Adding content to an eCommerce site

[Alick300]

We're creating buyers guides for the each category on our ecommerce website and we're not sure where to place the content for maximum impact.

Option a: place the content on the category page beneath the product listings

Option b: place the content on our blog and created links between the content and category page

Which option do you think would be most effective/ user friendly? Any thoughts, help or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Alick

[MonicaOConnor]

Do you have a Knowledge Base or FAQ section on your site? I would add content like this in one of those places. If you don't have something like this built in, I would recommend using the category pages. This kind of content is great for user experience. My only hesitation would be that more likely than not, most of the content would be below the fold, and it might not get as much view as it would if it had its own page on your site.

Can you split content on your category pages? Maybe show one paragraph above the products and the rest below. Or, if you can add JS to the page, use a script to hide a portion of the content behind a read more button. Ideally, content like this should really have a page all its own. If you can manipulate how content is displayed on the category pages, you should be able to make it work there as well.

[kwoolf]

In my experience, A/B testing for content placement yields different results for different products/languages/seasons. So many variables, I'd just use those resources for more valuable content testing.

Are your buyer guides downloadable or HTML? For downloadable guides, I'd have a thin content block above the fold on category pages right above the products. Another effective spot would be a taller block above the fold in the sidebar on the same category pages. If your guides are a really big deal, have a content block on your homepage introducing these new guides and then link internally on where to get/view them.

Whether you're hosting downloadable or HTML guides, I'd still have links to them on your blog. But without more details on your site, I can only offer this general advice but feel free to update us.

[EGOL]

If I was creating a genuine "buyers guide" for an entire category of products, that should be something substantive, requiring a lot of work, and as such would be a valuable stand-alone addition to a website.  So, I would give that type of content a special page on my website, feature it prominently, and not make it a caboose on a category page.

[Alick300]

Hi Ryan, thanks for your response.

Do you know of any good (elegant) ways to do this? If you could link to examples I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

[RyanPurkey]

My hunch is that it'd be most user friendly as part of the category level pages and that would work better for tying that content into the pages via search. You can always find other things to blog about if you're worried about lacking links to and from the blog and category pages.

A design change like that would also be good to split test as it will give you a better idea if it's something that is also helping you increase conversions. Cheers!