This is the third in my series of posts to share best practices on design and user experience for retail sites. My post aims to give you some tips to consider for testing improvements and designing your Product Listing Page (PLP). For each site page template type I have created a wireframe summary of a typical responsive site layout for desktop or tablet rendering showing key design elements, to give you a toolkit to review and optimize your pages.
If you work in design or merchandising for a retailer, or are involved in design at an agency for retail client’s accounts, then I hope these templates and tips will help you along the design/re-evaluation process to maximise results from your pages.
For retail sites, PLP pages sit within the category hierarchy and provide a list of all products available within a chosen category. For large catalogue retailers, these are usually found at a secondary or tertiary level e.g.Home & Garden > Garden > Garden Furniture.
In terms of the whole customer journey they are important mid-tail conversion pages, to showcase specific product sets and use navigation tools to help the visitor quickly find the most relevant product.
The key design elements of a Product Listing Page are summarised in this wireframe
You can use this template as a good practice framework to understand the key elements for an effective Product Listing Page. UX/UI design patterns can vary according to your site and depend on the extent each component is used (ie. by content, location on the page, scrolling done and across the page)
For example, some retailers actually use the PLP template for their main category page (ie Net a Porter) instead of using hub pages with PLPs for each sub-category.
Please note that site-wide components such as the mega menu are covered in my first post in this series on Retail site Home Pages.
The site adopts a very simple page template, with a long list of products with basic navigation tools like faceted navigation and sorting tools. For a high-end brand, it’s really surprising not to see promotional content such as featured brands and newest additions. It’s not sensible to judge the page design qualities without having an understanding of the data behind it. Perhaps the ecommerce team has tested different version and found that its customers like a simple PLP format to browse all products.
Here's a checklist of the details that I've found are involved in the discussion of improving this type of page:
In the full guide for Smart Insights members I go into much more detail on individual page elements on desktop and smartphone and look at more examples of how these apply in practice from UK and US-based ecommerce sites.
Use our wireframes and examples to test and create more persuasive Ecommerce designs to boost retail sales. Covers Desktop and Mobile page templates.
Download our Retail Ecommerce site design 'Bible''
By James Gurd
James is an Ecommerce consultant and owner of Digital Juggler, an E-commerce and Digital Marketing consultancy helping retailers develop, execute and evolve E-commerce strategies and optimise their digital channel. With a background as a Head of E-commerce and also agency side as Head of Client Development, he has experienced life on both sides of the fence. He has helped companies like A&N Media, Sweaty Betty and Smythson to manage RFP/ITT proposals. and been lead consultant on high profile projects for Econsultancy, Salmon and Greenwich Consulting. He is a guest blogger for Econsultancy, for whom he also writes best practice guides, regularly contributes to industry events and co-hosts #ecomchat, a weekly Twitter chat for e-commerce knowledge sharing. For e-commerce advice and support, connect with James on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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