A question for developers and SEO specialists. Should an online store reload the page when the shopper picks a color or size? That is, should it have a separate URL for every combination?
On the one hand, that’s convenient for exporting product feeds to shopping aggregators.
Here’s what Yandex recommends for exporting products in the “Clothing” category to Yandex.Market, Yandex’s price-comparison service:
Offer link on your site
For different color and size variations of one model, it is desirable to give a separate link to your site for each combination of colors and sizes in the offer, but you can also give the same URL for all variants.
[Yandex goes on to explain that with separate links, a shopper who picked a size and color on Yandex.Market lands on your product page with both already selected, and suggests building the links from the color and size, e.g. http://best.clothes.ru/product_page.asp?pid=12344&colour=14&size=44.]
Google Merchant Center takes the same view:
For variations of the same product, we recommend you submit URLs that pre-select the variant which the user clicked on in Google Shopping.
On the other hand, it means reloading the page whenever a size is picked, which is a disgusting user experience and eats a lot of resources.
Can you use AJAX to pick a size and swap the URL? I think not. My knowledge of technology tells me AJAX means no page reload, and how do you change the URL without a reload?
Besides, you’d have to hide a mass of URLs for individual product combinations from search engines.
Can anyone suggest the best solution?