An export site is a structure problem before it is a content problem
Deciding what a product page must answer comes before writing any of it. A buyer abroad cannot walk into your factory, so every question he would have asked in person has to be answered somewhere on the page, in a fixed place, on every product. Sites that skip this step end up rewriting the whole catalogue once the first serious enquiry exposes what is missing.
A client came to us with an electric bike range sold across several Southeast Asian countries. There were no page requirements — no wireframes, no reference sites, no list of sections. That sounds like freedom and it is mostly a burden, because it means every structural decision is yours and you will be the one who is wrong if it is wrong.
We made three decisions before writing a word of copy. They are the same three on every export site we have built since.
One: how the range is organised
A buyer arrives knowing one of three things — the model name, the use case, or nothing at all. The catalogue has to work for all three, and the organising axis you pick decides which of them you serve well.
| He arrives knowing | He needs | What that means for the catalogue |
|---|---|---|
| A model name or part number | To land on that exact product, fast | Search, and model names in the URL |
| The use case (commuting, delivery, cargo) | A shortlist he can compare | Categories by use, not by internal series |
| Nothing — he is scoping the market | To understand the range in one screen | A range overview that shows the whole line at once |
Organising by internal series numbers is the most common mistake, because it is how the company thinks about its own products. The buyer does not have that map. He has a problem, and the categories have to be named after his problem.
Two: what a product page must answer
This is the decision that costs the most to get wrong, because changing it later means editing every product. Write the list once, then every product page has the same slots in the same order — and a missing answer becomes visible instead of being quietly absent.
- What is it, in one line a non-specialist understands.
- The specification, as a table. Not prose. A buyer comparing three models reads three tables, and prose makes that impossible.
- What is in the box, and what is not.
- What it costs, or if the price is not public, exactly what happens when he asks.
- How long it takes to get to him, and who handles customs.
- What happens when it breaks — warranty term, and who he contacts.
The last two are the ones that get left off, and they are the ones a serious buyer needs most. Someone comparing suppliers from another country is not choosing a product, he is choosing a risk. Delivery and after-sales are where that risk lives.
Three: where the purchase path begins
On this site the answer was a full WooCommerce checkout, because the bikes have list prices and are sold to individuals as well as dealers. That is not the right answer everywhere. If your prices are negotiated, a cart is a liability — it puts a number on the page you did not intend to commit to.
| If you sell | The path should be | And the page needs |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed-price goods | Cart and checkout | Stock, shipping cost, delivery window |
| Negotiated or by quantity | An enquiry form | The fields a quote actually needs: quantity, spec, destination port |
| Configured or built to order | A configurator, then an enquiry | The options that change the price, and nothing else |
Mixing them is the failure case. A page with both a cart button and a "request a quote" button asks the buyer to decide which kind of customer he is, and he will pick wrong or pick neither.
Why structure first, and not content first
Content written before the structure exists has nowhere to go, so it becomes paragraphs. Paragraphs cannot be compared, cannot be filtered, and cannot be read by a machine that is trying to answer a question on your behalf. Structure first means the writing has slots to fill, and an empty slot is a question you have not answered yet — which is exactly the thing you want to see before a buyer sees it.
The site runs on standard WordPress and WooCommerce. That was deliberate: the client can move it to any host and hire anyone to change it. A structure decision that locks you into one agency is not a structure decision, it is a hostage situation.
In this guide
- What a B2B enquiry form has to ask before you can actually quoteThe fields that decide whether an enquiry can be priced on the spot or needs another email, and why asking more is not the same as asking better.
- One product page that shows a different price to every accountHow to serve walk-in buyers and contracted dealers from one catalogue, and the one rule that turns the tier system into an upgrade conversation.
- How many languages an export site should have, and how the URLs should workThe URL structure that keeps language versions from competing with each other, and the five places a new language has to be added before it works.
- When a product configurator pays for itself, and when it does notThe arithmetic that decides whether to build one, and the three rules that separate a configurator people finish from one they abandon.