The Power of a Taxonomy
Understands why products work together and fit personalized needs
A robust taxonomy provides an intentional hierarchy of product information that can be incredibly powerful to increase customer basket sizes, reduce returns, and increase customer satisfaction. Specifically:
- Recommendations/Cross-selling – clarifies which products naturally complement one another and/or are needed for a more complete product solution. Presented products are hyper-relevant to how the product is used, not just correlated sales data.
- Configuration – some retailers sell components from different manufacturers that are ultimately meant for larger product solutions. A strong taxonomy is the backbone that allows a configurator to understand which parts will be compatible and which will not.
- Discovery – Information stored in a taxonomy can help guide customers in the discovery process by allowing retailers to present how a product may be best suited to meet a customer’s specific needs, whether based on application (product-usage), other products they are considering (product-product), or how others have utilized it (product-person).
- Scalability – new products can easily be added to inventory and immediately be integrated into the system as a valid compliment, replacement, or alternative to every other product in the database. Truly headless eCommerce is achieved as there is no need to change anything on the front end.
- Loyalty – customers not only understand how things work together in their current session, but can also see compatibility with anything they have purchased from you in the past. They won’t have to guess, because you’ll already know.
