Collection Pages: Organizing Products the Right Way

In an age of overwhelming choice, how you organize your site plays an important part in the customer journey. This is where collection pages come into play. Simply put, collections are how you group products into categories.

Posted 4 years ago by Tatiana Dudin

For example, a clothing store might organize collections by categories such as men’s and women’s clothing. Further collection pages might then be divided into types of clothing, like pants or shirts.

Common ways include seasonal, color and sale collections for your visitors to peruse. They are a way to organize your products into groups visitors to your site will understand. But what makes a successful collection page? This week, we explore collection pages and the part they play in a well-designed e-commerce store.

Ways to Organize Collections

There are many ways to categorize and sort your products. Try to see your site through the eyes of your customer, who may or may not have come there with a specific product in mind. If they know what they want, make it easy for them to find it. If they are exploring, give them options so they can find something that appeals to them.

These are just a few ways you can choose to organize your products into collections. We recommend keeping it simple and not bombarding your visitors with too many collection choices.

Best Sellers. Knowing that others have bought a product gives the customer confidence that it’s good. If you can, include some reviews to build trust with visitors and illustrate how happy other customers were with your product.

Seasonal. This is especially important for clothing and fashion e-commerce stores. Each season brings with it a new style. Create anticipation by giving customers the option to shop for an upcoming season before it actually gets here.

Sale. People love a good deal! Make sure to show the original price and the sale price, to really drive the point home and show them how much money they’re saving.

New Arrivals. Being the first to have something is a satisfying feeling. Being the ONLY one to have something is even better. Novelty is a powerful motivator, especially in online shopping.

Tip: The same product can be part of several collections!

A Process of Discovery

Give customers the power to navigate your site. If they are looking for something specific, there is the search bar. But often, customers click through the site because something piques their interest and they prefer to discover your products in a more organic way. This exploratory journey should seamlessly take them from a collection page to a product page.

Your collections should be accessible through your menu bar, but they should also have a presence on your home page. As visitors scroll through the homepage, they will encounter other sections of your site. This is the perfect opportunity to gently direct them towards your collections. Using powerful imagery and a copy will encourage them to explore and eventually end up at checkout.

Other Important Elements

White Space. Give your collection breathing room and allow your images to speak your brand’s identity. Leave some room between product columns for better composition and a simple, clean design.

Professional Photos. Before arriving at a specific product page, customers will scroll through all the products in the collection. Put your best foot forward and ensure the photos clearly show the product. A neutral background helps to focus the eye on the product, while a hover over feature that shows the product from another angle can entice visitors to click through to the product page.

Pricing. This is optional, but some brands choose to include the price of a product on a collection page as well as the product page. The advantage of this is that a customer can navigate to a product that suits their budget right away.

Powerful Copy. Another optional feature is a few sentences about your collection that give customers an idea of what they are viewing. This copy can also simultaneously tell your brand’s story.

For example, on a New Arrivals collection page, a sentence like “Our most recent pieces, inspired by nature.” can explain to the visitor the meaning behind your latest products.

Heart Buttons. Consumers love the option of quickly saving something they like to a list they can later access. It’s almost like allowing them to create their own collection! This gives them the security to continue browsing your products, knowing they can return to the ones they love the most when they’re done.

Tip: Shopify gives you the option between manually created collections or automated collections, which uses selection conditions to automatically include matching products. 

“Allowing customers to create lists while they browse is almost like they are creating their own collection.”

Collecting Your Thoughts

Collections are an important part of the e-commerce experience, allowing customers to confidently examine your product, navigate your site and browse your products on their own terms.

While Shopify makes it fairly easy to create and organize your products into collections, there are more complicated features that may require coding knowledge to implement. Creating sub-categories and sub-collections, for example, is one such feature.

HeyCarson has a special section in our task catalog dedicated specifically to collection pages. If you want to give your customers the shopping ultimate experience, consider adding some of these great features to your site. Learn more by clicking below.