There are a lot of talks these days about eCommerce taxonomy automation tools - but what, exactly, are they for?
In short, these tools help you to better categorize your products so that customers can find them more easily. Even in a traditional brick-and-mortar store, finding lamb’s wool socks in a jumble of miscellaneous winter wear can be frustrating.
In an online store, it’s even more important to have a well-organized product catalog - customers are less likely to stick around if they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. With 47% of customers giving up after one attempt, it’s clear that eCommerce retailers need to do everything they can to streamline the search and discovery process.
That’s where product taxonomy comes in. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at what product taxonomy is, why it’s important, and how eCommerce retailers can use automation tools to streamline the process.
Ecommerce categorization automation is the process of using software to automatically assign products to categories in your online store. It also includes the entire product taxonomy that ensures the data quality and the information management process of your inventory.
Product taxonomy is the process of classifying products into groups based on similarities. In an online store, this might involve grouping together products that serve the same purpose, are made from similar materials or are targeted at the same customer demographic.
This might sound like a simple task, but it can be quite complex - especially if you have a large catalog of products. Consider, for example, a clothing store that sells both men’s and women’s clothing. Each of these categories would likely be further divided into subcategories (e.g. men’s shirts, men’s pants, women’s dresses, etc.), and each subcategory would likely contain a wide range of products with different sizes, colors, styles, etc.
Organizing all of these products into categories can be a time-consuming task - but it’s well worth the effort. A well-organized product catalog can help customers find what they’re looking for more quickly and easily, which can lead to increased sales and customer satisfaction.
There are several reasons why eCommerce retailers should consider using taxonomy automation tools.
eCommerce taxonomy automation tools can make quick and accurate recommendations for your product categorization across all sales channels. This means that customers will be able to find your products more easily, whether they’re shopping on your website, on social media, or through Google shopping.
As a result, your business will become more visible online, which can lead to increased traffic and sales.
Another important benefit of eCommerce taxonomy automation tools is that they can help to ensure the quality of your product data.
When you have a large catalog of products, it can be difficult to keep track of all the different product details (e.g. size, color, style, etc.). This can lead to errors in your product data, which can confuse customers and make it more difficult for them to find what they’re looking for.
Ecommerce taxonomy automation tools can help to reduce these errors by automatically assigning products to the correct categories. This ensures that your product data is accurate and up-to-date, which can make it easier for customers to find the products they’re looking for.
Your personnel no longer need to manually categorize each product in your catalog. This can free up a significant amount of time and resources, which can be used for other tasks (e.g. marketing, customer service, product development, etc.).
In addition, eCommerce taxonomy automation tools can help to reduce the chances of human error. When products are manually categorized, there’s always a risk that they may be placed in the wrong category. This can lead to customer frustration and decreased sales.
Here are the top six best practices for eCommerce product taxonomy automation:
There are two main types of taxonomies that our Pumice.ai model interacts with: faceted and hierarchical.
Faceted is the most commonly used type of taxonomy. It’s a flat structure that allows customers to narrow down their search results by selecting multiple criteria or attributes (e.g. color, size, style, etc.). This helps customers locate what they are looking for without knowing the exact name of the product. Instead, it utilizes the attributes of the product to find the item.
Hierarchical is a more traditional type of taxonomy that uses a “parent-child” relationship between categories. In this type of taxonomy, products are assigned to specific categories (or “parents”), and each category can contain multiple subcategories (or “children”). This type of taxonomy is often used in product catalogs and website navigation menus.
Our model interacts with both types of taxonomies to automatically categorize products.
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Pumice.ai uses a similarity API that can automatically group products into categories. It does this by analyzing the product data found in your database and then grouping them according to similar features or attributes.
If you have a well-written and keyword-rich product description, it’s more likely that your product will be relevant to a customer’s search query. On the other hand, if your product description is poorly written or lacking in keywords, it’s less likely that your product will be returned as a search result.
Also, you have to make sure that certain tags work well with a custom search query. For example, if you add "shoes" to men's shoes, you may not want it to show up when a customer searches for "women's shoes".
Just like with any other system, you need to test your eCommerce product taxonomy system to make sure it’s working properly. This includes testing the accuracy of the categorization, as well as the usability of the system (e.g. how easy it is for customers to find what they’re looking for).
To do this, you need to establish clear evaluation metrics. This will help you to determine whether or not the system is working as intended and needs to be tweaked or improved.
Your eCommerce taxonomy should be simple and easy to understand. It should be designed for humans, not machines. This means that you should use common terms and phrases that your customers are likely to search for.
Your taxonomy should also be easy to navigate. This means creating clear and concise category names and using a logical structure. For example, you wouldn’t want to put “other” since almost no one shops in the “other” category.
Your eCommerce taxonomy can have a big impact on your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This is because the terms and phrases you use in your taxonomy will be used to generate the metadata for your products.
Metadata is what appears in the search engine results pages (SERPs) when someone searches for a product. It includes the title, description, and URL of your product page.
Making sure that your products appear well on SERPs and properly map to other pages on your site, will result in more traffic and potential customers.
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Ecommerce taxonomy automation tools are important for any online business. By using these tools, you can ensure that your products are properly categorized and easy to find. This will help to improve your customer’s experience on your website and increase sales.
With Pumice.ai, you can automatically manage your product taxonomies using your custom rules and preferences. Pumice.ai will help you to keep your taxonomies up-to-date, accurate, and compliant with changing regulations.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about how our product can help you automate your eCommerce business.
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