Creating Product Category Structure

Categories are the backbone of your ecommerce site structure. They are both powerful and easy to use.

You can have an unlimited amount of categories in the system and unlimited depth of categories. However, for the best user experience, it is recommended to have no more than three levels to avoid requiring the user to delve too deeply which can negatively affect user experience on your website. If you find you would like users to have additional ways to navigate your site, you can use Filter Categories and Attributes to refine product selection.

Getting your data taxonomy correct can be tricky, but remember, it can always be updated and tweaked based on how you see your users navigating the site. Most users will start with the Search function to find those items they are interested in buying.

Product Category Concepts to Understand

• Parent Categories - any product category that has another category assigned as a child in the category structure. A category can be both a parent and a child to another category. A parent category may contain products but does not have to contain products.
• Child Categories - any product category that is connected to a parent category. They may also include Child Categories and products.

Creating Your Product Category Structure

Product categories can be used to create your site structure by creating parent/child relationships between categories. Any category can become a Parent when it is chosen as a parent in the Parent Category field of another category's set up page. A category can be both a parent and a child at the same time. The product category system is powerful to the point of having unlimited categories and unlimited categories depth and structure. However, the primary focus of designing your product category structure should be making it as easy as possible for your customers to navigate your site.

Below you can see the Category Tree overview of a selection of categories where parent/child relationships have been established. This view is helpful to check your category structure and taxonomy.

Note: inactive product categories will not show up on the category tree.

To see how the category tree appears on your website, you can look at the breadcrumbs for any specific category to see the parent and child relationship. The screenshot above shows the Ceiling Tile & Panes category as a child to the Ceilings category, which is the parent category.

You can manually create your categories and build your category structure for your site, or you can use the category import tool to quickly add many categories at once.