Searching obviously means using the site search whilst browsing involves drilling down through the categories provided by the website.

Regardless of which method is used, users will be presented with a product listing from which to find the product(s) they want. This product listing can contain tens, hundreds or even thousands of products, so finding the right product from this list can be a difficult or even impossible task on any ecommerce site.

Getting sorting and filtering right improves findability and allows users to find the product they want in less time, from this product listing. If users can’t find the exact product they require in the minimal time, there’s a good chance they’ll go to an ecommerce site where they can.

What is sorting and filtering?

Sorting is a method of changing the order of any product listing, where by users can choose which criteria they want the products to be listed by. So, price-conscious web users may choose to list the products in order of price, from cheapest to most expensive.

Filtering is a way of reducing the number of products in a product listing. Users choose which criteria are important to them and view only relevant products. For example, price-conscious users may choose to view only products for under 10 (thereby filtering out all products over 10).

Sort by options

Bringing products with certain criteria to the top of the page can be particularly useful for users who aren’t exactly sure what they want. This is especially true if there are a large number of products in the product listing. (Product listings, or a list of products, can be found either by running a search or browsing through the available categories.)

The Waterstones website, for example, provides extensive options to sort its search results. As well as basic sort by options (e.g. ‘Alphabetical: A-Z’) the site also tailors its sorting to the fact that it’s an online ecommerce bookshop. Users may find it helpful to sort by ‘Bestselling’, ‘Publication date’ or ‘Average customer review’. The latter is an increasingly popular way of choosing products on the web due to its independent nature.

The language of the options is also plain and simple. For example, ‘Price: Low to high’ is used instead of ‘Price ascending’, the former being slightly less ambiguous.

Presenting sort by options

Utilising a dropdown menu for sorting uses up minimal screen space and is generally familiar to users of ecommerce sites. It does however ‘hide’ some of the options as they’re not all visible at first glance.

You could instead offer sort by options as radio buttons. The main advantage of using radio buttons is that all sort by options are visible to users at one glance. Also, there should be less need to abbreviate terms as options aren’t confined to the width of the dropdown field.

As a rough guide, if you offer users four or more sort by options, use a dropdown box. Three or less sort by options then use radio buttons as the options won’t be ‘hidden’ in a dropdown box. Do be sure to restrict radio buttons to one row for easy scanning.

Filtering within product listings

Due to historically poor search results within websites, users are sometimes wary of site searches and will often browse through ecommerce sites to find a product. (They’ll then use the search function only if they can’t find what they’re looking for). For users that are browsing in order to find a product, filtering within a category is crucial to enhance product findability.

Filters let users reduce the number of items within any product listing, by filtering out products that don’t conform to specific criteria. This is often more useful for users who have a certain level of knowledge about the product(s) they require.

Dell offers a number of filtering options for their computers with a wide range of specifications. The product filtering concentrates on the technical specifics and usage but also has the option to ‘View all…’, thereby catering for all users. Filter options must be specific to each product listing and shouldn’t be generically applied across the site.

Using filtering to influence a purchase

Filtering can also be useful when there are many different parameters to a product and can be used as a tool to persuade and influence a purchase. H.Samuel, for example, uses an extensive filtering system for their range of watches. The product listing uses commonly-used filters such as ‘Price’, which many users will be familiar with. It also uses other, more clever filters, such as ‘Occasion: Anniversary, Christmas, Love, Good luck…’ and ‘Who is it for: For boys, For father, For groom, For bride…’.

These additional filters ‘humanise’ the online shopping experience matching users’ real life expectations and requirements. They essentially create an online ‘shop assistant’, matching users’ needs with specific products.

Conclusion

Do be sure to employ sorting and filtering across all product listings on any ecommerce or shopping comparison website. The options you provide for both should speak users’ language and be specific to the actual product listing (and not generically applied across the site).

Sorting and filtering are essential for helping users to find the products they’re looking for. Users’ increasing levels of sophistication when shopping online means they’re likely to ‘flick’ between similar sites in a matter of seconds. Providing effective sorting and filtering for product listings can play a major part in helping users find (and ultimately buy) the product(s) they’re looking for.

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This article was written by Jonathan Webb. He’s crazy about web usability and accessibility – so crazy that he now works for Webcredible ( http://www.webcredible.co.uk ), a leading UK web usability and accessibility consultancy to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

Why the name DigitalGhost?

Two reasons. I was making money ghostwriting when the ‘Digital Age’ came into being. CompuServe, Prodigy, etc. Everyone chatting online seemed to be just phantoms on a screen. Digital ghosts if you will.

How did you get into SEO?

I was selling computers and a friend of mine created a website, which was back in the days when maybe one person in fifty had an email account, and he asked me to look at it. The site had been live for six months but it wasn’t getting any traffic.

I noticed that the title for every page was new_page_1. I changed the titles to reflect what the page content was about, created a footer crammed with keywords for every page and boom. He started getting crazy amounts of traffic. Within a month I had 4 sites built and I was hooked. I quit selling computers three months later.

A woman that lived next door to me had a wine site and asked for help getting it to rank. She had a friend that had a site about 900 numbers, and he had a friend with a site about

I was an SEO for almost two years before I knew what it was called.

Does SEO, as a field, have much life left in it?

Of course it does. Search technology is still in its infancy. As the technology improves SEOs will be needed to help business owners deal with the changes. I believe that the technology will reach the point where the demand for SEOs is greater than it is now; especially as fewer and fewer of the self-taught SEOs are able to keep up with the technology.

Jakob Nielsen recommended using old words for findability. As a marketer, what is more important: using old words, or being able to create neologisms?

Keep it simple. Know your market and know the language your market uses. Banking on your ability to successfully market a new word isn’t a strategy; it’s a shot in the dark.

Why is linguistics important to SEOs and other internet marketers?

Linguistics offers insight into how people think, how they choose words and phrases, word dependencies, syntax, semantics, structure etc. The science is integral in search engine algorithms.

Are search engines matching keywords or concepts? What is the difference between the two? How might a shift in this change the SEO process?

They’re matching keywords. The keyword ‘war’ is quite simple, the concept of ‘war’ isn’t currently understood by the major engines. I could write an entire site about WWII without mentioning “WWII” and the engines would never rank it for ‘war’ unless it acquired links with ‘war’ in anchor text.

How might it change the SEO process? SEOs rely on keywords because the algos rely on keywords.

What are the most important books you have read about language, thinking, or communication?

There aren’t any single books that I feel are that important. A single idea, or several, contained within a book may be important but I think it is dangerous to assign too much importance to any one book. I place quite a bit of importance on reading many books and weighing the ideas found within them. I tend to think it is bullshit when someone says, ‘that book changed my life’.

What other books significantly helped shape you?

Now we’re getting somewhere. I remember reading Black Beauty by Anna Sewell and hating the kid that pulled wings off flies and threw stones at horses. Old Yeller taught me quite a bit about strength of character. Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn taught me about friendship. Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys, all of them had lessons. Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, Burning Daylight, more lessons.

I think we learn the lessons that shape us the most when we’re young. But most importantly, the latent lesson that I learned was, ‘love words’. All of those authors taught that lesson, though I never saw it written.

What drinks have helped shape you? What is your favorite Tequila?

Well, beer has added about twenty pounds of shape. As for tequila, just about any Aejo works.

You recently posted about sensationalistic headlines which have nothing to do with the content of the post. As more publishers come online, search engines and efficient ad networks commodify many of them, and more people are fighting for a finite amount of attention, will the web devolve into a series of half thoughts marketed by sensationalistic headlines? Or what publishing business models do you see as sustainable?

The web is too large for any single bad practice to ruin it. Most of the web is nothing but half-assed thoughts now and people still find it useful. As the need for better technology grows it will be met. The ‘cry wolf’ headlines will meet the same fate as the little kid in the story.

As long as publishers focus on meeting their users’ needs current models are sustainable. As soon as publishers shift the focus to their own needs they may as well quit. I can’t count the times a site owner has said, ‘I need more traffic’. How come they don’t ask, ‘What do my users need’?

What are your thoughts on tagging and the like? Will it make search any more relevant, or is it an over hyped fad?

Tagging hasn’t helped relevance a bit that I can see. Self-governing systems typically end up as nothing more than a fuster-cluck. People that insist that the more people that use a self-governing system, the better the system will work, need to have the Pareto Principle etched into those rose colored glasses they’re wearing.

How can social media and other popularity based metrics promote the creation of quality content while maintaining a reasonable signal to noise ratio?

Editing. It would help if people didn’t equate ‘more’ to ‘better’. Does Amazon need 600 book reviews for a single book? Does the world need 300 videos of people dropping Mentos into Diet Coke? You can increase the signal to noise ratio by limiting the number of people that can broadcast eh?

What is the difference between a horse and a donkey? Which animal is generally more entertaining?

A donkey is smaller than a horse and it has longer ears. Cross a mare, (female horse) with a Jack, (male donkey), and you get a Mule. Donkeys are more entertaining. They’re like big dogs and they make excellent pets. Nothing in the world sounds like a donkey braying, except for the Jackass Penguin.

It seems Google in particular is placing a lot of weight on domain age and link authority related trust at the moment. Many people are leveraging this to spam Google via video hosting sites, social media sites, and attempts at mainstream media to get into consumer generated media. Where do you see Google going next with their algorithms?

Semantic search. Nofollow is a bust. They created this huge link mess with their damn green bar and an easily exploited algo, and then they tried to clean it up with something as pathetic as nofollow.

You post a lot about word and link relationships. How do people typically mess up internal linking?

By creating navigation that looks like a keyword list. By ignoring concepts and focusing on keywords. By thinking in terms of pages instead of thinking about an entire site. By neglecting in-context links.

As example, a client told me he had a site about “new and used trucks”. According to his navigation text, his site was about truck accessories. Every truck model had 10-30 accessory links. Great text for accessories, poor text for trucks and he was wondering why he wasn’t ranking for new/used/ trucks/ city/state.

Do you see search engines as moving beyond advertisement based business models? How might they change going forward?

No, it’s easy, it’s passive, and they have the whole world creating content they can slap ads on, why should they change?

Do you eventually see search engines as becoming more powerful than governments?

No, but I foresee governments using search engines to become more powerful.

How long might your current blog last?

No clue. Longevity isn’t a good metric for quality though. Not that I’m saying I have a quality blog, but it’s my blog. I can name some pretty pathetic directories that have been around for a long time. But I won’t.

Danny just launched a new blog and it looks pretty damn good. So maybe the search engineers will learn that it’s about relevancy, not domain age, link age, link authority or any of that other bullshit they throw out there to keep people distracted from the fact that it’s all about what? Relevancy. Or is it the SEOs that keep throwing out dumb shit like “link age” for discussion? ; )

What are your favorite SEO Tools?

Whiteboards and a proprietary pattern analysis gizmo. SEO for Firefox is pretty damn good too.

What are your favorite non-SEO blogs?

Drivl is the only one I can think of at the moment. But I read a lot of online newspapers. Oh, and you can download the N.Y. Times reader now which makes reading the news a lot nicer.

Do you see a day when search moves past being primarily weighted on link authority?

Yes I do. Search engines like Hakia are already moving away from link-citation as the most important metric.

What might the next major metric be?

Wait for it this is good relevance. Yes. Relevance. Three thousand people linking to ‘white’ using ‘black’ as anchor text shouldn’t make black rank for white. Relevancy isn’t a popularity contest and I don’t care what type of spin the Googlemeisters want to put on it.

What is the biggest piece of the concept relevancy that you think most SEOs overlook?

Not knowing when to quit. Carrying the concept relationship too far. For example, having a site about greeting cards, and creating a subdomain for birthday cake decorating and linking it from the ‘birthday cards’ section of the site. And then creating another sub for ‘catering’. And since catering is ‘related’, may as well have a sub for ‘entertainment’. Why not games? And toys? Toys can be… gifts… and damn near everything can be a gift so now the site has books, candles, ties, hats, pens, tools, Viagra, baldness cures and vacation packages.

SEOs have heard ‘content is king’ for so long that it’s second nature to cover every possible phrase with a targeted page. Stop it already! Small, targeted sites do well too.

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Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, an ebook offering the latest
search engine optimization tips and strategies. From SEOBook.com Aaron
gives away free advice and search engine optimization tools. He is a
regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and runs the
Threadwatch community.

That’s news to me, too. I like long, artfully crafted sentences (not that I can write them). I like well-placed 25-cent words.

I even like serif fonts. But serifs, big words and long sentences are for fuddy-duddies and books. This is the Web. Fuddy-duddies should take note.

What’s the first word that comes to your mind? Use that one. How would tell a long story to an old friend who showed up next to you at the stop light? You know, before the light turns green. Tell it that way first on your webpage. Tell them more if they want to know, but give the basics first.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen says “speak the user’s language.” He says the Web-writer’s first duty is to write to be found.

He also said:

People really like bullets, too.

Sources:

How people read on the Web.

Using old words for findability.

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