Having a good navigation structure for your eCommerce store is key in making sure shoppers find exactly the products they’re looking for quickly and easily. By creating product categories you can create a roadmap for them to follow while shopping. Thankfully, BigCommerce makes creating and organizing product categories easy!
Below you’ll find a video of the process as well as a step-by-step instruction guide.
Let’s get started:
Step 1: Log into your BigCommerce control panel
Step 2: Go to Products > Product Categories
This screen shows you all the categories currently set up in your store along with:
- Number of products in each category
- Number of products in any sub categories
- Whether or not it’s visible in the store’s navigation menu (Red X = No, Green Check = Yes)
Step 3: Click on Create a Category
Step 4: Enter a name for your Category.
Step 5: The URL field will already be filled in by BigCommerce with a URL based on your Category name. Feel free to modify this if you feel it’s necessary.
Step 6: Use the WYSIWYG editor to provide a description of the Category. Good SEO content in this area is recommended!
Step 7: Choose whether this is going to be its own Parent Category, or whether you’re going to have it be a child residing under an existing parent.
Step 8: For the Template Layout Field, most store owners can leave this as the default unless you have created different templates for different types of pages.
Step 9: Sort Order is set at 0 but can be changed to any numerical value to control and determine the position the Category will be displayed. The lower the number the closest to the top of the list, and your navigation, the Category will appear. You can leave this as the default 0 if you’re going to organize your Categories manually on the main Category page.
Step 10: The Default Product Sort option can be used if you want products sorted on this category page differently than how you have your store’s default sort set. Options include:
Step 11: If you want to assign an image to your category, you can upload one from your computer.
Step 12: Optional SEO information can be entered into the Search Engine Optimization boxes:
- Page Title when filled in will overwrite the Name field you filled in earlier with a more SEO friendly title for your Category page.
- Meta Keywords can be added and will be included in the meta keywords tag. (Some themes do not support Meta Keywords)
- Meta Description can be added and will be included in the meta description tag. (Some themes do not support Meta Description)
- Search Keywords can be entered and are used in conjunction with the Category name to create meta tags for search engines. These keywords are also used to help shoppers when using your store’s search feature. Keywords should be comma-separated. (If you are using a 3rd party search application, Search Keywords may not be supported.)
Step 11: Click Save & Exit to create your category.
To organize the order Categories will appear in your store’s navigation and to move a Category from being a parent to a child, simply use your mouse to highlight and drag Categories on the main Product Category screen.
For more BigCommerce training videos, be sure to check out our YouTube channel.
Scott Sanfilippo began his eCommerce journey in 1994 by co-founding one of the Internet’s first online retailers, TheFerretStore.com, which was acquired by PetCo in 2006. In 2001, he co-founded the eCommerce design and marketing firm Solid Cactus, which was acquired by web.com in 2009. Today, Scott is the General Manager of Your Store Wizards and lives in Delray Beach, FL. Scott can be contacted at scott@yourstorewizards.com.