Client name withheld under NDA.
Kitchenware and storage is a hard category to sell online. Shoppers rarely arrive wanting a brand. They want a 1.2 litre container that fits a narrow cupboard, or a drawer organiser that suits a BTO kitchen, and they compare sizes, materials and delivery dates across several stores before they buy. If the site makes that comparison slow, they go back to the search results and pick another store.
This store had grown its range to about 600 products over several years, adding categories whenever a new supplier came in. Some products sat five levels deep in the menu. The filters were inconsistent, size and material details were buried under a long description and delivery information was only at checkout. Staff noticed that customers kept emailing to ask whether items existed that were already on the site. We pulled the numbers below before touching anything. The brand, colours and logo were not part of the work.
We exported three months of site search terms and read every query that returned nothing. Many were ordinary words the catalogue used differently, such as "lunch box" for items titled "bento container", or "tupperware" for storage boxes. We then walked the full product list, noting duplicate products, missing sizes and inconsistent materials, and recorded how shoppers moved through the menu.
Search terms are shoppers telling you what they want in their own words. When 40% of searches found nothing, the problem was not the stock. It was the way products were named and filed.
We rebuilt the category tree around how people shop for a kitchen: food storage, cookware, bakeware, drawer and cabinet organisers, and so on. No product sat more than three levels deep. We rewrote the menu labels in plain words, added a short mega menu for the biggest groups and set up filters for size, material, capacity and price, using the same filter names on every category.
A shopper should reach a product in three taps on a phone. Consistent filters let people narrow a range of 80 containers down to the 6 that fit, without learning a new layout on each page.
We designed one product page template for the whole range. Size, material, capacity and delivery cost sit in a short block next to the price and the add-to-cart button, with the delivery date range shown for a Singapore postcode. Photos show scale beside everyday objects. Care instructions, packing details and returns moved to tabs below the fold.
In this category, people leave a page when they cannot tell if an item will fit. Putting the deciding facts above the fold removed the need to scroll, and fewer customers emailed to ask about sizes.
We built collection pages for the groups that shoppers search for, such as lunch boxes, pantry containers and under-sink storage, each with a short introduction, filters and links to related collections. We then mapped every old category address to its new one with 301 redirects, and checked the sitemap and internal links. Redirects caused a dip in organic visits for about three weeks, before pages were reindexed and recovered.
Collection pages match how people type searches, so they earn organic visits that a deep category menu never did. The redirect dip was a cost of moving addresses. Mapping every old page kept it short and kept the earlier rankings from being lost.
We added synonyms to site search, so "tupperware" showed food containers, and made the search bar show suggestions as shoppers typed. At checkout, we removed one optional field, showed delivery cost earlier and added a guest option. We watched the numbers weekly and adjusted filters and labels where shoppers still left.
Search is where buyers with clear intent go. Fixing it helped the people most ready to spend, and a shorter checkout meant fewer abandoned baskets from customers who had already decided.
After four months, the store was taking 720 online orders a month, up from 410. Conversion rate rose from 1.3% to 2.2% and the add-to-cart rate from 5.1% to 8.4%. Searches that returned no results fell from 40% to 9%, and the share of shoppers leaving after a search dropped from 38% to 17%. Organic visits to category and collection pages grew from 4,300 to 9,100 a month, and checkout completion rose from 58% to 69%.
Search terms and catalogue reviewed, new category tree agreed and the product naming rules written.
New menu, filters and product page template launched in stages. Collection pages published and redirects went live, with a short dip in organic visits.
Search synonyms, a shorter checkout and weekly adjustments. Organic visits recovered and passed their old level.
Four in ten searches found nothing, even though most of those products were in stock. Reading the list took a day and shaped the whole project. If you run an online store, your search log shows exactly where the site and the shopper disagree.
For storage and kitchenware, size and delivery decide the sale. Moving them beside the price lifted add-to-cart from 5.1% to 8.4%. Think about what a customer needs to know before clicking, and put that where the eye already is.
Changing addresses cost us about three weeks of lower organic visits. Planning for it, with a full redirect map and a note to the owner beforehand, kept the dip short. Organic visits to category pages ended at 9,100 a month, more than twice the starting point.
How we design online stores that are easy to browse and buy from.
Category and product page optimisation for organic traffic.
Navigation, filters and forms people can use without thinking.
Another online store, rebuilt for easier shopping.
Share your store address and your busiest categories. We will review your navigation, search results and product pages and tell you what is costing you orders.