Information Tabs on the Product More Information Page

[extragear]

Hi:

We are in the early stages of a site redesign. At the moment, we are coming up with a rough draft of the changes that would be made.

Looking at some other shopsite websites, I came across a site using what I would call tabbed information browsing on the more information page.

See the following: http://www.gpsnow.com/gmmap60csx.htm

I'm curious if anyone else has used this. And if so, how did it work out for improving sales, answering customer questions, the cost for implementing it, what back end fields you used for storing the information under each tab and if there are any problems associated with it.

Thanks


Tim

Belden Motosport
Cycleluggage.com
607-693-1031

[BFChris]

I suspect the biggest problem will be finding fields in Shopsite to keep all the info in and organized.

Other than that, I find it a convenient and organized way to keep track of the growing amount of information we want to cram into product pages.

As for cost, all you're looking at is the cost of a custom MoreInfo template (if you can't do it yourself) and the time required to enter the data into the Shopsite database to populate the tabs.

[extragear]

Chris:

That makes sense. In the past I inquired about having Shopsite pull from another database once you run out of the allocated fields that shopsite gives you. I was told this wasnt possible. (We are almost out of fields to use as it is now.)

Do you think having a more info page such as the example is a good idea or not? For example, does it pose SEO problems or do you think customers would know how to use the tabs?

For our type of product, we have a large amount of info that we'd like to provide about it. But trying to find a elegant way of doing so has eluded us.

Thanks

Tim

[BFChris]

Tim,

1) The tabs should not cause SEO issues. All the information is there on the page (usually, in the ways I've seen the tabs coded) in hidden divs.

2) It is correct that SHOPSITE couldn't pull from a secondary database. However, there's really no reason you couldn't also use PHP/SQL to pull from a second database SEPARATELY from Shopsite (still coding the PHP/SQL into the Shopsite templates, though). I think the biggest issue this would create is data management confusion.

3) I think the tabs are becoming common enough on webpages that people know how to use them.

[bakerman]

We use tabs and love them. Our tabs do not effect SEO since CSS controls the layouts. Take a look: http://www.bakersgas.com/LINK2471-1.html

We used a combination of custom product fields and default fields to create this.

[elliven11]

Not sure if you're interested in something a little less low-tech, but I used a very simple version of tabs on the bottom of my site to help with answering customer questions:
Ex: http://www.houseofrave.com/giant-light-wand.html

It's obviously not quite as advanced as the example, but it's a nice add-on to my pages.

I can also easily integrate reviews into one of the tabs. I simply made the tabbed portion a Shopsite Include so when it needs to be updated, it can be updated just once and changed are reflected site-wide.


Source code: http://www.barelyfitz.com/projects/tabber/