Ecommerce Categories. for CounterPoint SQL. Overview...2. Planning Your Categories...2. Tips for Creating Categories...2. Category Worksheet...

Transcription

1 Ecommerce Categories for CounterPoint SQL Overview...2 Planning Your Categories...2 Tips for Creating Categories...2 Category Worksheet...3 Checklist...4 Adding Ecommerce Categories...4 Images...5 Descriptions...6 Storefront Layout...7 Browsing Categories...8 Browsing Items Within a Category...9 Working with the Category Editor...10 Basic Information...10 Advanced Options...11 Featured Items...12 Category-Specific Item Options...12

2 Ecommerce Categories OVERVIEW If you followed the steps in the CPOnline Quick Start Guide, you created a few sample categories and uploaded them to your online store. Now it s time to plan your store navigation and add more categories. We recommend that you start with a small group of your best selling items, and then continue to add more items later. The sooner your store is up and running, the sooner you can begin generating sales! PLANNING YOUR CATEGORIES The structure and names of the ecommerce categories that you create now will actually form the navigation of your CPOnline store. Although these ecommerce categories come directly from CounterPoint, please note that they are not the same as your inventory categories in CounterPoint! Similar to the organization of a physical store, the structural goal for your online store is to make it easy for your customers to find and purchase items. Your customers already think of your merchandise in terms of departments, sections, vendors, etc., or in ways that your physical stores are arranged. You can define an unlimited number of ecommerce categories and subcategories up to eight levels deep. And you can list a single item in as many categories as you want. The fewer clicks it takes to get to your merchandise, the better! In other words, the fewer category levels of merchandise in your online store, the quicker your customers can get to the items they want to buy. We recommend no more than two or three category levels! TIPS FOR CREATING CATEGORIES Online sales frequently fail because shoppers cannot find the products that they want to buy. It s important to have a well planned category structure: Think about departments in your store. Create category names that are meaningful to shoppers. Use natural language in category names. Incorporate your target keywords into your category names. Resist using all UPPER CASE letters and symbols such as &. To facilitate organic search engine optimization (SEO), name your product categories and sub categories using high volume, multi keyword search phrases. Similarly, be sure to include all your best categories as top level categories. Because top level categories display on every page on your site, search engines are more likely to find them. Learn more about SEO and keywords in Ecommerce Success: Tips & Techniques Add items to multiple categories to give shoppers multiple ways to find items in your store, for example: Sporting Goods > Sports Equipment Nike Pro Tour Golf Bag Men s X8 Snowboard > Sports Apparel Youth Baseball Jersey Shop by Brand > Nike Nike Pro Tour Golf Bag > Rawlings Youth Baseball Jersey > Burton Men s X8 Snowboard Shop by Season > Summer Sports Nike Pro Tour Golf Bag Youth Baseball Jersey > Winter Sports Men s X8 Snowboard Ecommerce Categories 2

3 CATEGORY WORKSHEET It s a good idea to plan your category structure on paper. You can use up to eight levels, but we recommend no more than three levels. Complete a similar worksheet for each Category level 1. Category level 1: Identify the top level categories (e.g., Sporting Goods). Category level 2: For each top level category, identify appropriate subcategories (e.g., Sports Equipment and Sports Apparel). Category level 3: For each subcategory, identify any additional subdivisions. Category level 1: Category level 2: Category level 2: Category level 2: Category level 2: Category level 2: Category level 2: Ecommerce Categories 3

4 CounterPoint: CHECKLIST 1. Plan your category structure on paper using the Category Worksheet on page Add ecommerce categories in Setup / Ecommerce / Categories (learn more in on page 4). a) Optionally assign images to each category (learn more on page 4). b) Optionally enter long descriptions for each category (learn more on page 6). 3. Publish ecommerce information using Ecommerce / Publish. CPOnline: Import ecommerce information using Import + Export / Import from CP. 5. If you are using category images, create a zip file named catpics.zip containing your category images. Upload catpics.zip to CPOnline using Image Maintenance / Category Images. Zip files can be no larger than 10MB and may not contain folders. 6. Modify the category layout used in your storefront (learn more on page 7). ADDING ECOMMERCE CATEGORIES CounterPoint: Setup / Ecommerce / Categories If you followed the steps in the CPOnline Quick Start Guide, you created a few sample categories and items and you uploaded them to your CPOnline store. Select Setup / Ecommerce / Categories and use the drag and drop category editor to add additional ecommerce categories and subcategories. You can also change category names, delete categories, assign images and descriptions to each category, and add items to each category. The category organization is similar to what shoppers will see in your online store Items included in this category NOTE: The ecommerce categories defined here are not directly related to your CounterPoint item categories. Although you can move the categories up or down, this has no effect on the order in your storefront; to change the sort order in CPOnline, select Items + Categories / Items + Categories / [Select Category] / Basic Information Ecommerce Categories 4

5 You can display an item in an unlimited number of categories. Although you can move the categories up or down, this has no effect on the display order in CPOnline. To change the category sort orders in CPOnline, select Items + Categories / Items + Categories / [Select Category] / Basic Information (learn more on page 10). Learn more about adding items to each ecommerce category in Ecommerce Items. TIP: To print a list of all the categories defined so far, select Setup / Ecommerce / Reports / Categories. You can also print any items that have not been assigned to any ecommerce categories. IMAGES CounterPoint: Setup / Ecommerce / Categories For each category and sub category, optionally assign an image that will display when customers browse your store. TIP: Ask your vendors to provide you with professional, web optimized category images. You can assign category images to all, none, or some of the category levels you define for your online store. If you don t assign images to a category level, the category name will be used instead. To display an image with your category, enter the name of the Image file (e.g., baseballs.jpg) for each category in Setup / Ecommerce / Categories. Category images can be GIF, JPG, or PNG formats. Category images will automatically be copied to your company s ItemImages folder (e.g., C:\CounterPoint\[Company]\ItemImages), and a thumbnail will display in the category editor. Enter the image filename (e.g., baseballs.jpg) We recommend that you use a naming convention for your category image files that will help you identify and manage the images. A useful naming convention assists you in recognizing images and facilitates image changes. Image filenames should not contain spaces or special characters such as asterisks (*). After assigning category images, upload individual category images or a ZIP file of multiple images named catpics.zip, select Image Maintenance / Category Images in CPOnline. Ecommerce Categories 5

6 DESCRIPTIONS CounterPoint: Setup / Ecommerce / Categories Optionally add descriptions to your ecommerce categories. Select Setup / Ecommerce / Categories and click the Edit description button to enter or edit a category description. Use category descriptions to identify the items included in the category or to provide shoppers with general information about the category. TIP: Include SEO target keywords and phrases in your category descriptions to facilitate organic search engine optimization. Category descriptions should be both descriptive and informative, and should include keywords and phrases similar to those used in your category meta information (more about meta information on page 11). Formatting Long Descriptions Long descriptions may include HTML formatting. The maximum length of each category description is 6,320 characters. DO NOT use double quotes in HTML formatting entered in CounterPoint! If you must use quotes, use single quotes. DO NOT paste in HTML code generated from WYSIWYG editors such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver, or Microsoft Word. HTML code generated in this way contains extraneous code that may cause your online store to appear improperly. If you choose to use the Rich Formatting editor in CPOnline, the description for that category will be maintained in CPOnline rather than CounterPoint. Ecommerce Categories 6

7 CPOnline s Rich Formatting editor allows you to format text without having to learn HTML. It uses a friendly graphical interface with a toolbar similar to a word processor. To use the Rich Formatting editor, go to Items + Categories / Items + Categories and click on the Properties icon for a specific category. Click Rich Formatting to open the Rich Formatting editor Select No if you want to maintain this category s description in CPOnline instead of CounterPoint STOREFRONT LAYOUT With CPOnline, you can easily change the layout of your category pages. There are two types of category pages: Category pages that contain a list of subcategories (what merchants see when browsing categories) Category pages that contain a list of items (what merchants see when browsing items) TIP: Before you proceed with CPOnline setup, you may want to publish your CounterPoint information using Ecommerce / Publish and import it into CPOnline using Import + Export / Import from CP. Ecommerce Categories 7

8 BROWSING CATEGORIES CPOnline: Items + Categories / Category Display / When Browsing Categories Select the layout to use when a shopper views a page containing a list of categories or subcategories. Ecommerce Categories 8

9 BROWSING ITEMS WITHIN A CATEGORY CPOnline: Items + Categories / Category Display / When Browsing Items Select the layout to use when displaying the parent category at the top of a page containing items. Ecommerce Categories 9

10 WORKING WITH THE CATEGORY EDITOR CPOnline: Items + Categories / Items + Categories Use CPOnline s category editor to change the sort order of the categories on a page, add an image or long description, edit the meta tags, add featured items, and modify the default settings for this specific category. Go to Items + Categories / Items + Categories and click on the Properties icon category name. This will open the Category Editor. to the right of the BASIC INFORMATION CPOnline: Items + Categories / Items + Categories / Basic Information The Category Editor displays basic information about this category. The read only information comes directly from CounterPoint. If you change the image name here, it will be overwritten the next time you import data Values can range from 1 (highest priority) to 999 (lowest priority) Select Yes if you want to use the category description from CounterPoint; if No, enter the description in the field above Changing the Sort Order By default, all categories have a default sort order of 5 and are displayed in alphabetical order. You can change the order in which your categories display by changing the sort order value. Values can range from 1 (highest priority) to 999 (lowest priority). Categories will appear in your storefront first in ascending sort order, then alphabetically within the sort order. Ecommerce Categories 10

11 ADVANCED OPTIONS CPOnline: Items + Categories / Items + Categories / Advanced Options Meta information helps search engines and shoppers locate products in your online store. Meta information should be specific to each category page. Page Title: The page title displays in the browser s title bar when browsing this category, and it is used as the link from the search engine results page. Category URL: The category URL is the unique web address of this specific category page on your site. Meta Keywords: Meta keywords are used to increase this category s visibility to Internet search engines. Meta Description: Search engines display the meta description on the search results page. TIP: Include SEO target keywords and phrases in your meta information to facilitate organic search engine optimization. Include 4 or 5 keywords in addition to your store name (place keywords before store name) Enter 2 sentences that describe this category (include keywords) Include the same 4 or 5 keywords or phrases separated by commas Page title Meta description Category URL Ecommerce Categories 11

12 FEATURED ITEMS CPOnline: Items + Categories / Items + Categories / [select category] / Featured Items In addition to featuring best selling items on your home page and other pages, you can include featured items on each category page. Optionally enter items to feature on this category page CATEGORY-SPECIFIC ITEM OPTIONS CPOnline: Items + Categories / Items + Categories / [Select category] /Category Specific Item Options CPOnline automatically uses the global store settings to display the item prices, out of stock messages, and the layout of the items within each category. You can optionally change the display options for the items included in each category. Ecommerce Categories 12