Advice on duplicates and hidden products

[Kirk]

In the past year and a half or so that our v8 site has been up, we have received feedback from our customers ranging from "Your site is great" to "Your site is $#!+". The one underlying theme that all the feedback points to, is that parts would be easier to find on the site if they were arranged by model (356, 911, etc.) rather than by type (brake pads, shocks, etc.). Edit: [It is a Porsche parts site]

I actually agree with this and have been putting it off due to the labor intensive nature of the process. However, it really does need to be done and the site really needs to be gone through and cleaned up anyway.

My plan was to basically make new sections with the various models and year ranges, then list the appropriate parts using duplicates. Using this method, my catalog would grow from about 1,700 original products and 300 duplicates, to maybe as many as 5,100 duplicates if all of the original products are hidden.

Is this the best way? I also plan to leave the first version viewable, so I could leave the original products where they are, which would save 1,700 duplicates. I really don't mind doing the work - I'm just wondering if I'm over-thinking things and making more work than I need to.

Thoughts? Advice? Been there, done that? Any comments are appreciated. Sorry this is so long.

Thanks,

Kirk

[leehack]

With that many parts, that is your best way yes. Don't hide the originals use them in one list and duplicate them into your other list.

[george]

It'd just be like a printer cartridge site, with listings of parts for each model, then the reverse listing for the parts with the models they do. If done properly with spp's you'll nail search engine responses.

I'm sure theres a cracking car part site that I've used before if I find it I'll post it on here.

Try to avoid massively long pages too.

[Kirk]

Thank you Lee!

Thank you Lee!

That should save quite a bit of time. I was leaning that way, then started second guessing myself and got tired head. I'll have to learn to trust myself a bit more, I guess.

[RuralWeb]

The Vauxhall car parts website in my signature which is under construction uses that method and will have 30,000 products when it's finished.

[Kirk]

Thanks!

The Vauxhall car parts website in my signature which is under construction uses that method and will have 30,000 products when it's finished.

Awesome! That's very close to what I was thinking.

I also like the little tool box for the Add to Cart. Very cool.

All I lack now is finishing...and, well...starting.

[acompton]

This is the method I've been using for several years.

I did run into one problem recently: I've been moving some original products within the tree, and while the shop still operates correctly, where duplicates are listed in a GoogleBase datafeed they retain their 'old' price and don't pick up a price change in the original product. This only happened where the original had been moved and had had a price change. Might only be a V7 bug.