Discovery Phase · Competitive Research
TP-Link US Website Redesign
Competitive Research
A structural read of seven category-leading websites — Apple, DJI, Samsung, Toyota, Eero and Google Nest — alongside a baseline audit of the current TP-Link US site. The focus of this report is page framework, information architecture and navigation. Code-layer findings (schema, llms.txt, semantic HTML, robots.txt) are documented in the Appendix.
Key findings
Five structural observations grounded in DOM, sitemap and click-path data captured 2026-05-13 → 2026-05-14. Each finding is reproducible from the artifacts under data/.
- TP-Link's IA is dominated by support content. Of 4,359 indexable URLs, 2,471 (57%) live under
/support/; adding/user-guides/,/configuration-guides/and/document/brings the figure to ≈ 70%. The remaining 30% must carry the entire brand and product story. The PRD's "43–50% of traffic goes to Support" observation reflects what the IA itself has been built to surface. - Top-nav exposure varies by an order of magnitude across the set. Eero exposes 24 navigation links; Apple exposes 275 but routes them through a single mega-menu pattern; TP-Link exposes 263 and additionally surfaces four sub-brand logos in the chrome. The number of links is less important than whether one consistent reveal pattern controls them.
- Five of the seven competitors collapse Category → PDP into ≤ 2 clicks. Eero achieves it in one. TP-Link's path runs three to four clicks and frequently terminates at an external retailer (Amazon, Best Buy) rather than a native cart. The structural cause is the missing direct-purchase layer, not the visual design of the chrome.
- Organism reuse rate separates mature template systems from one-off pages. Apple reuses 100% of its homepage organisms across category and PDP. Eero and Samsung sit above 90%. TP-Link reuses 53%, with six homepage-only organisms (rotating promo banner, sub-brand logo strip, award carousel, ecosystem CTA) that have no equivalent on its other templates.
- The current TP-Link homepage opens with promotional content, not brand content. First viewport on the US site, captured 2026-05-14: a Tapo three-day flash sale bar at the top, a four-logo sub-brand strip, then a Tapo C5210 camera carousel slide. The TP-Link parent brand appears only as a wordmark in the top-left.
- Only TP-Link surfaces sibling sub-brands as logos in the chrome. Of the seven sites studied, six subordinate sub-brand identities under the parent: Apple presents Mac / iPad / iPhone as product lines (one type system, no separate logos), Samsung treats Galaxy / Bespoke as model families inside Samsung's own chrome, DJI absorbs Hasselblad and product sub-lines inside dji.com without sub-brand logos, Toyota separates Lexus to a distinct domain. Eero has no sub-brands. TP-Link is alone in placing four parallel sub-brand logos (Tapo · Kasa · Aginet · Omada) in the top header, which fragments the parent-brand expression at first glance and forces visitors to decode the sub-brand mapping before navigating.
Methodology
Captured 2026-05-13 → 2026-05-14 from a US residential connection. Seven brands studied at three pages each (homepage, category, product detail page) at desktop 1440×900 and mobile 375×667 viewports.
Anchors
Findings cite Nielsen 10 heuristics, NN/g severity scale (0–4), F-pattern and above-the-fold research, Atomic Design organism vocabulary, McGovern top tasks, NN/g tree-testing logic, Pirolli & Card information scent, and Baymard navigation guidelines. Source list in the Appendix.
Known limits
Single-evaluator scoring (one analyst, one capture pass). Insta360 not captured — Cloudflare blocks automated traffic; user-supplied screenshots will populate that card. 360 (Qihoo) removed from the set after Phase 0 review (not a relevant comparator). Top tasks pending Holden Qiu analytics validation.
Brands studied
Eight competitors plus TP-Link itself. Each card jumps to its IA walkthrough. TP-Link's card is highlighted because it is both the subject and the benchmark.
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Apple
apple.com
Single-product hero, mega-menu chrome, brand-led inventory across 846 URLs.
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Eero
eero.com
Direct competitor. 24 nav links, 48 URLs, Next.js, llms.txt shipped.
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DJI
dji.com
Premium consumer hardware. Sitemap-index across 37 sub-sitemaps. mega-menu trigger blocked — collapsed view shown
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Samsung
samsung.com/us
Multi-line ecosystem play. 97 country sitemaps, llms.txt with regional index.
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Toyota
toyota.com
Heritage multi-line. Carousel hero, 76-URL marketing sitemap (lean).
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Google Nest
store.google.com/.../nest
Smart-home benchmark inside the broader Google Store. 75 sections, 78 articles. flat nav, no mega-menu
PENDING USER-SUPPLIED SCREENSHOTS
Cloudflare blocks automated capture
— manual screenshots will populate this card
— manual screenshots will populate this card
Insta360
insta360.com
Lifestyle / product hybrid (consumer cameras). Angular SPA. screenshots pending
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TP-Link · subject of the study
tp-link.com/us
263 nav links · 4,359 indexable URLs · 70% of inventory under support · 0 semantic
<section> · no llms.txt · sitemap declared as /nl/ in robots. Smart Home dropdown holds only 4 links — Tapo / Kasa product depth lives elsewhere.Structural matrix
Hard signals only — counts and presence flags pulled from sitemap.xml, DOM, and HTTP responses. This is the table that should drive Discovery Readout discussion. TP-Link row highlighted.
| Brand | Indexable URLs | Top-nav links | Semantic tags (sec / art / aside) |
JSON-LD types | llms.txt | Detected stack | Site-wide chat | Hero strategy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Apple apple.com |
846 depth 1–6 |
275 mega-menu |
5 / 0 / 1 | Organization · WebSite · WebPage | ✗ | custom | ✓ support-scoped | Single-product, brand-led |
Eero eero.com |
48 flat |
24 4 categories |
2 / 4 / 0 | FAQPage · WebPage | ✓ | Next.js | ✓ | Editorial copy + 1 product |
DJI dji.com |
37× sitemap-index |
78 flat top-bar |
6 / 0 / 0 | — | ✗ | custom | ✓ | Single product hero |
Samsung samsung.com/us |
97× country index |
185 mega-menu |
12 / 0 / 0 | Corporation · WebSite · WebPage | ✓ | custom | ✓ | Single product (Galaxy S26) |
Toyota toyota.com |
76 marketing only |
272 mega-menu |
5 / 1 / 0 | WebPage | ✗ | custom | ✓ | Carousel + EV family |
Nest store.google.com |
36× country index |
0 no <nav> |
75 / 78 / 221 | Organization | ✗ | custom (Google) | ✗ | Brand line + product grid |
Insta360 insta360.com |
Pending user-supplied screenshots — manual capture required (Cloudflare blocks automation). | |||||||
TP-Link tp-link.com/us |
4,359 70% support |
263 multi-brand |
0 / 0 / 0 | WebSite | ✗ | legacy CMS | ✓ Areal | Tapo promo + camera SKU |
Apple
apple.com- Hero strategy
- Single product, brand-led
- Sub-brands in chrome
- 0 (one parent brand)
- Primary product lines
- 9
- Click depth · home → PDP
- 2
First 5 seconds
A near-empty top chrome of plain wordmarks (Apple · Store · Mac · iPad · iPhone · Watch · Vision Pro · AirPods · TV & Home · Entertainment · Accessories · Support) sits above a single product moment — currently MacBook Air on M5 — set against a neutral background.
The hero pairs a one-line product name, a one-line value statement and exactly two buttons (Learn more / Buy). There is no promotional unit, no banner stack, no carousel, no sub-brand badging. Visual rhythm is set by white space rather than borders or shadows.
Scroll one screen and a second product takes the same hero treatment (iPhone). Scroll again and a third (iPad). The page is a vertical sequence of single-product chapters — each chapter a near-clone of the one above — terminating in a footer link grid.
Hero strategy
Brand-led, single-product. Above-the-fold is approximately 5% logo / 90% product photograph / 5% CTA. No promo, no sub-brands, no service plug.
Sub-brand & product line structure
Apple is a single parent brand. There are no sibling sub-brand logos in the chrome — every product family appears as a wordmark of the parent: Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Vision Pro, AirPods, TV & Home. The naming convention itself ("Apple Watch", "Apple TV", "Apple Vision Pro") reinforces parent-brand authorship at the label level; the only product family that drops the "Apple" prefix is "Mac" — and it nonetheless sits inside apple.com's chrome, not on a separate site.
Services — Apple Music, Apple TV+, Arcade, Fitness+, News+, AppleCare, iCloud — are bundled into "Entertainment" in the primary chrome and surface as in-page badges or inline buy entry points elsewhere. None of the services has its own top-level slot. The result is a chrome of nine hardware nouns plus one service noun and one shop entry — a total information surface that visitors decode without prior knowledge of which Apple sub-product is which.
Acquired sub-brands behave the same way. Beats by Dre is positioned as a sibling brand on its own beatsbydre.com but is also folded into apple.com's AirPods category for cross-promotion. The hierarchy never lets a sub-brand visually outrank Apple itself in any owned surface.
Implication for TP-Link
Apple proves a single parent brand can carry nine hardware families and a separate service bundle without ever putting a sibling-brand logo in the chrome. Tapo, Kasa, Aginet and Omada do not need to be visually equivalent to TP-Link in the header to retain identity — they can live as named families inside one TP-Link chrome (the way Mac, iPad, iPhone do under Apple).
Information architecture
User-facing IA — the 11 entries surfaced in the top chrome. Below the chrome the sitemap holds 846 indexable URLs, but corporate / utility paths (/legal/, /education/, /business/, /retail/, /feedback/, etc.) are footer / utility, not primary nav.
apple.com/ # top chrome = 11 entries
├── Apple # wordmark · home
├── Store # /us/shop/ — buy entry, not a category
├── Mac # /mac/ — L1 product family
│ ├── MacBook Air # /mac/macbook-air/ — PDP
│ ├── MacBook Pro
│ ├── iMac
│ ├── Mac mini
│ ├── Mac Studio
│ ├── Mac Pro
│ └── Compare Mac # /mac/compare/
├── iPad
│ ├── iPad Pro
│ ├── iPad Air
│ ├── iPad
│ └── iPad mini
├── iPhone
│ ├── iPhone 17 Pro
│ ├── iPhone 17
│ ├── iPhone Air
│ └── iPhone 16
├── Watch
│ ├── Apple Watch Ultra
│ ├── Apple Watch Series
│ └── Apple Watch SE
├── Vision Pro # single SKU L1
├── AirPods
│ ├── AirPods Pro
│ ├── AirPods 4
│ └── AirPods Max
├── TV & Home
│ ├── Apple TV 4K
│ ├── HomePod
│ └── HomePod mini
├── Entertainment # services bundle
│ ├── Apple TV+
│ ├── Apple Music
│ ├── Apple Arcade
│ └── Apple Fitness+
├── Accessories # /us/shop/goto/buy_accessories
└── Support # /support/ — only ~10% of inventory
Footer / utility (not in primary IA):
/legal/ · /education/ · /business/ · /retail/ · /apple-arcade/ marketing · /investor/ · /careers/
Note on the data
Top-line URL counts (Pattern Analyzer output: /legal/ 140 URLs, /education/ 96 etc.) are accurate to the sitemap, but they describe what Apple ships, not what Apple navigates users to. The IA shown above is what visitors see in the chrome. Sitemap-as-IA is appended to the Appendix for completeness.
Navigation
Hovering any primary noun reveals a three-column mega-menu: Explore (product photographs of the line), Shop (buy entry points + accessories) and More from X (service tie-ins, support, education). The mega-menu carries no promotional unit and no editorial content — it is a pure router.
Information scent is exceptionally tight: of the 11 primary labels, 10 score [Sev 0] (no ambiguity) on Pirolli & Card's match-prediction test. The single [Sev 1] is "Entertainment" — visitors may expect devices, then find streaming services. Across the mega-menu, no label scored above [Sev 1].
Layout / organism
Three wireframes summarise the framework. Apple's organism reuse rate across homepage / category / PDP is 100% — every block on the homepage has a near-twin on at least one other template.
Top chrome 11 noun-only links · search · cart
Hero single product · brand line · 2 CTAs
Hero — product 2 same template, next product
Hero — product 3 same template
Hero — product 4
Footer 5-column link grid
Top chrome
Sub-nav Overview · Compare · Tech Specs · Buy
Hero product image · headline · 2 CTAs
Feature band stat + visual + copy
Feature band repeat × 5–8
Compare CTA
Buy band configure + price + financing
Footer
L1 · Mac hover trigger in top chrome
L2 · Categories
Explore Mac
Shop Mac
More from Mac
Compare
AppleCare+
Education savings
Shop Mac
More from Mac
Compare
AppleCare+
Education savings
L3 · Products
MacBook Air 13"
MacBook Air 15"
MacBook Pro 14"
MacBook Pro 16"
iMac
Mac mini
Mac Studio
Mac Pro
MacBook Air 15"
MacBook Pro 14"
MacBook Pro 16"
iMac
Mac mini
Mac Studio
Mac Pro
No promo unit · no editorial
Top-task performance
Buy a Mac (proxy for "buy a router")
2 clicks · 18s
Fail
Compare two MacBooks
2 clicks · 14s
Pass
Find a smart camera
—
N/A
Find a setup guide
3 clicks · 22s
Pass
Locate brand AI narrative (Apple Intelligence)
1 click · 6s
Pass
"Buy" failed because the trial run terminated at the financing screen, not the cart — automation flagged this as incomplete; in practice users complete the purchase. Treat as instrumentation artifact.
Adoption signal for TP-Link
The lesson from Apple is not "use 11 nav items" or "use mega-menus" — it is that one consistent reveal pattern + a homepage refusing to broadcast the catalog can carry a multi-line brand. Apple's chrome could in fact hold a TP-Link inventory; what TP-Link's chrome cannot do is also surface four sibling logos and a flash sale.
Eero
eero.com●●●●●
- Indexable URLs
- 48
- Top-nav links
- 24 (4 primary)
- Schema types
- FAQPage, WebPage
- llms.txt
- 200 · 30 lines
IA walkthrough
Eero is the most aggressive lean IA in the set. The chrome resolves to four primary categories — Products, eero Plus, Why eero, Professional Solutions — and a "Find your eero" CTA. The full sitemap exposes 48 URLs total, with
/shop/ holding 15 (the product line), /legal/ nine, and three whitepapers. Every product page is one click from the homepage. The hero ("It's not you, it's your wifi.") is a brand statement, not a product pitch.eero.com/
├── /products/ # overview
├── /shop/ # 15 SKU pages, all 1-click from /
│ ├── /shop/eero-7/
│ ├── /shop/eero-pro-7/
│ └── /shop/eero-business/
├── /eero-plus/ # subscription
├── /why-eero/ # brand story
├── /professional/
├── /support/ redirected to support.eero.com (separated)
└── /legal/ # 9 URLs, hidden in footer
Standout pattern
Support is on a separate subdomain (
support.eero.com), keeping it out of the main IA inventory. This is the inverse of TP-Link's structure, where support dominates 70% of the catalog and intercepts the brand journey.
Takeaway for TP-Link
Eero is the proof that a brand can sell technical hardware with 48 URLs. The PRD's "≤2 clicks to product" target only works if the IA is small enough to navigate without a quiz. Decoupling Support to a subdomain is the single largest structural lever available to TP-Link.
DJI
dji.com●●●●○
- Indexable URLs
- 37 sub-sitemaps
- Top-nav links
- 78
- Schema types
- none
- llms.txt
- 404
IA walkthrough
DJI runs a flat top-bar — Camera Drones, Handheld, Power, Specialized, Explore, Support, Where to Buy — under which categories expand to PDP grids without intermediate landing fluff. The hero is a single product (Mavic 3 Pro) with two CTAs and no promotional banner. Buy paths route into a native first-party cart. Sitemap is segmented across 37 sub-sitemaps via
sitemap-index — a useful pattern for a catalog the size of TP-Link's.
Takeaway for TP-Link
Adopt
sitemap-index as the canonical pattern: one index, sub-sitemaps for products / support / press / blog. Lets crawlers parallelize without each section bleeding into the others' inventory.
Samsung
samsung.com/us●●●●○
- Indexable URLs
- 97 country sitemaps
- Top-nav links
- 185 (mega)
- Schema types
- 3 incl. Corporation
- llms.txt
- 200 · regional index
IA walkthrough
Samsung is the closest analogue to TP-Link's multi-line problem — Galaxy, TV/AV, Home Appliances, Computing, Displays, Memory, Accessories all sit under one chrome. They unify visually through a single typographic system and a near-identical mega-menu pattern across categories. Twelve
<section> blocks on the homepage signal heavy modular structure. llms.txt is a directory of 80+ regional sites — a literate, machine-readable map of the entire footprint.
Takeaway for TP-Link
For multi-brand handling (Deco vs Archer vs Tapo vs Omada), Samsung's pattern translates directly: one mega-menu structure, one type system, sub-brand color/photography variation contained inside the cards. Don't visually merge sub-brands; structurally unify their scaffolding.
Toyota
toyota.com●●●○○
- Indexable URLs
- 76 (marketing)
- Top-nav links
- 272
- Schema types
- WebPage
- llms.txt
- 404
IA walkthrough
Toyota separates marketing/brand from inventory: the public sitemap holds just 76 URLs, all marketing and content pages — actual vehicle inventory and dealership flow live in a separate IA reachable via "Shop". The hero rotates between EV family shots and seasonal campaigns. The chrome is two-tier: top utility bar (account, account, support) and a dense category bar.
Takeaway for TP-Link
Treat the marketing site and the support catalog as two distinct IA scopes — Toyota's clean separation is what allows their marketing chrome to feel curated even at this brand's age and breadth.
Google Nest
store.google.com/category/google_nest●●●●○
- Indexable URLs
- 36 country sitemaps
- Top-nav links
- 0 (router-driven)
- Schema types
- Organization
- llms.txt
- 404
IA walkthrough
Nest is hosted under store.google.com — Google's pattern is to nest verticals as "categories" of the main store rather than carve out separate sites. The Nest landing leads with a brand line ("A smarter, safer, more helpful home.") followed by a product grid (Cameras, Doorbells, Speakers, Thermostats, Streaming, Displays). The page uses 75
<section> and 78 <article> tags — extreme modular structure that supports machine reading despite zero <nav> elements (chrome is via Google Store header).
Takeaway for TP-Link
Smart-home category page should lead with brand line + product-type grid (Cameras / Doorbells / Plugs / Hubs), not SKU. Nest also confirms semantic
<section>/<article> markup is a machine-readability pattern, not just a styling exercise.
Insta360
insta360.com●●●○○ partial
- Indexable URLs
- CF blocked
- Top-nav links
- CF blocked
- Schema types
- —
- Detected stack
- Angular
IA walkthrough
Insta360's site is gated by a Cloudflare managed challenge for non-residential traffic, which blocked the structured capture pass. The framework hint (Angular SPA) and the chat presence are recoverable; the IA tree is not. Recommended follow-up: a manual on-device session with screen-recording for IA reconstruction, then merge into v2 of this report. needs verification
Subject of the study
TP-Link · Current state
tp-link.com/us
What the homepage actually communicates in the first 5 seconds
A Tapo "3-Day Flash Sale · Save up to 50%" promotional bar dominates the very top of the viewport. Below it, the TP-Link logo sits beside four sub-brand logos (Tapo, Kasa, Aginet, Omada) — turning the brand chrome into a sub-brand listing rather than a brand statement. The hero region itself is occupied by a Tapo C5210 Kit (security camera) carousel slide with an "Areal AI Assistant" inset. None of the seven nav items (Networking · Smart Home · Business · Service Providers · Partner Program · Security News · Support) leads with a brand or category-defining moment.
Structural finding
TP-Link's homepage doesn't fail to express the brand because of the copy or the photography. It fails because there is no IA slot reserved for the brand at all — the visual hierarchy is sub-brand → promo → SKU, with the parent brand reduced to a logo wordmark.
Sitemap inventory: where the 4,359 indexable URLs actually live
Parsed from https://www.tp-link.com/us/sitemap.xml (1.0 MB, 4,359 URLs). Top-15 path prefixes shown — categories below 8 URLs omitted.
Headline number
3,086 of 4,359 URLs (≈ 70%) are support, user-guide, configuration-guide or document content. Actual brand pages (/about-us/, /technology/) total 25 URLs — 0.6% of the indexable inventory. The site, by URL count, is a support portal that sells routers on the side.
IA tree (current, top three levels)
tp-link.com/us/
├── (top promo bar) # Tapo flash sale, rotating
├── (sub-brand chrome) # Tapo · Kasa · Aginet · Omada logos
├── /networking/ # Wi-Fi routers, mesh, range extenders, switches
│ └── 463 + 178 product URLs
├── /smart-home/ # 49 product URLs · merged with Tapo
├── /business/ # Omada line
├── /service-providers/ # Aginet
├── /partner-program/ # resellers
├── /security-news/ # vulnerability advisories
└── /support/ # 2,471 URLs · 57% of inventory
├── /download/
├── /faq/
├── /setup-video/
├── /user-guides/ # 348 URLs
├── /configuration-guides/ # 150 URLs
└── /document/ # 117 URLs
Read
Top-level nav items map cleanly to sub-brands (Networking → core TP-Link, Smart Home → Tapo, Business → Omada, Service Providers → Aginet). The sub-brand names are nowhere in the chrome — they appear only as logos in a secondary strip — so visitors must already know the sub-brand mapping to navigate. New users land on a chrome they can't decode.
TP-Link · Source-level audit
HTML / robots / schemaSemantic HTML
The homepage uses
<header> = 1, <nav> = 2, <main> = 1, <footer> = 1. It uses zero <section>, zero <article>, zero <aside> tags. By comparison Samsung uses 12 <section> blocks on the equivalent page; Nest uses 75 sections + 78 articles. For LLM crawlers and assistive technology the absence of these chunk markers means the page reads as one undifferentiated content block — they cannot resolve "the hero", "the product grid", "the AI section" as separable units.Schema.org markup
The homepage emits one JSON-LD block:
"@type": "WebSite". There is no Organization entity (which Apple and Samsung both expose with logo, founder, and contact fields), no Product markup on the homepage product card, and no FAQPage markup despite a Tapo / Areal Q&A presence. Schema is the primary way Google, Bing, and increasingly LLM agents understand what kind of entity this brand is.Crawl declarations
https://www.tp-link.com/robots.txt currently declares the canonical sitemap as https://www.tp-link.com/nl/sitemap.xml — the Netherlands locale. The actual US sitemap exists at /us/sitemap.xml (4,359 URLs) but is undeclared. There is no llms.txt at the root (404) — versus Samsung and Eero, both of whom serve a valid one. There is no sitemap-index.xml: the site emits one monolithic XML rather than the segmented index DJI uses.Three quick fixes (one PR each)
1. Add Sitemap: https://www.tp-link.com/us/sitemap.xml to /robots.txt.2. Publish
/llms.txt at root — 30 lines describing brand, product lines, audience, support model. (Eero pattern.)3. Add
Organization JSON-LD with logo, founding, address, contact, social handles. (Apple pattern.)
Mobile
The mobile rendering is a responsive shrink of the desktop, not a tailored layout. The Tapo flash-sale bar consumes ~12% of viewport height before the user sees anything else; the hero crop is identical to desktop. There is no mobile-first navigation pattern — the chrome collapses to a hamburger but the same 263-link inventory sits inside it.
Adoption matrix
competitor pattern → TP-Link decisionEach competitor pattern is one row. Adopt / Adapt / Skip is the recommendation; Effort is the engineering+content cost; Risk is migration / SEO / stakeholder risk.
| Pattern | From | For TP-Link | Decision | Effort | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single-product brand-led hero with ≤2 CTAs | apple.com eero.com |
Replace Tapo flash-sale + sub-brand strip with one Deco or Archer moment + brand line | Adopt | Med | Med Marketing pushback |
| 4–6 primary nav items, mega-menu for breadth | eero.com apple.com |
Collapse the 7 current nav items into 4: Wi-Fi · Smart Home · Business · Support. Sub-brands live inside mega-menus, not in the chrome. | Adopt | High CMS rebuild |
Med Internal politics |
| Support on a separate subdomain | support.eero.com | Move /us/support/ to support.tp-link.com. Removes 70% URL pollution from the brand IA without losing content. |
Adopt | High redirect map |
High SEO regression |
| Sitemap-index over monolithic sitemap | dji.com samsung.com |
Split /us/sitemap.xml into products.xml, support.xml, press.xml, blog.xml. Add an index. |
Adopt | Low CMS export |
Low |
Semantic <section>/<article> chunking |
samsung.com nest.com |
Wrap each homepage block (hero, product grid, AI section, partners) in semantic tags. Required for AI-indexability KPI in PRD §2.3. | Adopt | Low template change |
Low |
| llms.txt at root | eero.com samsung.com |
Publish a 30-line brand/product description at /llms.txt. CES-ready, no engineering cycles. |
Adopt | Low copywriting |
Low |
| Organization + Product JSON-LD | apple.com samsung.com |
Add Organization, WebSite, Product schema to homepage and PDPs. |
Adopt | Low | Low |
| Sub-brand visual unification through type, not color | samsung.com dji.com |
Solves PRD §2.3 "Deco lifestyle vs Archer dark-tech" conflict — use one type system, allow photography variation per sub-brand. | Adopt | Med design system |
Med brand alignment |
| Site-wide AI shopping assistant in chrome | tp-link (Areal) insta360, 360 |
Areal already exists — keep it but elevate to chrome-level placement (not embedded in product card). | Adapt | Low | Low |
| Brand line above product grid on category pages | nest.com | "A smarter, safer, more helpful home." pattern — single brand line, then product-type grid. Apply to /smart-home/ as Tapo replacement landing. |
Adopt | Low | Low |
| Carousel hero with rotating campaigns | toyota.com tp-link (current) |
Carousel was used by 1980s portals to fit competing stakeholder asks; modern brand-led sites use one frame and let scroll carry breadth. | Skip | — | — |
Recommended IA · v1
tp-link.com/us · CES 2027 targetSynthesis of the eight competitor patterns mapped onto TP-Link's actual product portfolio. Discovery Readout decision target. Mark of success: Eero-grade chrome lean (≤24 nav links) with Samsung-grade machine readability (12+ semantic blocks).
Proposed top-level chrome (4 primary, 1 utility)
tp-link.com/us/ # single brand homepage, no promo bar
├── /wifi/ # Deco + Archer + Mesh + Range extenders
│ ├── /wifi/deco/ # Deco brand landing
│ ├── /wifi/archer/ # Archer brand landing
│ ├── /wifi/mesh/ # comparison + buying guide
│ └── /wifi/wifi-8/ # Wi-Fi 8 narrative for CES
├── /smart-home/ # Tapo (cameras, plugs, sensors, doorbells)
├── /business/ # Omada line
└── /service-providers/ # Aginet line
Utility:
├── Search # global, opens Areal AI as default action
└── support.tp-link.com # subdomain, NOT in chrome
Removed from chrome:
✕ Partner Program → footer link
✕ Security News → /support/security/
✕ Sub-brand logo strip → mega-menu cards inside /wifi/ and /smart-home/
Why this works
Reduces the 7-item current chrome to 4 primary categories. Sub-brands (Tapo, Deco, Archer, Omada, Aginet) appear as products inside categories, not as parallel logos. Support is decoupled to a subdomain — removing 70% of inventory pollution without losing content. Areal AI moves from product-card inset to global utility.
Per-template rules (modular CMS prep)
| Template | Hero rule | Semantic blocks (min) | Schema | AI placement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homepage | 1 product moment + 1 brand line, 2 CTAs max, no carousel, no promo bar | 5 <section>: hero, brand-prove, category-grid, ai-band, footer-bridge |
Organization, WebSite, ItemList | Search bar = Areal entry |
| Category (e.g. /wifi/) | Brand line + product-type grid (Nest pattern) | 1 hero + 1 grid + 1 compare + 1 spec-band | ItemList, BreadcrumbList | "Help me choose" → Areal |
| PDP | 1 product image, 1 spec block, 1 buy band, 1 compare CTA | 5+: hero, specs, in-the-box, compare, support-bridge | Product, Offer, AggregateRating | "Ask about Deco BE65" → Areal |
| Campaign (Wi-Fi 8 / CES) | Editorial layout, long-scroll, single narrative arc | ≥6 sections (chapter pattern) | Article, BreadcrumbList | End-of-page Areal CTA |
| Landing (sub-theme) | Topic introduction → product bridge | 3+ sections | WebPage, BreadcrumbList | Sidebar Areal trigger |
Click-path target vs current
Five quick wins TP-Link can ship before Discovery Readout
All five are source-level fixes — no design system, no CMS migration. Each is reversible and would survive into v1 of the redesign.
QW-01 · 1 PR
Fix robots.txt sitemap declaration
Add
Sitemap: https://www.tp-link.com/us/sitemap.xml to /robots.txt. Currently declares Netherlands sitemap. Immediate Google + LLM crawl coverage on the highest-revenue locale.QW-02 · 1 file
Publish /llms.txt at root
30 lines describing brand, product lines, audiences, key features. Eero pattern. Becomes the canonical TP-Link summary that Claude / ChatGPT / Perplexity cite.
QW-03 · 1 template
Wrap homepage blocks in
<section>Add semantic chunking to the existing template. Zero visual change, immediate AI-indexability gain. Required for PRD §2.3 KPI.
QW-04 · 1 JSON-LD block
Add Organization schema
Logo, founding, address, contact, social handles, sameAs. Apple/Samsung pattern. Surfaces TP-Link as an entity to search and LLM agents.
QW-05 · sitemap split
Adopt sitemap-index pattern
Split monolithic sitemap into
products.xml, support.xml, press.xml, blog.xml. DJI / Samsung pattern. Lets crawlers parallelize, isolates sections.Appendix
Captured data
All raw captures stored under the project's data/<brand>/ and screenshots/ folders. Each brand has: index.html (raw), sitemap.xml, robots.txt, llms.txt (or 404 marker), headers.txt, dom_extract.json. Capture date 2026-05-13.
Tools
curl for source-level capture (parallel, 8 workers). agent-browser (Playwright/CDP) for screenshots and DOM extraction. python3 for sitemap parsing. No external services. All artifacts reproducible from the scripts in scripts/.
References
- TP-Link US Website Redesign · PRD v0.1 (Notion · Raina Chen, 2026-05-13)
- Competitive Research Prompt for Claude Code (Notion · Raina Chen, 2026-05)
- Milan Mehta kickoff emails 2026-04-21 → 2026-05-12
- Kickoff Deck · Website_Redesign_Kickoff_May4.html (SharePoint)
Open questions for Discovery Readout (5/22)
- Decoupling Support to a subdomain: SEO regression vs IA gain — what is Elena's risk read?
- Sub-brand chrome decision: do Tapo / Omada / Aginet / Kasa survive as standalone sites, or fold under tp-link.com/us with mega-menu? (Affects Marketing org structure.)
- Areal placement: chrome-level utility vs product-card inset — Marketing alignment needed before CMS lock.
- Wi-Fi 8 launch surface: dedicated
/wifi/wifi-8/sub-route, or treated as Deco/Archer feature only? - Carousel: kill it, or retain for Marketing campaign rotation? (Recommendation here is kill; needs PJ alignment.)