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Create and Manage Categories
Categories organize your products. This improves the navigability of your site and makes products easier for your visitors to find. The Manage Categories screen lets you create and manage your categories.
How To Use:
This "how-to" talks about the Parent-Child categorization scheme. This scheme is so-named because sub-categories are considered the children of the category of which they are a part. A top-level category is the parent of its sub-categories. Similarly, a sub-sub-category is the child of the sub-category of which it is a part. Top-level categories are your main categories. They will appear, in your side navigation and represent the main categorization of your products. All of your products will be in at least one top-level category. So...
- Under the Inventory heading, click on the Categories link. You will be redirected to a page titled manage categories.
Adding Categories
- Click on the Add A Category button
- You are now in the General tab of the Edit Category screen
- In the Name field, provide a descriptive name for your category
- Enter in a Url Name. You do not need to include the www. or “.com” portions of the url, we’ll do that for you.
- Double-check that the status is set to Enabled. When you disable a category it will not appear in your store, though you will still see it in your category list.
- Note: If you disable a child category that has products in it, they will still display under the parent category for that store. You will need to hide those products if you do not want them to appear on your storefront (you can do this from your Manage Inventory screen by clicking on the product name).
- Choose the structure for your category. If you want your category to displayed as a child category to another, highlight the appropriate parent categories in the structure table.
- Click on the Customizations tab.
- To add Meta Tag content, click on the Customize this setting check box (you’ll find it located under the description Meta Tag field).
- You will now be able to edit your Meta Tag keywords and Meta Tag descriptions. Enter in appropriate page specific content in these fields
- Under the landing page content heading click the Customize this setting check box. Add descriptive category information in this section. Site Visitors will be able to read this content when they’re viewing the page.
- Click on the final Customize this setting box should you wish to change whether or not your products display along side your category page content. By having the visible radio button selected, your products will display below this content.
- Click on the create category button. You will now be redirected back to the manage category menu.
- To edit a pre-created category, simply click into the category link under the my categories header.
Organizing Your Categories
- Click Organize Categories link
- You will be directed to the Organize Category Page.
- Use the Expand and Collapse links and buttons to view and hide your categories.
- Drag and Drop Categories to reorganize your categories and change parent/child structures
- Click Update Category Order to save your changes
Glossary:
- Meta Tags are pieces of descriptive text placed in the header of each page on your website. They provide relevant information about that page's content and can help with Search Engine Indexing. Meta Tags typically consist of Meta Tag keywords and Meta Tag descriptions.
- Meta Tag keywords are a list of descriptive words or short phrases that explain your page content. You can separate your keywords with commas. Shopster allows a maximum of 100 characters in this section.
- Meta Tag descriptions are short summaries about a webpage’s content. Shopster allows you to use 400 characters to write each Meta Tag description.
Tips & Tricks
- A note of caution: While you want to include descriptive page content, be careful not to keyword stuff. Keyword stuffing is when you overload your Meta Tags with keywords that do not pertain to that page. The goal is to feature more highly in index results, however Google and other search engines penalize websites found employing these techniques. Websites that keyword stuff are typically ranked very lowly by search engines or not at all.