The Koreans show the way it should be done... but where can I buy 'tentacle rape'?
“Wait a minute. Categories? Aren’t they just those menu options down the side of the page?”
Well yeah, they are. And all the time you’re busily arguing the toss with the web designer about whether the logo should go to the left or the right of the top banner and not thinking about your categories you might as well be smoking tenners. Here’s why.
Words Matter
At the most basic level, categories tell your customers what it is you sell. This matters for lots of reasons. If you sell cat food then think about how your customers will discern this fact. Most likely, they’re looking for the word “cat food” someplace. If your category is called “food for pets” then it’s a start – it’s just nowhere near specific enough.
If they come for cat food and happen to see that you sell fish food too, then next time their daughter comes home with a goldfish from the school fair, they might think of you. Giving your categories ‘fun’ names often sounds like a good idea – “nibbles for furry friends” or whatever, but think long and hard about it. That’s putting an obstacle in front of someone. And if they’re coming to the site through SEO or PPC, the closest match you can give them between what they typed into Google and what they see on the screen the better your chance of converting.
Oh – and for decent SEO you can do a lot worse than naming your categories after popular search terms 
Navigation Matters
You know when you’re looking for meringue nests at ASDA and you can’t find them? You probably start looking for those big green signs they hang from the ceilings over the various aisles for an indication of where to head for next. With a bit of luck, the signs will guide you to roughly the right spot. That’s the function your categorisation fulfills on your website. Make it good, and people will glide through to the products they’re after and start buying.
But what are merinque nests? A cake? A biscuit? Cooking ingredient? A supermarket is hampered because they can hardly hand you a map of the shop when you go in. And that’s why you end up asking a disinterested teenager in a tabard where you might find meringue nests, and he’s all “I don’t even know what a meringue nest is” and offers to go find someone who does, only on his way to find them he sees his mate from school and has to hide behind the chiller cabinet because he doesn’t anyone to know that his mum made him get a job at ASDA and… well. You get the idea.
Anyway: the lesson is “think about your categories” and – just as importantly – your sub categories. When someone’s lost in ASDA they’ll happily wander about for a while and maybe spend a bit more accidentally as they look for meringue nests in the crisp aisle (they are kind of crispy, after all) On your website they’re just as likely to flounce off in a great big huff.
[Oh - and on a side note, this is why your site search facility better be A) visible and B) effective.]
Choice Matters
People like choice. It makes them feel warm and gooey when they choose product X over product Y. They can tell their friends about it later to impress on them how much taste or money they have. So having a category is only ever any good if you can fill it with something. You must have been on one of those websites where there’s a category called “Garden Chairs” and you click on it and there’s just one sad, green plastic chair that you don’t really want and then you sigh and go somewhere else where you can choose between a sad, green plastic chair and a sad white plastic instead so you can feel like Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen.
Choice Matters. Again.
Have you ever been to one of those tiny micromarket chains like Costcutter when their ordering system is on the fritz? You can always tell because you go in and half the shelves are empty and there’s no bread. If that happens once or twice you stop thinking about going there at all, because Lal’s corner shop is always full of stuff (and his wife makes delicious home-made bhajis). He might not have 7 brands of potted beef to choose from, but it doesn’t matter in a sense because the shop looks full. If you’ve got a category with one product in it, better to lose the category altogether to maintain the sense of choice.
I did some work recently for a jewellery company who had a ‘bangles’ category with two products in it. Two! Earnest Jones have scores of bangles so it was little wonder when even a PPC campaign with a CTR of 12% couldn’t sell the damn things. Bounce rate? 88%
Promotion Matters
Oftentimes, folks are looking for bargains from the web – and cross-selling is a sweet spot of opportunity for many websites. But how do you let people know you’ve got promotions? Sure you can have a nice little flashing banner with dancing girls and a yellow aston advertising the fact, but how about a category called ‘hot deal’ or ‘sale items’ or whatever else? If someone has already put a gimp mask from your website in their basket, they’re already favourably predisposed to buying from you and before heading to the checkout might just see what else you have – especially if you’re already cheaper than the competition. A category that brings together all such items is a great way to focus their minds and increase your sales.
Reporting Matters
Assuming you care how much money your website is making you probably want to be able to make informed decisions about your buying decisions. You can probably trawl your sales data by individual product lines, but if you’ve racked up a product base of several hundreds or thousands, or if your search traffic is largely based on long-tail terms, it can be hard to get an objective overview of where you are performing. Categories provide a great high-level overview of where your site is strongest. If you sell shedloads of condiments, but much less packet pasta, it can can help you inform your strategy for the next round of buying decisions – whether you’re going to further strengthen your offering in categories where you do well, or whether you’re going to ofocus your attention on bolstering underperforming categories with perhaps greater potential profit margins.