Common Mistakes in Online Store Categories and Subcategories

Categories and subcategories in an online store should work like well-organized, clearly labeled aisles in a physical shop. Your goal is to make it easy for customers to find what they're looking for and present your offering clearly. Here's a look at the mistakes to avoid in your e-store's categories and product categories.

Table of contents

• An overly complicated category tree
  • Why create subcategories in an online store?
• Poorly chosen category names
• Missing or inadequate category descriptions
• Incorrect internal linking
  • No internal links
  • Too many links
  • Repeated links
  • Poor anchor text
  • Linking that ignores the page hierarchy
• Incorrect URLs
• Incorrect product categorization
• No testing or optimization

An overly complicated category tree

A category tree is a graphical representation of how products are classified in an online store. It's an essential element that shows the hierarchy and makes navigating the site easier. A common mistake is building an overly elaborate category structure, which makes it much harder to find the right products. How categories are structured is closely tied to UX, or user experience. So try to make it logical, clear, and grounded in an understanding of how potential customers actually search for products on the site.

A well-built category structure not only makes navigation easier, it also matters for effective SEO, affecting your store's visibility in search results. Piling up too many links, after all, lengthens the site's indexing process.

To illustrate this problem, imagine a small store selling women's outerwear. There's no need here to create a main category called "Fashion," "Apparel," or "Clothing" just to break it down into subcategories like "Coats," "Jackets," "Sheepskin coats," and "Furs." Instead, it's better to place those four categories at the top of the hierarchy, and use subcategories within them only where necessary. Every page should have a clear place in the hierarchy. Move from general to specific (homepage > categories > subcategories).

Why create subcategories in an online store?

A large product range often means a wide variety of items. Subcategories help create a clear structure, letting customers move easily between different segments of your assortment. This brings order and makes it easier to find specific products. Subcategories are worth using for stores that offer many different product variants. For example, if you run an electronics store, it makes sense to split the "Headphones" category into subcategories like "Over-ear headphones" and "In-ear headphones."

Of course, not every category needs to be chopped up into smaller pieces. Some categories simply can't be split into logical subcategories, so don't force it. If you offer a small number of products, it's better to go with a simpler category structure, without building an elaborate tree. With a limited assortment, it's better to focus on clarity and ease of navigation rather than over-structuring things.

Poorly chosen category names

Badly named categories are the first step toward losing customers and making it harder for them to find products in your online store. A well-chosen category name should be unambiguous, easy to understand, optimized for SEO, and consistent with your overall brand messaging. It's an important element that shapes a customer's first impression and their ability to navigate the site effectively.

While product descriptions benefit from unique, distinctive content, category names should be as intuitive and clear to the reader as possible. After all, the core function of a category name is to signal what a customer will find after clicking it, without them having to guess or think it through. Avoid unnecessary diminutives or overly elaborate names that don't reflect what's actually behind a given link. For example, a category called "Little soups" would strike most people as being for babies and toddlers, not as a category for adult products.

How you name your categories is another factor affecting your site's visibility. Category and subcategory titles are usually 1-3 words, and they should contain keywords. Keep this in mind, since content that isn't optimized for SEO can significantly limit your store's visibility in search results.

When naming categories, consistency matters too. For example, if one category is called "Women's Shoes," use the parallel name "Men's Shoes" rather than, say, "Footwear for Gentlemen." Inconsistent category naming can confuse customers and make navigating the site harder.

Missing or inadequate category descriptions

Incorrect category descriptions, or missing them altogether, is a mistake that can have a negative impact on search engine optimization (SEO) in online stores. Wondering what counts as an inadequate category description?

You should avoid duplicate content like the plague. This is a situation where identical or very similar content appears on different pages (external duplication) or in different places within the same page (internal duplication).

Category, subcategory, and product descriptions are places where it's unfortunately very easy to end up duplicating content. Remember not to copy descriptions from other sites - for example, from a manufacturer's site or an Allegro listing. Doing so creates harmful competition between identical pieces of content and puts your site at risk of a significant drop in visibility. Avoid this mistake, since only original, unique text is valuable to search engines.

When writing a category description, focus on keywords that accurately relate to that part of your offering. Remember, though, not to stuff every sentence with keywords. Too many repeated phrases look unnatural, and to a search engine it's a sign that the content might be low-value and aimed only at artificially boosting visibility. Use natural language suited to your target audience - focus on quality, not the sheer volume of text.

Another mistake that sometimes shows up in category descriptions is long, monotonous blocks of text. It's worth splitting content into paragraphs with proper headings (h2 and h3). This helps search engines understand the page's content when crawling it, and helps users find key information.

When writing a category description, avoid vague, overly general sentences. Instead, write in terms of benefits. For months now, Google's algorithms have been "tuning in" to evaluate content based on its value to users. Think through what your customers' main needs and expectations are when searching for products in a given category. Spell out directly what benefits they'll get by choosing your assortment. Depending on your industry and offering, that might include saving time or added convenience. To create the kind of content your target audience is looking for, you need to understand their needs and how they search for products.

Incorrect internal linking

Category and subcategory descriptions are also a place for internal linking - that is, adding links to other pages within your store. Here are a few common mistakes that show up in internal linking:

No internal links

A complete lack of linking can result in so-called "orphan pages", which can't be reached from anywhere else on the site. The harder a page is to access, the longer it takes to get indexed. It's worth adding internal links, especially if your store is large and has many pages. Valuable internal linking has a positive effect on how your store gets indexed, which in turn can improve its visibility in search results.

Too many links

Any extreme is a bad idea, and an excess of internal links can also hurt your store. This can result in none of the links being seen as particularly important by users. It's better to focus only on the important, valuable elements of the page. What's more, too many internal links can be interpreted by search engines as an attempt at spam, which in turn can lower your ranking.

Repeated links

If several links in a single description point to the same page, you create the impression of spam or overly aggressive advertising, which will certainly be viewed negatively. Repeated links to the same page also bring no SEO value. Quite the opposite - they may again be flagged as a spammy practice.

Poor anchor text

Every link in a category description should be paired with the right anchor text - that is, the phrase the link is attached to (for example, a clickable link reading "silver necklaces for women"). When planning your linking, it's worth doing a thorough keyword analysis and choosing the phrases that best match the content of the target page. Avoid vague, overly generic anchor texts that don't tell the reader where the link leads (e.g. "Click here" or "See more").

Linking that ignores the page hierarchy

The more high-quality links a page has, the better it tends to be rated. So avoid linking to random pages that add no value. After all, the point of linking is to make it easier to discover new content and create smooth transitions between pages.

Incorrect URLs

A common mistake in categories and subcategories is using long, complicated, unreadable URLs. These have a mainly negative effect on an online store's SEO. If URLs are incorrect, hard to understand, or contain unnecessary elements, it can make the site harder to index and lower its ranking in search results.

How do you avoid this? It's worth planning a correct, consistent URL structure from the start, so you don't end up having to introduce redirects later. Each page's URL should contain keywords that reflect your site's structure. That means URLs should clearly indicate what's on the page, for example: domain.com/womens-jewelry/necklaces.

Remember, a user-friendly URL is concise, readable, and easy to understand - both for users and for the crawlers indexing your site. A URL shouldn't contain elements that don't convey any specific information about the category or product. Avoid capital letters, punctuation marks (question marks, exclamation points), unnecessary numbers, or confusing strings of characters.

Incorrect product categorization

Assigning a product to the wrong category can be behind a low conversion rate and a high bounce rate. By misleading customers, you increase the risk that they'll leave the site without making a purchase.

A lot, of course, depends on the settings and capabilities of the sales platform you use. Some panels, though, have certain gaps - if you overlook assigning a new product to the right category, you can lose a great deal. The product will be available, but not visible. For example, a newly added item will show up under "New arrivals," but if you don't assign it to the right category and subcategory, it will become very hard to find over time. As a result, users won't see the product while browsing that category. If they don't type the exact product name into the search box, they'll probably never come across it at all.

No testing or optimization

A systematic analysis of your site's data will help you answer the question of what's worth changing in your categories, and why. Which areas are worth analyzing?

Analyzing user behavior is extremely valuable, since it can help you find the source of your problems. Tracking how customers move around the site, and which categories they visit most often, lets you identify the popular purchase path and any points where cart abandonment happens. It's also worth considering time spent on the site. How long users shop, and where they linger, can tell you a lot about a category's appeal. Also look at which products are frequently bought together. That kind of information can point to a better way of organizing your categories and subcategories, and where to add internal links.

It's also worth running an SEO analysis, checking how effective your keywords are in category names and descriptions, as well as your link structure. Track your ranking in search results for key phrases tied to your categories. Not sure which titles and headings to go with? Use keyword analysis tools to find content that best reflects your store's offering and matches what users are searching for.

As an online store owner, don't neglect studying the market and your competitors. Watch what solutions are appearing in your industry and how well they work. In a constantly changing e-commerce landscape, stay up to date with the latest trends and try to adapt your category structure to changing customer preferences. If you decide to rebuild your categories or make changes to your store, don't forget to run usability tests. This will help you identify any issues with navigation and category structure. If you're not sure how to analyze the key data or what to improve in your store's categories, get in touch with us. We have experience building and optimizing online stores across a wide range of industries. Together, we'll analyze your target audience's needs, identify areas for improvement, and make the changes needed to help your store reach new customers.