Product Categories

You can group products using a category to make them easier to find and browse for shoppers.

Go to Products › Product Categories to create, organize, and manage your store's categories.

How Categories Work

A product can be assigned to multiple categories, and categories can be based on the attributes that matter the most to your customers.

Categories can only be assigned to one storefront at a time, but multiple storefronts may have the same category name and URL path—for example, wine.com/reds.

The way categories appear on your storefront depends on your store's theme. 

Managing Categories

You can use the category list to rearrange categories, see which products are assigned to them, and toggle their visibility status.

If you have several categories, use the search bar to see their assigned storefront and quickly locate them in the list.

Click on a storefront name to expand it and see its assigned categories.

• To change the order of categories, hover your mouse over the category row, then click and drag the type up or down. Drag left or right to "nest" a kind under another to make it a subcategory.
• To view the products assigned to a particular category, click ⋯ next to the type and select View products.
• To change the Visibility of a category, use the toggle under Visibility. When turned off, the class is removed from the storefront menu and cannot be accessed. Note that products in non-visible categories can still appear in other places like search results, featured products, and the New Products panel.

Creating Categories

The steps below show you how to create categories in the control panel. You can also create a class when adding or editing a product.

Go to Products › Product Categories and click Create category at the top right of the screen.

Enter a Display name for your category. If you have more than one storefront, use the Channel selector to assign this category to a storefront. The other fields are optional; see Category Settings.

Click Save when you're done.

Subcategories

A subcategory is a category that is "nested" in another category. Subcategories are sometimes called child categories, and the category they belong to is called the parent category.

There are two ways to create a subcategory:

• Create a new category and specify a Parent category.
• Click ⋯ next to the parent category from the category list, then Create a subcategory.

Category Settings

Below are the settings available when creating or editing a category:

• Display name — the category name as it appears in your store (limit of 50 characters)
• URL — the category URL path (defaults to the category name if left blank)
• Description — a WYSIWYG content editor that will appear at the top of your category page
• Channel — If you have multiple storefronts select which storefront this category belongs to. If you only have one storefront, this will be your default storefront and cannot be changed.
• Parent category — if this will be a subcategory, select the parent category
• Template layout file — the category template file
• Sort order — sets the priority in which the categories are listed; 0 is the default.
• Default product sort — set how you want products sorted within this category. You can keep the global setting from Settings › General › Display (Category Settings) or select a specific one for this category.
• Category image — select an image to appear on the category page (if supported by your theme)
• Search engine optimization — add your page title, search keywords, meta tag keywords, and meta tag descriptions to maximize your SEO impact

Additional Category Display Settings

Additional category settings can be found in Settings › General under the Display tab. We list their locations in the control panel below, briefly describing them.

Settings › General › Display tab › Display Settings

• Product Breadcrumbs — Show the category tree of a particular product as an alternative browsing method for shoppers and add structure to your store's search results. Select Don't Show to hide breadcrumb links on product pages or how One only displays the most recent category tree the product has been added to.

Settings › General › Display tab › Category Settings

• Category Product List— where products on a category page are fetched from
  • Show products from the current category only
  • Show products from child categories if the current class is empty
  • Show products from the current class and its children
• Default Product Sort— store-wide setting for the order in which products are displayed; can adjust individual courses to a different sort if desired.
  • Featured
  • Newest Items
  • Best Selling
  • Alphabetical (A-Z)
  • Alphabetical (Z-A)
  • Average customer review
  • Price (Low to High)
  • Price (High to Low)
• Menu Display Depth — controls how many levels deep your categories display in the store. Note that your theme may have additional settings associated with category display depth.

Additional settings, such as products per page for category pages, category display mode, category menu style, and menu display depth, are set using Page Builder. If your store uses a legacy Blueprint theme, see Blueprint Themes for more information about these settings.

Deleting Categories

Sometimes you may need to delete categories. Categories can only be deleted from Products › Product Categories.

Check the box to the left of the category or subcategory you wish to delete. Deleting a variety will automatically delete its subcategories.

Click the Delete button at the top of the list.

Troubleshooting Categories 

If one or more categories are not appearing on your storefront when you expect them to, there can be several potential causes:

Check Category Visibility

Go to Products › Product Categories.

Locate the categories that aren't appearing. In the case of subcategories, click the › sign to expand the parent categories until you see your class.

Make sure that the category has Visibility toggled on. Note that categories marked as not visible cannot be visited, even by navigating directly to the URL.

Refresh Category List

Sometimes the database caches categories a certain way, leading to them not appearing correctly. In this case, toggling the types can refresh the database and fix the display.

• Click and drag a category up in the category list. You will notice the Category page reload.
• Drag the category back to its original position.
• Refresh your homepage to see if the categories appear. You may need to clear your browser's cache to see the changes reflected.