pros & cons of single product per page?

[christina]

I've always built actinic stores using the traditional section-list of all products in that section per page way.

Am just about to start adding products to a new store & have been playing with the new functions in v.9 business (I upgraded from v.4 catalog so there's quite a lot new ) & looking at the portfolios of some of the more experienced designers on here & notice that a lot of these sites are using the single product per page layout, which does give a nice look to the site

are there any major advantages/disadvantages to this? does it affect SEO?

thanks
chris

[leehack]

The only cons you will generally experience are with regards to the time taken setting them up (the conversion) and the upload times after doing so (on very large sites). The pros are tenfold and as long as you have a decent amount of product description text (i like 80 words per product at least) there is generally only positives to gain.

Certain products do not offer themselves to be on SPP setup and it's important that you make the decision consciously, not as a sheep, but it stands a very high chance that you should do it.

If i gave you one sheet of A4 and asked you to market 20 products on that one page, i suspect you'd market none of them very well. If i gave you one sheet of A4 and asked you to market one product on that piece of paper, you'd find that much easier right? SPP is the same principle, SEO is where it's at.

[christina]

thanks lee.
the shop is to sell gifts & art so the descriptions tend to get pretty lengthy at the moment.
I also really like the idea of being able to people also bought, related items, email a friend features, etc. but I think it looks pretty unwieldy with my current set up.

[leehack]

Then waste no further time young lady and get on with it. If anyone can counter that you shouldn't do it, i will happily credit you back with the time wasted out of my own little time bank. With lots of info (maybe look at the tabber on drillpine.biz if loads and loads) and upsells etc. i don't think there is a choice to be made tbh.

[chris ashdown]

I go the opposite way in that on say my sites you may be looking for "Tabards"

I recon there is no way you would look through 20 or so pages of single tabards, you would like to have a great shopping experience in that you go into a shop and see all simular items on one or two racks

You may get better SEO using single sites, though i am not sure how that happens as on my example you get say 10-20 chances to enter your key words without goblegook

One big advantage is Google base likes single product pages

I think with gifts and art I would soon grow tied of clicking on single pages

Remember each click is an open opportunity for the customer to walk away, the less clicks the more chance of a sale

[chris ashdown]

If i gave you one sheet of A4 and asked you to market 20 products on that one page, i suspect you'd market none of them very well. If i gave you one sheet of A4 and asked you to market one product on that piece of paper, you'd find that much easier right? SPP is the same principle, SEO is where it's at.

Thats true of sheets of paper but html pages are never ending you can type as much or as little as you need

Its far easier to scroll down than to click to another page

[jont]

It is not always cut and dry - it is very site / product specific on having SPP or multi product pages. I have 1 site with multi products per page and another with SPP ... the products on each decide the layout.

You can obviously combine the 2 using a cut down version as a multi page listing with a link through to the full description on a SPP.. this helps with Froogle / Base but does add another click to the procedure.

It is all down to individual sites - no single way will suit all sites.

[christina]

thanks all for the feedback.
at the moment it looks like I will be doing a mix, depending on the products in the sections.
the sections with single product per page still have an add to cart button on the sub section page so people can buy without clicking onto the extra info. I think the possibilities of cross/up selling within single product pages is worth the risk of losing people from extra clicks to get there.

chris a - totally see your point about tabards but the gifts are so diverse that even when you start carving them up into categories e.g. homeware - there is so much variation in product e.g. cushions, sculptures etc. that having a small taster of each product on one apge allows you to view all the items & browse through before clicking on the items that really interest you.

the products are very similar to another site that I already have up & running which on multi-products set-up so I will monitor the traffic through the two sites, clicks etc. & compare the two - will be interesting to see which works best!

[Darren B]

I agree, SSP's are the way to go, but as said depends on your products.

here it does not work http://www.casupply.co.uk/acatalog/1...carbonate.html it really is no use to anyone me having all these items listed seperately.

but here http://www.rawair.co.uk/acatalog/Sports_Kites.html
these are all duplicates, but at the bottom is list of the SPP pages so you can have both. (credit to Jont for this design)

Chris something worth considering, you can have the best of both worlds and adjust your site slowly, its what i do. People can see all the kites and google gets the SPP's for its base feed.

[leehack]

I go the opposite way in that on say my sites you may be looking for "Tabards"

I reckon there is no way you would look through 20 or so pages of single tabards, you would like to have a great shopping experience in that you go into a shop and see all simular items on one or two racks

When you say this Chris you are assuming that the SPP setup does not afford you the facility to mooch through products having a look at what is on offer. This is not true at all. Take a look on here for example - http://www.atlanticshopping.co.uk/ac...ky-Chairs.html - you can see the colour, style and overall look of the products before having made any clicks at all. You can also on a standard 1024 square screen see 12 products all at the same time, all without scrolling to see each one.

You may get better SEO using single sites, though i am not sure how that happens as on my example you get say 10-20 chances to enter your key words without goblegook

It comes down to density Chris, 20 instances of a keyword phrase on one page may be fantastic on one page and downright abyssmal on others, you can't throw a blanket decision here that easy as many factors go into the equation. 20 x H2 (product name) on a page is as likely to be seen as spamming as it is a great page.

One big advantage is Google base likes single product pages

GB drove this SPP process without doubt IMO and although i dislike their control, i think it is good for the masses, which is all you can hope for in web terms i guess.

[leehack]

Thats true of sheets of paper but html pages are never ending you can type as much or as little as you need

Its far easier to scroll down than to click to another page

The content at the bottom of a html page is far less important than that at the top, if not websites could be just one long page and you link through to the correct place on that page, so i disagree. I'd rather see thumbnails of what i am looking for alongside each other and then go see it in detail once my interest has been caught. Long lists are boring and you miss too many good things in them IMO.

So much is down to opinions of course and i guess what the masses like is what turns out to be the correct decision. For me personally i would rather click through to one product with correct cross selling than one page with 20 products. BUT it is product specific and there is no blanket rule, but in general i would say 75-80% of products would benefit from SPP setup.

[plantsforshade]

Hi

We have looked at this ( this is our opinion and may be wrong) and find that depending on your search key words, if they are specific to a product you need to have SPP. If your key words are more generic say in our case eg Geranium or Tiarella which are genera for which we may offer 20 or more forms, they rank much better for SEO as multi-product this is as well as the customer wanting to see the full range at once, probably just a case of the amount of info such pages contain.

Best

Nigel

[leehack]

That's also a very good point Nigel and ties in with what Darren said also IMO. Darren's example is a prime example of this, he does in fact only have one type of product for sale on the page, it is the sizes of it that differ.

[chris ashdown]

I take you points about the taster and it definatly has a good place in negating some of the clicks.

Though I still feel giving the customer as much info in the fewest clicks is a better solution for many sites (not repeat Not All)

I know I am slow in adopting new idea's but still believe that you only have one chance to get someone's attention and the more information you give them on early contact and the widest choice with limited effort on thier part will help get the sales

[leehack]

I understand your opinion and these are the type of things that are great to debate on a forum as you get to see all sorts of ideas. One thing often overlooked on SPP setup is the ability to have a really nice clear and large image on show without the need to offer a 'zoom' image. This is afforded to you because a user does not spend their valuable first few seconds downloading 20 product images, they download just one key and vibrant one. So although a thumbnail (the taster) is often smaller, the product image is usually around 300 wide so much better than your traditional 150-200 wide multi product page image size. This can often negate the need for a zoom image, so you get a click back effectively.

The amount of clicks counted needs to change IMO, too many times it is counted until a user hits the page, despite the fact they might need to open up a pdf or a larger image before actually adding to cart. In today's marketplace we should be counting the clicks they need to do before they click add to cart, not just hit the page IMO.