Effective Interlinking Strategies to Improve Your Site’s Navigation

The key to getting the most out of each site visitor that encounters your e-commerce store is to encourage them to visit as many pages as possible. To do this you need to utilize effective interlinking strategies to improve your site’s navigation and increase the number of upselling opportunities. In a real store people browse through each department looking at products leisurely, and in many cases this results in them purchasing something they didn’t originally plan to buy. However, online stores give each product its own page, so unless you provide some type of incentive or encouragement for the reader to visit another product description/page, most people will simply add their desired selection to their cart and checkout. To increase conversion rates and solicit more sales consider the following effective interlinking strategies:

Top Navigation, Side Navigation, and Additional Categories

Analytical studies have shown that most people focus their attention to the top of the page, so adding a list of menus/submenus that accurately categorize your product catalog into sections is perhaps the best way to attract attention to all other offerings. You could also do the same with a side navigational menu, as many visitors can’t help but glance to the side of the page as they are scrolling down. A good way to keep your site from becoming cluttered and present navigational menus in an easy-to-understand way is to have them expand upon being clicked to expose additional categories that are less commonly explored.

Search by Options, Suggested/Alternative Products, and Testimonials/Ratings

Having a convenient section at the bottom of a catalog page that allows visitors to search by product size, type, popularity etc. is an effective way to recommend the most suitable selection based on a customer’s preferences. A content box that contains basic descriptions and thumbnails of suggested/alternative products is a commonly used marketing tool seen on many major retailer sites and for good reason – it is perhaps the most powerful way to interlink related products. Many successful e-commerce stores also integrate expandable testimonials/ratings into the product description pages, letting visitors view the opinions of others who have had the privilege to test specific products.

Comparing and Categorizing Products by Criteria and Demographics

To aid the customer in finding exactly what they’re looking for you’ll want to categorize your products based on as many criteria as possible, including size, color, brand, style, width, material, price, etc. Another good idea is to add a side navigational pane to every page that allows customers to fine-tune their results based on demographic (i.e. – women’s, men’s, kids, new arrivals). You may also want to incorporate shopping cart applications that allow customers to compare the main features of two products side-by-side.

Using a Themed Footer to Neatly Display Your Product Catalog

Just as placing navigational menus at the top of the site can be beneficial, including all of your product categories within a neatly organized themed footer is a great way to make your entire site accessible within a small section at the bottom of each page. Doing this effectively links all of your products together by making virtually every category accessible within a single click of the mouse. Furthermore, by placing keyword-rich category names in your footer you’ll be improving search engine optimization efforts while simultaneously enhancing your site’s navigational attributes. In essence, you can convert your themed footer from a basic aesthetic component to a miniature, easy-to-understand site map that helps customers find what they’re looking for, while also helping search engine crawlers index your pages more effectively.

So, follow these effective interlinking strategies and it will help your website to rank really high.