Filtering

What is filtering?

Filtering (also known as faceted search) is a feature that allows visitors to your online store to narrow down the product list based on specific criteria. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of products, customers can filter by, for example, size, color, price, or brand, and quickly find exactly what they’re looking for.

Filtering is especially important in online stores with a large number of products. The larger your product range, the more critical it is that customers have effective ways to navigate it.

Common filter types

• Price filter: Often displayed as a range (slider) or predefined price groups. One of the most commonly used filters in any online store.
• Color filter: A visual filter with color circles that makes it easy to select the desired color.
• Size filter: Essential for clothing and shoe stores, where customers only want to see available sizes.
• Brand: Allows customers to focus on their favorite brands.
• Material type: Relevant for furniture, clothing, and accessories.
• Availability: Show only products in stock—important for avoiding frustration.
• Reviews: Filter by products with high ratings.
• Sorting: Price (low to high, high to low), popularity, newest, best-reviewed.

Why is filtering important?

Better user experience

Customers who can easily find the right product are more likely to buy. Research from the Baymard Institute shows that 42% of e-commerce sites have inadequate filtering, and that this directly negatively impacts the conversion rate.

Lower bounce rate

Without filtering, you risk visitors leaving your store because they can’t find what they’re looking for. A good filtering experience keeps customers engaged and navigating your store.

Increased average order value

Effective filtering allows customers to discover products they didn’t know you carried. When browsing is easy, they discover more relevant products and add more items to their cart.

Best practices for filtering

• Show the number of results: Always show how many products match the selected filter so the customer knows what to expect.
• Avoid zero results: Hide filter values that return zero results, or mark them as unavailable. It’s frustrating to select a filter and get a blank page.
• Offer a “clear filters” option: Make it easy to reset filters and start over.
• Combinable filters: Let customers apply multiple filters at the same time (e.g., “blue” + “size M” + “under 500 kr.”).
• Mobile filtering: On mobile, filters should be in aslide-in panel rather than taking up space in the layout, since screen space is limited.
• Fast response: Filter results should appear instantly (AJAX) without reloading the entire page.

Filtering and SEO

Filtering can have SEO implications that you should be aware of:

• Duplicate content: Filtered pages can create many URL variations with similar content. Use canonical URLs to tell Google which version is the preferred one.
• Crawl budget: If Google crawls thousands of filtered URL combinations, it wastes crawl budget. Consider blocking filtering parameters in robots.txt.
• Useful filters as landing pages: Popular filter combinations (e.g., “black running shoes”) can be effectively set up as dedicated landing pages with unique content to rank for specific search terms.