Products page design | e-commerce

[Jvalops]

Hi All,

We are redesiging our ecommerce site and product page is bothering us. We want to tidy up. We want to hide some of the description with jquery script.

Visitor will be able to view first 30 words and there will be a "read more" text link just after that content. If they want to read more (which we think most will do) they will have to click the text link and rest of the content will slide open in the same page.

The whole content is visible from source code.

Would this be ok as far as Google and SEO concerned?

I hope I explained it well

[RyanPurkey]

Typically slider content and partially hidden content isn't an issue, just try to use layers in a clever way instead of moving the content way off the page left or right. As Steven mentions: TEST TEST TEST.  You'll want to look at this from both a user experience angle and how well the page does in Google post change.

[EGOL]

I would test conversion rate too.... I bet people who see the full text without having to click are better buyers.

Hiding that text could be costing a lot of sales.

[sferrino]

I think I understand what your doing about hiding part of the text. I also agree with EGOL about, if that is what people are looking for just give it to them.

Will it hurt your SEO efforts? I would say, no it will not. You are not intentionally hiding text for the sake of cheating the systems, you are doing it to help the user experience, something that I have heard Google employees speak of many times. What's good for the user is good for SEO.

I would test this in one of the many ways possible, heatmaps, clicktracking, etc. to see what the percentage of people reveling the hidden text is, if it's more than say 40% I would show more, simply because the other 60% might be interested, but are not willing to got the extra effort and may be going somewhere else.

[Jvalops]

We are not trying to protect the design. We are trying to make the page more clear and trying to push the reviews to top. Basically trying to make it more informative and clear product page.

Other option is show the description on the first tab which will be open in default. If we do that reviews will be hidden under second tab. If we don't use tabs the page will be way too long.

I saw a a similar website doing this and theirs opens in a pop up. I don't want to do that and I would rather slide open.

Would this be advisable as far as google and on page SEO?

What will be the pros and cons?

Many thanks

[EGOL]

Visitor will be able to view first 30 words and there will be a "read more" text link just after that content. If they want to read more (which we think most will do) they will have to click the text link and rest of the content will slide open in the same page.

If you think most will want to read the full description then why would you want to hide it?   Why make the visitor do anything extra to see your content?

Based upon your post it sounds like you are doing this because you are "protecting" your design.  If this was my site I would be putting my design efforts into serving the visitors instead of inconveniencing them to conserve a design that does not work.

You can probably find a way to make the page look great while showing the full description.