When viewing your store, customers will click on a category to view products that have been assigned to it.
You can also create subcategories, or child categories, to help guide a customer to the products they are looking for.
When you are thinking about your website’s navigation, you don’t want to overwhelm your
customers with too many categories at the top of your storefront.
Your goal should be to ensure overall navigation is easy.
This starts with simple, top level categorization that makes sense.
Next, ensure you have logical sub or child categories.
If you think you have too many categories, consider selecting a design theme with left-handed navigation.
On stencil themes, your menu display depth, which is how many levels your categories will
show in the menu, is determined by the design theme.
Let’s begin by creating some product categories.
Inside of your Contvrol Panel go to Products, then Product Categories.
If you haven’t started adding your own products and only have the theme’s demo products,
the first thing you should do is remove the sample categories.
You can select them all here, then delete.
Please note that deleting a category will delete all products in it unless they are
already assigned to another category or you reassign it to a new one.
There is no way to retrieve deleted products unless you have backed up your store.
Search for how to back up you store in the support portal to learn more.
Once you are ready to create a new category, click here.
Give it a simple and straightforward name so when potential customers arrive they can
figure out where to go.
The URL will auto-populate and is search engine friendly.
Next, provide a description.
You can highlight information that will be relevant to your potential customers like
the features and brands of the products that will be in this category.
Although not every design theme will make this description visible to your customers,
it will help your SEO.
If you would like to edit the look and feel of the text, you may do so by using the WYSIWYG editor.
Hover over any icon to discover what it can accomplish for you.
You can change the font, colors, drop in an image or video, and so much more!
If you prefer to edit in HTML, you can access the source editor here.
If you want to change how your products are sorted within this category, you can change that here.
Otherwise, this will default to your global category settings found in Store Settings.
Finally, be sure to fill out the SEO fields with category specific information.
Click Save & Add Another to quickly create another category.
Walkthrough and enter the details.
If you want it to show on your main storefront navigation leave this set to “no parent category.”
If you want it as a subcategory, you can select the parent you would like to place it under,
and then click save & exit.
After you’ve added a few categories, you can rearrange them here.
Click and drag around to change the sort order on your storefront.
You can adjust the subcategory settings by dragging to the right or left and snapping
them under a parent.
Again, just be mindful you don’t have too many levels in your category navigation
as it gets challenging for a shopper to maneuver their way to the product they’re interested in purchasing.
To view the products assigned to a particular category, click the action icon and select products.
To disable or hide a category without deleting it and the products assigned to it, click
the green checkmark.
When it shows a red X, it has been removed from your store's menu and will not come up
if someone goes to the URL.
In case you were wondering, these links are called breadcrumbs.
Breadcrumbs provide a trail to help navigate the customer to where they are in the store.
To change if these show on your pages, go to Store Setup, then Store Settings.
Click on the display tab and here under product breadcrumbs you can change the setting.
Also, on select BigCommerce plans, you can use Customer Groups to control which customers
can see which categories.
For example, you can use customer groups to manage what your wholesale and retail customers see.
Remember that no matter what decision you are making, think about your potential customers.
The goal should always be about reducing as many obstacles as possible
to help shoppers make a purchase!