755063 - URLs don't represent the information architecture

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Marketplace Graveyard :: Consumer Pages, defect)

Description

[:ibai]

URLs today don't differentiate between:
- First level categories
- Detail pages

They are: https://marketplace.mozilla.org/en-US/apps/foobar

We should represent the architecture that we want in the URL:

https://marketplace.mozilla.org/en-US/apps/productivity/asana
or at least:
https://marketplace.mozilla.org/en-US/apps/details/asana

To implement the first solution in our model (with multiple categories per app) we can generate the URL dynamically depending of the path that the users has taken.

The resolution of this bug will boost our SEO performance and simplify the web analytics analysis.

Comment 1

[Christopher Van Wiemeersch [:cvan]]

(In reply to :ibai from comment #0)
> URLs today don't differentiate between:
> - First level categories
> - Detail pages
> 
> They are: https://marketplace.mozilla.org/en-US/apps/foobar
> 
> We should represent the architecture that we want in the URL:
> 
> https://marketplace.mozilla.org/en-US/apps/productivity/asana

An app can be in up to two categories, so that might not work.

> or at least:
> https://marketplace.mozilla.org/en-US/apps/details/asana

That could work, yeah.

> To implement the first solution in our model (with multiple categories per
> app) we can generate the URL dynamically depending of the path that the
> users has taken.
> 
> The resolution of this bug will boost our SEO performance and simplify the
> web analytics analysis.

Comment 2

[:ibai]

I'm aware that an app can be in more than one category, that's why I'm suggesting that we build the URL depending of the path (if they are coming from external Search they will be pointing to one of them).

The only tricky issue is if they are coming from internal search and in that case we can promote the most popular path.

Comment 3

[Andy McKay]

I'm not sure of the advantage of adding /details/ into the URL.

Admins can change categories and and move their apps between categories. If a URL contains a category, it can break quite easily and that's not good for longevity of URLs.

Comment 4

[:ibai]

From an analysis point of view it easier to understand what is going on with the site. Today is impossible to automate anything with the URL structure that we have because it's impossible to know if we are visiting a details page or a navigation page. 

Same case for Google's spider.

Comment 5

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

The difference is already in the URL.  Listing pages are /apps/somecategory.  Detail pages are /app/someapp.  apps vs app.

Figuring our the most popular path is complicated and leads to broken URLs.  Since the difference is already in the URL, I'm going to close this.