Ecommerce
The Growing Importance of Schemas in Ecommerce
22 August 2025
Schema-ing Up Success!
Author: Mike Berry
Introduction
I want to talk about Schemas – An area which many in ecommerce are vaguely aware of, but often ignored for being dry and technical.
So, what’s the big deal? Well, ecommerce is a busy place, a crowded marketplace full of vendors loudly shouting out their wares. It’s not only humans who struggle to sort the wheat from the chaff - Search engines and AI systems are flooded with product pages, reviews, articles and brand content and more, but, like humans, what they want are cold, hard facts.
Schemas, structured data annotations that describe what’s on a page, act as store-signs and product-labels, providing comparable signals machines can trust and are easy to understand above all the noise. When used well, schemas boost visibility, power richer search results, and help large language models (LLMs) better understand and recommend your brand, products & services, and even you.
Background: why easily understood, categorised data matters
A page that looks like a product page to us is just text and markup to a crawler. Structured data provides an agreed vocabulary that labels entities (Product, Offer, Review, Organization, Person, Service, etc) and their attributes (price, rating, availability, brand, important links, etc.). Search engines use structured data to help qualify content for enhanced results. LLMs use it to inform answers, reduce ambiguity, and connect facts across sources. Schemas minimise misunderstanding and therefore help establish trust, authority and context – all of which are very much of the moment in search, SEO and LLMs.
How schema helps solve the structured data problem
Schemas are exactly that - lists of defined attributes written in machine-readable formats to industry accepted standards. Currently in JSON-LD format embedded in the HTML is preferable. The JSON-LD provides a structured (consistent and comparable) set of data about your content. An example of that information might be: “This page is a Product named ‘Xxxx Widgets’, of product category ‘Useful Widgets’, belonging to Brand “Xxxx”, priced at £99.99, in stock, with 97 reviews averaging 4.6.” This reduces guesswork and enables consistent understanding of the product relative to other products crawled by search engines and LLMs.
How search engines and LLMs use schemas
Search engines: Qualify pages for rich results (price, ratings, availability), knowledge panels, merchant listings, and site links. They also reconcile entities (brand vs. retailer, product variants) and improve crawl efficiency.
LLMs: Extract trustworthy facts (e.g., service areas, products, reviews, warranties, technical specs, etc) and helps connect them to a brand’s broader knowledge graph (via sameAs, brand, manufacturer, etc). Well-structured schemas make your content easier to cite and assist in getting it integrated integrate into AI answers, alongside other signals.
Always be consistent between what is on your page and the information contained within schema mark-up. Information which is dissonant is likely to be disregarded or down weighted.
Which schemas matter most for ecommerce and services
Schema.org provides a comprehensive list of industry accepted schemas, but some are more useful for ecommerce than others. Getting a full schema strategy in place can be quite daunting, but the best way to get one in place is to get started. Start with your organisation, then your products / services, and go from there.
You will also likely find that many of the ecommerce tools and themes that you use already produce various schema on an automated basis, so you may want to start by reviewing what you have in place using the Schema.org Markup Validator.
Organization (US Spelling) / Corporation (and WebSite):
Establishes your brand identity, official logo, social profiles (sameAs), customer service contact points, etc.
Allows products, services, individuals, ratings, etc to be associated with the organisation.
Product, Offer, AggregateRating, Review:
Allows core ecommerce attributes to be accurately understood: Price, Availability, Currency, GTIN/MPN/brand, Images, Structured review data, etc.
Can result in eligibility for product rich results, higher CTR from SERPs, better feed consistency and the linkage of your product set to your knowledge graph.
BreadcrumbList:
Communicates site hierarchy and product categorisation.
Improves contextual understanding of the site. Helps build pockets of authority around themes.
FAQPage / HowTo:
Builds out the understanding of policies and informs answers to common questions for LLMs. These used to be a good way to feature in Google’s rich-results, but seem to have gone out of favour for this purpose of late.
Service:
Defines what you do, for whom, and where; supports packaged offers, pricing models, service areas and descriptions.
Whereas ecommerce retailers are now used to providing consistent sets of easily comparable product data, due to the requirements of platforms like Google Ads / Merchant Centre, service offerings often lack such consistency of definition. Providing a high-quality service schema presents the opportunity to establish understanding and authority with search engines and LLMs ahead of the pack.
Person (for founders, experts, authors, etc):
Use when an individual’s expertise is part of your proposition (thought leadership, authorship).
A high-quality E-E-A-T signal.
WebPage and Article / BlogPosting:
Contain data regarding the content of pages on the site.
Improves contextual understanding of the main focus of on-site content.
How to implement schema
You can see some simple examples of schema mark-ups below. Plus, if you view the source of this page, you should find the schema markup used on this page towards the end of the body. To get going:
Decide scope: Start with Organization & Product or Service (as appropriate). Add Reviews, Offers, and Breadcrumbs next.
Define IDs: Decide on a stable format you will use as the ID for each schema used, ensure this is used consistently, including when referencing between the different schema you have deployed – For example, use the correct Organization ID when referring to it from your Product schema.
Define the attributes you will include in each schema: Select these from the information at schema.org or use one of the schema generators listed below.
Use JSON-LD format: It’s Google’s recommended format and easy to use.
Automate generation where possible:
Shopify / BigCommerce / SFCC / Adobe Commerce: Look for theme or app-level templates that generate JSON-LD from your product data. If you don’t use themes, or the one you use lacks product schema, choose a suitable app or create scripts (see links below).
Headless: Render JSON-LD server-side with your CMS / commerce data to keep it consistent and fast.
If automation is not possible, or the amount of schema markups you are listing doesn’t justify the effort, you can easily create each markup yourself – just be sure to maintain consistency and accuracy of the attributes and variables used and comprehensive knowledge graphs to build with the various platforms.
Ensure data quality: Keep it valid, consistent, and up to date - especially price, availability, and ratings. Sync with your feeds.
Validate: Use Google’s Rich Results Test and Schema.org validator. Fix warnings, not just errors.
And then you are off – on your journey to better understanding of you, your brand, products, services and more by the machine masters of modern ecommerce.
Summary
Schemas are now a foundational element of good ecommerce practice. They help search engines show your content and help LLMs understand it. Start with Organization + Product (or Service), keep it accurate and validate it. Then consider further schemas such as reviews, FAQs, and authors. Improvements in visibility, CTR, and AI inclusion make structured data a pre-requisite for modern ecommerce.
If you need help with your schema mark-up, get in touch for a no-obligation chat.
Helpful references:
Schema.org: https://schema.org – Full reference site for everything schema related.
Technical SEO’s generator: https://technicalseo.com/tools/schema-markup-generator/ - Helps easily create some common schemas, such as Organization, Product, etc.
Schemantra: https://schemantra.com/schema_list/Service#schemantra1 – Not quite as user-friendly, but helps create a Service schema structure.
Shopify Community Article on implementing Product schema where it is not a default element of your theme: https://community.shopify.com/t/how-can-i-effectively-implement-product-schema-for-better-seo-visibility/83053/3
Google Rich Results Test: https://search.google.com/test/rich-results
Schema.org Validator: https://validator.schema.org/
Short Schema Examples:
The following short examples do not include all possible attributes within each schema. Lists of attributes are available from schema.org. Additional attributes can be added as extra lines within the script, and the ordering does not matter.
Please note the following examples have removed the script tags <> to open and close each block, to prevent it being parsed and stored as actual schema mark-up when crawled.
Organization (include on the Homepage, About Us page):
script type="application/ld+json"
{
"@context":"https://schema.org",
"@id": "https://www.example.com/#organization",
"@type":"Organization",
"name":"Your Brand",
"url":"https://www.example.com",
"logo":"https://www.example.com/assets/logo.png",
"sameAs":["https://www.linkedin.com/company/brandname","https://x.com/brandname"],
"contactPoint":[{"@type":"ContactPoint","contactType":"customer service","telephone":"+44-0000-000000","areaServed":"GB"}]
}
/script
Product:
script type="application/ld+json"
{
"@context":"https://schema.org",
"@type":"Product",
"@id":"https://www.example.com/p/Xxxx-widget#product",
"name":"Xxxx Widget",
"image":["https://www.example.com/p/Xxxx-widget.webp"],
"sku":"WID-123",
"brand":{"@type":"Brand","name":"Xxxx", "@id": "https://www.example.com/#organization"},
“offers":{"@type":"Offer","priceCurrency":"GBP","price":"99.99","availability":"https://schema.org/InStock","url":"https://www.example.com/p/Xxxx-widget"},
"aggregateRating":{"@type":"AggregateRating","ratingValue":"4.6","reviewCount":"243"}
}
/script
Service (for agencies/service providers):
script type="application/ld+json"
{
"@context":"https://schema.org",
"@type":"Service",
"@id":"https://www.example.com/services/xxxx#service",
"serviceType":"Xxxx Service",
“provider":{"@type":"Organization","name":"YourBrand",”@id":"https://www.example.com/#organization"},
“serviceArea":{"@type":"AdministrativeArea","name":"United Kingdom"},
"description":"Description of the service."
}
/script
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