Dollstudio wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2024 11:50 amnumerous requests, explicitely asking for the old body. Lesson learnt: An online shop is not a database. It's not the right way for an online shop to keep legacy records for unavailable products around.
Agreed. Even tho for "doll research" purposes, that approach is ideal, it's not the purpose of your site and creates too much hassle for you.
Variant A: We could update the page for the old body with the new specs. That would mean that people looking for the old body would come across the new body with the updated specs, and old backlinks would remain valid. The page could include a note that the new body replaces a discountinued one. But this approach might create confustion as photo shootings with the old body variant would also keep pointing to the updated body.
Oh man, if your first approach has created too much confusion, then this Variant A is just asking for even more trouble and tons of customer questions.
Varian B: Alternatively, we could remove the page for the old body completely. That would break all backlinks and references, but it'd be a clean cut. All traces to the old body would vanish in Nirvana.
I don't think you need to literally remove the page, just redirect it to a standard page that bears little more information than "the doll you are looking for has been discontinued and is no longer available".
You can keep files of photos and such of the old model in the background, so that direct links on other sites (such as TDF) don't break - but only if the direct URL is used, one wouldn't be able to find them anymore by browsing your shop site.
Additionally, you could have a list which doll models have been replaced (with links to the newer, current models only).
Bonus points if you include dates as to when a model was replaced with a newer one (don't need to be super exact, just month+year would suffice so the customer gets an idea just how "new" a model replacement is).
(Not sure if I understood Variant B correctly and if my suggestions make sense, but in general, I think a more or less "clean cut" of some sort is preferable for a webshop site.)
[quote=Dollstudio post_id=2537697 time=1714060258 user_id=289974]numerous requests, explicitely asking for the old body. Lesson learnt: An online shop is not a database. It's not the right way for an online shop to keep legacy records for unavailable products around.[/quote]
Agreed. Even tho for "doll research" purposes, that approach is ideal, it's not the purpose of your site and creates too much hassle for you.
[quote][i]Variant A:[/i] We could update the page for the old body with the new specs. That would mean that people looking for the old body would come across the new body with the updated specs, and old backlinks would remain valid. The page could include a note that the new body replaces a discountinued one. But this approach might create confustion as photo shootings with the old body variant would also keep pointing to the updated body.[/quote]
Oh man, if your first approach has created too much confusion, then this Variant A is just asking for even more trouble and tons of customer questions.
[quote][i]Varian B:[/i] Alternatively, we could remove the page for the old body completely. That would break all backlinks and references, but it'd be a clean cut. All traces to the old body would vanish in Nirvana.[/quote]
I don't think you need to literally remove the page, just redirect it to a standard page that bears little more information than "the doll you are looking for has been discontinued and is no longer available".
You can keep files of photos and such of the old model in the background, so that direct links on other sites (such as TDF) don't break - but only if the direct URL is used, one wouldn't be able to find them anymore by browsing your shop site.
Additionally, you could have a list which doll models have been replaced (with links to the newer, current models only).
Bonus points if you include dates as to when a model was replaced with a newer one (don't need to be super exact, just month+year would suffice so the customer gets an idea just how "new" a model replacement is).
(Not sure if I understood Variant B correctly and if my suggestions make sense, but in general, I think a more or less "clean cut" of some sort is preferable for a webshop site.)