Optimize product names for eCommerce

What’s in a name? Well, quite a lot, it turns out, when it comes to product naming in your online store. Product names have an impact on SEO, on-site search and how effectively a shopper is drawn to a product when scanning a category page.

Here are some considerations you should take into account when choosing how to name your products –

Product names and SEO

Shoppers typing a search query into google for a product they have in mind are some of the best shoppers to attract, as they know what they want and have a higher intention to buy.

You can increase your chances of ranking higher in search results by Including descriptive keywords in the titles of your product names. The information in the search result that comes up will also be richer with a higher chance of winning you that click through to your site vs a competitor.

Product names and on-site search

Internal data from SearchNode shows that approximately 30-60% of all eCommerce site revenue is generated by on-site searchers. So you’ll want to make your on-site search as effective and frictionless as possible.  There are many tools you can use to optimize your on-site search such as searchspring or built-in modules within eCommerce platforms like with Ultra Commerce. A simple way to make on-site search more effective with or without these tools is to also ensure full, descriptive names are used including the language that shoppers would type into a search bar. Common keyword areas include brands, product types, and attributes like colors, sizes, and styles.

Creating Effective Product Names for eCommerce

To ensure that your product names are optimized here are a few simple guidelines to get you started –

Follow a consistent structure

Setting a product name format and sticking to it where it makes sense across your website makes it easier to scan more products and understand the selection available. There may be differences between categories or product groups but start from a common point and tweak where needed.

Know what attributes are important to shoppers for your products

Are brands important in the product range you are selling? Or is weight a key factor in how people search and select? Understanding your shoppers and what they look for when selecting your products is key to prioritizing what you include in the prime real estate of the product name.

Make your product names unique

Unique product names help you stand out from competitors in search and can even help rankings, bringing more traffic to your site. Particularly if you have a number of competitors all using the vendor sourced product data exactly as it is provided to them.

Use the keywords your shoppers will use

Aligning keywords is paramount. As a good example, you may want to include color in your product name. But if the attribute value for color for your product is ‘’cerulean’’ this is unlikely to come up in search. Adjusting this to a more commonly searched term, ‘’blue’’ will increase your chances of ranking and bringing that searcher to your product and site.

By putting these strategies in place, you will ensure that your products are appealing and connect with the right consumers, your visibility and brand image are improved, and your overall eCommerce site is optimized.

Automating Product Naming with Vesta

For companies who have large product ranges, limited time, or are scaling rapidly – individually editing product names would require a large commitment of resources. Using off-shore name writers is a commonly suggested technique, but these come with the trade-off of inconsistencies, errors, and management. Automating the creation of product names in your optimized format is another option, this is where Vesta can help.

Vesta set up cleaning profiles for each of your vendors, to automate the cleaning and optimization of vendor data into the format you need for your online store. This includes standardizing vendor data into a normalized format, categorizing the data, and creating product variants. Product name creation is just one of the optimizations Vesta delivers to improve your product information, the shopper experience and drive your conversions up.

Contact one of our friendly team today to learn more about Vesta’s automation processes and tools and how they can help you improve not only your product names but all of your product data processes.