Easy, Filtered Navigation

The second critical ecommerce marketing strategy required for a great retail website is developing navigation that is easy to use, lends well to a simple and organized URL structure, and maintains SEO.

Functional navigation for a site with many product pages should always begin on the homepage. You should also utilize submenus to reduce the number of categories and sublayers required and include a thorough search function.

In addition, faceted navigation that allows users to filter for the products they want is so user-helpful if your site has a lot of pages. This is also a critical part of SEO and ecommerce marketing as it gives marketers the ability to give precedence to certain pages.  

3. Pagination

Pagination is another essential element you should use for a successful ecommerce website. Rather than scrolling or Load More features, pagination gives the user more control over what they are looking at and how they can search for it. Pagination should include a selection of successive pages to choose from as well as a link to the end of the list of pages, not just forward and backward links.

4. Breadcrumbs and Internal Linking

Breadcrumbs and internal links, which are additional navigational features, finalize the architecture for a great retail website. Internal links are an important ecommerce marketing strategy that helps users see additional related products that could be of interest based on their current search.

Breadcrumbs that indicate the user’s position on the website allow them to find or go back to things quickly, using the fewest steps. They also serve as another way to get keywords on your website and perform as internal links that can improve crawling.

The main goal for every ecommerce website is effective navigation that lets users find what they want and promotes easier web crawling. Your ecommerce marketing strategy should begin by analyzing your website architecture and developing effective URL and navigational structure. Ecommerce marketing must consider both user and search engines to ensure website success!

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