In the rapidly expanding world of e-Commerce, search and filtering are essential behavior for online shoppers. While searches alone are insufficient for helping online customers locate what they’re looking for, product filters help to focus the results and present items that most closely fit their preferences. Because of this, filter design is crucial.
Visitors that utilize filters are 52% more likely to convert than non-users, according to DigitalCommerce360. Only 16% of websites offer a decent filtering experience, with enough filtering kinds available, a balanced filtering design, and a filtering logic that corresponds well with user expectations, according to a sobering Baymard Institute usability test finding.
1. Select the Proper Facets or Filter Options.
Due to the variety of products, Shopify sites rarely have a Shopify filter that is one size fits all.
When it comes to filter design for online business, the product characteristics should be the very first thing taken into account. A product attribute should, in general, be provided as a filter if it needs to be displayed in the product listing, such as size, color, or variant.
When creating eCommerce filters, there are other equally important things to take into account.
It will be quite beneficial to have a solid understanding of the features that customers value most in a product. For instance, a lot of online shops offer the location filter as a way for customers in a hurry to rapidly find nearby products. Due to the fact that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, rating is another well-liked refining criterion.
Not to mention, it’s always useful to look at how your rivals create their filter trees. Customers won’t have to spend time getting used to a new filter design thanks to standard design patterns that create familiarity and relevance. Several filters that are suitable for various product types include:
- Brand
- Material
- Color
- Average Rating
- Price
- Size
- Availability
2. Activate the Multi-Select Filter with the Different Sorting Choices.
Multi-select filters are essential because faceted navigation with dynamic filters is frequently used in eCommerce and it is impossible to find the ideal product with just one refinement.
From their usability test sessions, Baymard discovered that 45% of customers tried to use multiple filter values for the same filter type. But just one-third of the test sites succeeded in doing this.
The refined earphones should meet the following requirements based on the filter parameters chosen:
New Arrivals OR Top Picks in one of the categories AND possessing one of the following features: Best for Calls OR Active Noise Cancellation
A user-friendly product list should have numerous sorting options in addition to multi-select filters. Users “frequently favoured the “soft” borders of sorting over the “hard” boundaries of filters,” Baymard found in the same usability study.
Filters are a “hard” barrier since they exclude items that don’t quite fit certain requirements. Sorting, on the other hand, just modifies the order of the products; no products are omitted.
The user’s product discovery and selection process can be considerably sped up with only one sorting click.
While alphabetical ordering is rarely appropriate in an e-commerce setting, there are other practical sorting choices to consider:
- Arrival/Release Date
- Popularity
- Rating
- Price
- % Sale
We advise you to limit the number of sorting options you offer to no more than five in order to avoid long sorting drop-downs that can mislead customers.
3. Avoid Using Unclear Names and Business Jargon
When a website has filter names that are jargon-heavy and industry-specific, users frequently fail to apply the proper filters. Even worse, if they don’t know how to filter the product list to fulfill their demands, many prospective customers will leave the website.
Site owners should initially strive to replace industry-specific filters with frequently used phrases because understanding concerns are crucial.
Nevertheless, there are numerous instances where we are unable to discover suitable replacements for the industrial jargon. Then, it’s preferable to use a tooltip to provide further explanation or a visual display.
Increase efficiency via filter analytics
The tactics stated above are designed to raise filter engagement, which will probably result in greater purchases. However, you can accomplish a lot with additional capabilities like the Analytics of Boost Shopify Product Filter & Shopify Search app
You can learn more about your consumers by analyzing data on filter clicks, filter combinations, and other filter-related factors. By putting those filter options at the top, you may continue to refine the filter design once you know which criteria are typically used to whittle down the product list.
If you are looking for for a Shopify filter app that can automatically enhance your filter UI/IX, and also increase sale, Product Filter and Search App is your number one choice.
