Does adding subcategory pages to an commerce site limit the link juice to the product pages?

[Santaur]

I have a client who has an online outdoor gear company. He mostly sells high end outdoor gear (like ski jackets, vests, boots, etc) at a deep discount. His store currently only resides on Ebay. So we're building him an online store from scratch. I'm trying to determine the best site architecture and wonder if we should include subcategory pages. My issue is that I think the subcategory pages might be good from a user experience, but it'll add an additional layer between the homepage and the product pages. The problem is that I think a lot of user's might be searching for the product name to see if they can find a better deal, and my client's site would be perfect for them. So I really want to rank well for the product pages, but I'm nervous that the subcategory pages will limit the link juice of the product pages.

Home --> SubCategory --> Product List --> Product Detail

Home --> Men's Ski Clothing --> Men's Ski Jack --> North Face Mt Everest Jacket

Should I keep the SubCategory page "Men's Ski Clothing" if it helps usability?

On a separate note, the SubCategory pages would have some head keyword terms, but I don't think that he could rank well for these terms anytime soon. However, they would be great pages / terms to rank for in the long term. Should this influence the decision?

[Everett]

As usual, a good answer from Chris Menke.

Santaur, you asked:
"Should I keep the SubCategory page "Men's Ski Clothing" if it helps usability? "

I say "Yes". If it helps usability, as sub-category pages often do in this type of situation, you should keep them.

You can add content to sub-category pages to help them rank better for phrases that will bring in the RIGHT customer from the SERPs, even if they don't know yet what specific product they want. For example: "Overstock Ski Jackets" or "Discount Ski Jackets" would align with your client's value prop, target high-converting keywords, and bring in the right visitor to the right page.

[Chris.Menke]

Santaur,

Ultimately you should go with what makes the most sense to the visitor.  If the client's only value proposition to the visitor is price, then that should be a primary factor in architecting navigation that gets the product in front of the visitor fastest.  Keep in mind, though, that if price is their only value proposition, ranking in google is a slippery slope, and could be a strategy that may not pay off for them.

If your client can create a unique value proposition, the home page and category pages are useful tools for its presentation. A category page, for example is a great place for copy such as: "Our collection of mens ski jackets features a combination of warmth, style and value that you cannot find anywhere else online." (that's kind of a superficial example--it takes hard work to develop a list of features that will resonate with your particular audience)--and then proceed to give more detail regarding each of the features. The product pages, then, give your client the opportunity to get even more detailed regarding product features.

There's nothing easy about all of that and there's really no shortcut to it either.  If the client is asking you, the designer, to be responsible for their success when their business model is based on a low price strategy, you should be pushing back on them because it's not going to be the difference between having a category tier of pages or not that will ultimately make the site a success.