I worked on my website today!

[iansmommaya]

I Have one thought. I have 125 products, mostly because an aromatherapy mister can come in 12 kinds, a soap comes in 23 kinds, you get the idea. So do I put them all separate or do I list them as the same thing with different options?

 

What do you do?

[TallTayl]

In the same boat here... man it’s a time suck listing and photographing so many things! here’s what it came down to on my site (zen cart).

 

1) how clear is the invoice/pick list? Does it show chosen options clearly to make order processing easy? If not, then probably need separate listings.

 

2) most shopping carts can keep a quantity available, but not necessarily how many of each variation is available.  how important is it to keep accurate inventory of each item? Example, if you have a mister that comes in 3 colors, Do you want someone to be able to buy one that is not in stock? 

 

3) scent variations, do you describe them all somewhere other than the listing? Do they all look pretty much identical? 

 

4) how “full” do you want your online store to look? One entry for soap, one for misters, one for mister scents might make it look a bit “empty”. On the other hand, clicking through 47 pages of essentially the same item may look a bit overwhelming. 

 

5) for sales tracking, do you want to know easily by scent, for instance, the most popular sellers? If so, separate listings are probably the easiest to count up.

 

does this help at all? 

 

[iansmommaya]

It does help. Thank you.

[ScentedPleasurez]

I have mine as 1 product with a scent drop down box. Much easier for me

[birdcharm]

Although I don't have a website, I once worked for a small company that had a Zen cart and I spent a lot of time within both the site and the cart.  The one thing that I'd like to mention is that the cart (ideally, from a marketing standpoint) should be only a part of the entire site.  For example, as ScentedPleasurez has mentioned, a drop-down box for scents per product is an easy way to offer several scents for the product.  Now, if you'd like to describe those scents, you can have a page on the website itself (not the cart) to go into detail.  In other words, the cart can be for the ordering part, but the marketing (details about the products/selections) is on product pages.  I just thought I'd add this to confuse the topic a little!

Edited September 23, 2018 by birdcharm

[Trappeur]

Call me simple cause I was always told by my Dad I could get lost in a closet, but that is a great idea Birdcharm.   It's simple, easy to navigate and people can understand and move around the website easily.

 

Trappeur

[TallTayl]

52 minutes ago, birdcharm said:

Although I don't have a website, I once worked for a small company that had a Zen cart and I spent a lot of time within both the site and the cart.  The one thing that I'd like to mention is that the cart (ideally, from a marketing standpoint) should be only a part of the entire site.  For example, as ScentedPleasurez has mentioned, a drop-down box for scents per product is an easy way to offer several scents for the product.  Now, if you'd like to describe those scents, you can have a page on the website itself (not the cart) to go into detail.  In other words, the cart can be for the ordering part, but the marketing (details about the products/selections) is on product pages.  I just thought I'd add this to confuse the topic a little!

I’m a bit confused by this post. Zen cart is an integrated product. The catalog is where options like drop down menus are programmed. The cart is filled with items from the catalog. You can’t operate the cart without the catalog. You can’t choose options, other than quantity, in the cart. 

 

(Have considered prestashop and others, (which all come as integrated systems too) but none can do what I need a cart to do, so I stuck with zen.)

 

I am unfamiliar with other newcomers to the “bolt on” cart sites, like for weebly. 

 

@iansmommaya, what software are you using?

[birdcharm]

3 hours ago, TallTayl said:

I’m a bit confused by this post. Zen cart is an integrated product. The catalog is where options like drop down menus are programmed. The cart is filled with items from the catalog. You can’t operate the cart without the catalog. You can’t choose options, other than quantity, in the cart.

 

Sorry, it's hard for me to draw the picture in words, I'll try again.  Yes, the cart is an integrated product ... a section of the webpage that is your catalog and that's where the actual purchasing of the products is completed.  On those pages, there is some information about the product, but it's mostly specifics ... in other words, the details about available selections, sizes, etc.  That's why I said from a "marketing" standpoint that there can be other pages that go into more detail.  It's a similar concept to the types of stores you could go into that were showrooms, but you ordered the products from a catalog.  The cart serves the function for ordering, but the site as a whole is where you do your actual selling.

 

I can't recall at the moment, but there has been a candle supply site that I've visited that has product pages, about us pages, etc. that are nice pages for a first time visitor, but there was a link that said "Our Catalog" and that took you to the shopping cart area of the website.  I've read that people may visit your site a few times before placing an order, that being the case, if you have product pages as well as a catalog for ordering, they will most likely get their first impression from your product pages and then look through your catalog.  It's all on the same site, it's just that there is a sort of invisible wall between your showroom and your check-out counter.  I'm probably just being more confusing, lol, but it's a concept that probably makes for a more comfortable atmosphere to customers and doesn't put them directly into the "buy now" area, which can seem a bit pushy in some ways.

 

 

 

 

[ScentedPleasurez]

This is 1 ss of a top waxvendor. As a customer i wouldnt purchase because its full of links. Its annoying af to me that they must have a good product to go through all of that lol

[ScentedPleasurez]

This site, another site. The main splash page is an enter store page. When you open it, it has 4 or 5 products, you click on which product you want and up comes this page with a drop down box. Imo this one is much easier and to the point. They have their scent Descriptions listed in abc order @ the bottom of each page. 

[iansmommaya]

for mine the items I have most recently added automatically are first. You can also click a link on the left for example SOAP and you will be shown all the soaps (assuming I set things up right. lol.)

 

 

[birdcharm]

22 hours ago, ScentedPleasurez said:

This site, another site. The main splash page is an enter store page. When you open it, it has 4 or 5 products, you click on which product you want and up comes this page with a drop down box. Imo this one is much easier and to the point. They have their scent Descriptions listed in abc order @ the bottom of each page.

 

Those are good examples.  The page with the list needs a better design.  It's one thing to have a list in a drop-down box, imo, but when it comes to page design, I think it's better to group them into categories to break it up.

[birdcharm]

5 minutes ago, iansmommaya said:

for mine the items I have most recently added automatically are first. You can also click a link on the left for example SOAP and you will be shown all the soaps (assuming I set things up right. lol.)

 

 

It looks as though you're doing it right!  Your products are interesting too!

[kandlekrazy]

I'm answering from a consumer standpoint here.  I think when shopping for melts or candles, even room fresheners and other items of that nature I'd be fine with a site that had 1 picture and a drop down menu.  Soap, I think is different, I want to see the colors on each scent so I'd like to see each product separately.  

[ScentedPleasurez]

1 hour ago, birdcharm said:

The page with the list needs a better design.  It's one thing to have a list in a drop-down box, imo, but when it comes to page design, I think it's better to group them into categories to break it up.

The page with the list of links is so annoying to me as a customer lol. 

Thee second i thought was a good example the only thing that i do not like is their scent description list. You have to scroll through the entire list to find what you are looking for.

I used to have a site that i created through freewebs. You could add a hover code so when someone placed the cursor over a particular scent the description would popup. 

I think @iansmommaya is off to a great start.😀

 

[Sebleo]

Drop down menus for scent selections are fine if you're going to describe them somewhere that is easy to find.

 

I've been on a few sites that listed scent names that I have no clue what they would smell like...like, Blue Queen...and nowhere on the site do they describe it. 

 

I would never order it. It's hard enough to gauge if you will like something just based on a description.  Certainly not going in totally blind.

[iansmommaya]

4 hours ago, birdcharm said:

 

It looks as though you're doing it right!  Your products are interesting too!

 

 

Thank you!

[iansmommaya]

3 hours ago, ScentedPleasurez said:

The page with the list of links is so annoying to me as a customer lol. 

Thee second i thought was a good example the only thing that i do not like is their scent description list. You have to scroll through the entire list to find what you are looking for.

I used to have a site that i created through freewebs. You could add a hover code so when someone placed the cursor over a particular scent the description would popup. 

I think @iansmommaya is off to a great start.😀

 

 

Thank you! I am SO using that hover description of the scent idea. If thats okay with you.

[ScentedPleasurez]

48 minutes ago, iansmommaya said:

 Thank you! I am SO using that hover description of the scent idea. If thats okay with you.

YES. I cant remember the coding for any of that stuff now. Its all on my old pc. That and im old 😂😂

[iansmommaya]

10 hours ago, ScentedPleasurez said:

YES. I cant remember the coding for any of that stuff now. Its all on my old pc. That and im old 😂😂

 

I can do it, and I am a middle aged lady who misspent her youth so I have no memory left. lol

[Faerywren]

I like the idea of a drop down menu for scents, but I'd like the scents separated by category. I don't want to scroll through evvvveeeerrryyy scent when I know I want something bakery or masculine etc.

[Sponiebr]

On 9/22/2018 at 7:55 PM, TallTayl said:

In the same boat here... man it’s a time suck listing and photographing so many things! here’s what it came down to on my site (zen cart).

 

 

I read this as :... man is a time suck listing and photographing so many things!

I was like DAMN! Harsh TT!  Me thinks hubby is not going to have a good week end... 

Oh. IT'S... Well, that's TOTALLY different then.  

(It's been a LONG 28 hours for me.) 

Item 2) I personally like the little #in stock ticker. Under each listing. 

Item 3) scent variations, do you describe them all somewhere other than the listing? Do they all look pretty much identical? 
I'm going to transliterate this from Russian: NEVER DO NOT list the scent descriptions ANYWHERE but with the item. e.g.: NO separate page detailing scent descriptions. NO! Unless you have insanely LOW prices with free shipping on FO's if I have to go hunt down a separate web page to find out what the scent description is, I'm outta there.  (I'm just talk'n about me personally) 

I do love the tooltip hover with the scent description idea, that's BRILLIANT! 
 

On 9/26/2018 at 12:46 AM, Faerywren said:

I like the idea of a drop down menu for scents, but I'd like the scents separated by category. I don't want to scroll through evvvveeeerrryyy scent when I know I want something bakery or masculine etc.

I LOVE collections and accord listings! 
 (oh and HI!!! Faerywren! ) 

Just some input from a grouchy, stink'n, over tired, dude. (but I've got a GREAT CHARACTER! )

Nite all y'all!

Sponiebr 

 

[MilosCandles]

So I do BOTH for various reasons. 

 

On Etsy I want as many products to show up in search as possible.  Having more products gives me more of a chance that it will appear multiple times on multiple pages.  Now I also have a single listing showing many products and scents, I pay more in Ad's for these listings so they tend to show up first.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MilosCandles

 

On my website I have mixed feelings and not 100% sure what I want to do.  Currently I have it setup like ETSY, but the one thing I like about my WooCommerce (Word Press) site is that when you select a Product, it will actually show you the item.  They site has not been around long enough to truly see how Google will index it.  

Also I can create "TAGS" on my site to account for "Fruity" "Fall" types of scents.  I just created a separate page with all the scent descriptions.

 

 

 

[TallTayl]

Just came across a situation where listing things separately definitely pays off. Or alternatively one listing with the drop-down box costs real money.

 

A customer mistakenly ordered bayberry candles when she meant white candles. It could easily be argued it was my fault. So I sent out the candles and the customer got both.  

 

Guess who is going to split one listing into 21 right now? I don’t care if it’s redundant. It cost too much money not to.  A side benefit now is I get more presence in searches. 21 shots to make it to the big list versus 1. It costs the same either way. 

[ShelleyF]

On 10/25/2018 at 9:05 AM, TallTayl said:

Just came across a situation where listing things separately definitely pays off. Or alternatively one listing with the drop-down box costs real money.

 

A customer mistakenly ordered bayberry candles when she meant white candles. It could easily be argued it was my fault. So I sent out the candles and the customer got both.  

 

Guess who is going to split one listing into 21 right now? I don’t care if it’s redundant. It cost too much money not to.  A side benefit now is I get more presence in searches. 21 shots to make it to the big list versus 1. It costs the same either way. 

I'm sorry to hear this happened but am thankful you told us. I've been debating on whether to make separate listings or not. Now I'm going to make separate ones after reading your experience. I also read not to put any other products but the one I'm selling in the listing. Even if I word it as one item the customer can say they thought they were getting all of them. They need to learn to read.