Pet store website: shoppers buy the wrong size

A pet store often sells the same food in several weights, life stages and recipes, and the product page puts them all in one size picker. A shopper who searched for cat food can land on a page whose first photo shows a large dog bag, because the title names the brand and the recipe and not the animal. The picker then offers three weights with nothing beside them to say which animal each one suits. The shopper may assume the page is for their cat, pick the smallest bag and go to the cart. Nothing in the cart says the bag is for a dog.

• Does the product name say the animal before the recipe or the flavor?
• Does each size label show its weight and the animal it suits?
• Does a search for cat food return only cat products near the top?
• Does the cart line repeat the animal, the life stage and the weight?
• Is the life stage, such as kitten or senior, written on the page, not only shown in a photo?

Many pet food catalogs name products after a recipe, because the recipe is the thing the brand wants to sell. That works in a store with a shelf. On a website, the shopper arrives from a search with one question, and the name answers the wrong one. A product called Ocean Blend Adult, with a picker of three weights, makes the shopper work out the animal from the photo. A product called Ocean Blend Adult Dry Food for Cats, with each size labeled by its weight, answers the question in the title and again at the picker. Keep the recipe name, but put the animal first.

A shopper types cat food into the store search and expects cat products only. A store search can return dog bags for a cat food query when the titles and tags never name the animal. If the category pages are called Dry Food and Wet Food with no animal in the name, a cat owner has to open each page to see which animal it is for. Search your own store for the animal and the life stage, and read the first few results as a shopper would, on a phone. Any dog product near the top is a page that needs a clearer name.

Pet food bags are heavy, so the shipping charge often depends on bag size, and some stores show it only at the cart. A cat owner who picks the larger bag to last longer sees the total jump on the last screen before payment, and that is where many leave. The cart often shows only the product name, so the total does not say which animal the bag is for. The test shows the cart line, the shipping line and the total as the visitor sees them. Check that the animal and the bag size are still named in the cart, next to the total.

The first run finds the page where the shopper picks wrong. The fix changes the name, the size labels and the cart line. Run the same cat owner again, and check that the first result is cat food and the cart names the cat. Run it again after you add a bag size, bring in a seasonal range or change the shipping rule, since each can rebuild the picker with the animal missing.