How to Structure Data in Your Ecommerce Business

Structured data (e.g., rich snippets, schema codes, JSON tags) are integral to SEO promotion. Google leverages these codes to define the context of your content clearly.

It is even more critical to eCommerce businesses because Google will need significant resources to crawl and analyze massive websites with different content on multiple page types.

Even so, structured data may perplex marketers. For this, we have gathered information to provide you with the basic markup for your ecommerce website and tips on correctly structuring data.

What Is Structured Data?

Structured data is a small schema code placed on a website that helps the search engine collect complete contextual information about the website.

Why Does Your Ecommerce Business Need Structured Data?

Ecommerce sites contain a large amount of information throughout the website that Google frequently misinterprets or loses if you do not highlight it.

For example, you run a marketplace that sells different brands. How will the search engine distinguish the following?

• Your brand
• Other trademarks introduced on your website
• Your brand’s goods

It is where the schema codes come to the rescue since they clarify all the information about your brand and goods to the search engine.

How to Create a Data Infrastructure for Your Ecommerce Website?

Consider the following points to build an ecommerce infrastructure:

• Determine the data you need. Before moving further, you must decide on what metrics and data types you want to collect to inform the rest of the elements of the architecture. While you most likely do not need to build advanced data models for now, thoroughly examine all the cloud apps you leverage.
• Improve data collection. A standard customer journey may look as follows: they begin with the Category page. They filter items > view them > add to cart > remove from cart > abandon cart > return in a couple of days > edit cart > buy > contact support > return a product > get refund.Keeping track of the details of this every step is integral to identifying problems with your site and discovering hidden gems that will increase your development and income.
• Decide where to send and store your data. When running an online store, you strive to access all of your data from the start to review shifting consumer behavior, loyalty, trends, and others. The warehouse will allow you to store, access, and transform this data efficiently.
• Move data to the destination. You need to create a data pipeline to move data to a destination. Quality pipelines will ensure the data in your warehouse and dashboard is constantly updated.
• Transformations. Doing the correct transformations allows you to get the data and details you are searching for.
• Create dashboards. Each business will have unique visualizations when they begin the reporting process.

What Are the Essential Structured Data Types for Ecommerce Businesses?

There are different structured data types, such as events, products, people, and others. We have detailed the most critical schema types for your online store to help you orientate in such a plethora of them.

• Organization Schema Markup provides Google with information about your brand and related details (e.g., company’s address, contact number, social media accounts, and others). Placing this markup on your website improves the visibility and appearance of your site in search results.

Only embed this markup in your home page’s head or body sections. Do not apply it to all pages of your website.

• Product Schema Markup gives Google comprehensive information about your goods and allows you to specify an item’s price and availability in search results. Also, you can extend this markup to display sales, reviews, delivery time, and costs.
• Breadcrumb Schema Markup is a text path usually placed on the top of website pages to specify the page’s position in the website’s hierarchy and allow users to return to previous pages along the way.

Also, this markup makes it easier for Google to interpret your site’s structure and provides better search results by breaking the URL down into the breadcrumb. Even though Google now breaks the URLs automatically, you should still consider embedding this markup to ensure breadcrumbs are displayed correctly.

• Article Schema Markup allows you to display your content as rich snippets and your pages to get more search space by including the post title, image, and content preview.

How to Add Structured Data to a Website?

Let’s review how to implement structured data with Structured Data Markup Helper.

• Open Structured Data Markup Helper tool in Google.
• Choose your data type and enter your Url. Open your Website tab, select the data type, enter the URL, and click Start Tagging.
• Highlight page elements and assign data tags. As the tool loads, highlight the components of your page to assign data tags like name, author, and publishing date. And you can add missing tags that may not be displayed on the page by clicking Add Missing Tags.
• Create the HTML. Once done with the previous step, click Create HTML in the top right corner.
• Implement the schema markup to your web page. Structured Data Markup Helper automatically generates the script as JSON-LD markup, which you can change to microdata. To publish your markup, copy and paste the new HTML markup into your CMS or source code. After that, click Finish.
• Test your markup. Open the tool, enter any web page’s URL or HTML code, and click Run Test.
• Analyze and eliminate any detected problems. Pay attention to all red errors or warnings. Then, you can fix all HTML errors in the tool panel before publishing the markup.

Final Thoughts

Inevitably, as your eCommerce business develops and changes, the pieces of your data architecture will change too. And ensuring they are seamlessly integrated is integral to your online store’s durable health and performance.

While adding code snippets to your website might seem tiresome, schema markup is essential if you expect your website to drive traffic from search engines. Along with other rich snippets, your listing will be meaningless without them. Therefore, consider working on your website code, test and refine your markup, and expect new rich snippets to attract more customers.