Filters
Filters are the options on a category or search page, such as Colour or Width, that let shoppers narrow a list of products to the ones that match.
- Product filters
- Faceted navigation
What it means
Filters turn a long list of products into a short one: tick White and 60 cm, and only the white 60 cm fridges remain. Baymard Institute, which researches ecommerce usability, notes that shoppers mostly want to filter on “category-specific attributes”, such as megapixels for cameras.1
A filter can only offer the values that are in your data. It is usually built from the distinct values in a column, so every spelling becomes an option of its own. Corner and Corner Bath appear as two choices, each showing only part of the range.
The fix therefore belongs in the data, not the filter. Baymard’s advice is that suppliers’ data and branded feature names be “post-processed” into common names before shoppers can filter on them.1
Think of it like this
Filters work like the index of a recipe book. Look up vegetarian and you find every recipe someone marked vegetarian, and miss any that qualify but were never marked.
For example
A Type filter on a bath page offers both Freestanding and Freestanding Baths. A shopper who ticks Freestanding sees only the baths filed under that exact word. Fold both spellings onto Freestanding, and one option shows the whole range.
Why it matters
Every blank or misspelt value takes a product out of a filter. eBay puts it plainly: “When buyers apply filters to search results, only listings with matching information will be shown.”2 A shop’s own filters work the same way, so a fridge with no width never appears when a shopper filters by width.
Not to be confused with
A filter is separate from your category tree. A category is where a product lives, and a filter is a choice a shopper makes. That is why an old category can live on as a filter when a scattered range is brought together.
Sources
- Baymard Institute. Filter List Design: Have Filters for All Displayed List Item Info (38% Don’t).
- eBay UK Seller Centre. Product identifiers.