Tags for Sub-categories. Really?
I'm still trying to get my head around the lack of sub categories. If I sell alcohol online for example, I would have in my main menu things like Champagne, wine, whisky, beer. Presumably these would be Collections? Within these I would want subcategories e.g. red wine, white wine, rose wine etc.
If I use Product Tags to set these up I don't get any SEO landing page i.e. if I essentially filter by the tag for my "subcategory" the page title / copy won't change to accommodate what is now on the page.
Looking at the example sites from Shopify I see http://www.goodasgold.co.nz/ uses lots of Collections e.g. Men's is a collection > Men's Denim is a collection > Men's Straight Jeans is a collection...
Looking at http://www.49thparallelroasters.com/pages/shop they use Pages to act as a top level category for Coffee and Tea with collections as sub categories.
So, given the above and the requirement to have at least two levels of category navigation, and the ability to use sub categories as optimized landing pages, what would be the Shopify approach? Are there downsides to the examples above?
Thanks
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I would really value a reply, as I don't want to go down the wrong path in my setup. Thank you.
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Hi Ted,
There's one downside to using collections for sub-categories: you'll have a somewhat hard time coding your breadcrumb navigation.
If you have gone down the path of using tags for your sub-categories, when you create your sub-category collections, make them smart and use a condition on the tag.
Say, you have Wine as main category and you wish to have Red Wine as sub-category.
You'll have a Wine collection, ideally smart, using:
Then you'll create a collection called Red Wine, using these 2 conditions:
Then it's a matter of presenting all your collections in a clear-enough fashion.
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Is it fair to say the above example fails to achieve the most basic of SEO requirements e.g. Keyword in page title and h1 tag for the red wine landing page, thanks to the use of tags?
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The best answer I have for this is: use Magento. It's a PITA to code for and takes a bit of getting used to, but I manage a few different e-commerce sites running multiple back-ends - Magento handles this easily but Shopify has no good answer.
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Was there ever any response on this? Is it in the pipeline for Shopify to fix?
Seems quite ridiculous that this isn't an available option.
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Has anyone figured a way around this?
I can't believe there isn't a dedicated sub-collection (category) page, where I can input all the vital SEO information.
Surely, this is one of the most basic fundamentals of an e-commerce website?
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posted the same in another thread. Looks like there is no solution to this on Shopify.
I would like to know about this too.
Currently working on women's collection in which I would like categorization as
Currently I have to put those sub categories as main categories and it will create problems for me because
1. I plan to add men's collection later on.
2. Number of Main categories will be too high as I add more products.
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Shopify can you get this fixed pronto before I leave and move to another competitor. Absolutely ridiculous this hasn't been addressed yet.
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I completely agree, this needs to be addressed. I know a lot of people that struggle with this and it's an absolute must. Maybe we should really push them to implement this feature. Maybe create some form of group and keep pestering them?
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Just chiming in and putting in a request with all the others. Really would like sub categories, specifically like BH Photo Video homepage. Their usability is fantastic because of the ability to have subs.
I have a few friends who would consider switching to Shopify if this happened - we've specifically talked about the lack of this support.
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I couldn't agree more. Apart from Sub-category issue, I noticed that Shopify doesn't support critical features such as layered navigation and infinite scrolling out of the box. Made my case here on this thread - https://ecommerce.shopify.com/c/ecommerce-discussion/t/layered-navigation-sub-sub-categories-infinite-scrolling-where-how-seriously-195960
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I'll keep my thumbs up for sub-collections. That's really saves a lot of time. For now I see that the most of clients just create tons of collections and manage them(put under sub-menus) manually.
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I've got to agree. This seems like a basic function that needs to be added asap
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Yes to all of this, it's needed.
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As a person who's been making ecommerce sites for the past 10+ years, and who just setup a large shopify install with ~2000 items, I as well had a very hard time trying to figure out how to organize my products properly in shopify.
I personally decided to do it with tagging, then created a bunch of dynamic collections. Then a bunch of linked lists. Benefit of this, is I could duplicate products in multiple categories (adding Unisex pants to both Mens Pants & Womens Pants for instance)
It's a stupid solution and fairly difficult to maintain with the amount of products we add every day...but most flexible I believe. Coming from Drupal, I feel shopify needs to take a look at a proper taxonomy organization which is flexible and allow users to categorize their site in a robust way.
The other major issue I have with shopify is the lack of proper faceted search as well. This is probably also because the lack of a proper taxonomy on their end. The amount of BS you need to deal with in shopify to make your theme have a 1/2 assed faceted search is pretty large. This has been pretty standard in browsing products in ecommerce for years now and I have a pretty hard time dealing with the lame filtering of products shopify has.
I'll personally probably start evaluating other ecommerce platforms in the future and will probably switch my stores over when I have some time.
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Seeing as we don't seem to be getting any response here I've been thinking about writing an open letter and posting it on https://news.ycombinator.com/ to get some publicity.
I'd at least like to know if this will be a feature that is in the pipeline.. if it's not I will have to move one of my stores.
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Yeah it is a PITA. My store has sub categories in literally every category, so my navigation section/link lists is a mess. Shopify can be very simple and clean, if you keep your store small and simple, and I think that is what they intended when designing it.
But for shops like mine with a lot of products, the admin can get messy....
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I know of a bunch of stores I could move to Shopify if sub-collections were included. From a programming perspective, infinite sub-collection depth can be a pain (they require recursive functions) but I'd be over the moon with just 2 tiers of sub collection and that's very easy to program.
While I understand that there are way around the sub-collection restriction, there shouldn't need to be. I also note that the most common work around (using Tags) is specifically marked as NOT SUPPORTED by Shopify: http://docs.shopify.com/manual/configuration/store-customization/page-specific/collections/subcategories
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I thought I am too stupid to figure out how to add a sub-collection...lucky that I didn't sign up for the whole year plan. I think I better move to other e-commerce provide. Any suggestion ??
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Barely have enough market data to support proof-of-concept and enough cash flow/traction to support growth trajectory estimates, and folks are already worrying about large-scale SEO optimization and writing to Y-Combinator hacker-news? And this is apparently a big enough dealbreaker to take on the technical debt of switching platforms mid-development?
Wow.
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Hi, I am trying to do the same thing. I have a main link at my nav bar "Clothing". I want to have a drop down menu with sub categories such as "tops", "dresses", "bottoms" etc. So how do I go about creating the link sets?
So I have to assign "tags" in order for me to categorize them into my sub link sets? Can't I use the "type" which is already a feature when I am creating a product in the portal? Please advise these features like the collection, tags, types etc in the product fields, I am really confused. More help needed please..
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+1 for better support for nested sub-collections.
We have a need for "sub-sub-collections"....i.e
Books (main collection)
... Nature
... Gardening
... Kids
......PreK-K
..... Grade 1-2
......Grade 3-4
etc.
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@James: You miss the point, and your reply is off-topic.
Sub categories are a BIG DEAL.
+1 for Sub-categories. Shopify's workarounds are counter to what Shopify is all about. Not having a quick solution for this undermines Shopify's entire value prop.
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I have been using Shopify for a couple months now and have pretty much come to the conclusion that Shopify is counterproductive to having a long term sustainable business. While it's very easy to get a store up and running quickly, it just doesn't have the "basic" features pretty much every other cart has standard. The fact that you can't have your own sub categorizes with unique content for the products on that page is just crazy. Would you want to start a race with 1 leg, because I sure don't want to start a business at such a disadvantage, Bottom line if you have any long term goals for your business I suggest you start with the right cart (which is not shopify) . The simple fact that nobody from Shopify has replied to this thread should be proof enough.
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Glad to see I wasn't the only one.
Shopify, are you listening?!
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One day into evaluating shopify and I realise no sub categories. Im done, see ya later, good luck to any idiot stupid enough to buy into shopify.
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I too will have to find an alternative solution. Shopify is on the right track though, aside from this subcategories thing, the platform seems really nice.
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Agreed. We evaluated Bigcommerce but not enough templates to get you started. Ended up selecting Prestashop and the implementation has been easy.
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I would also like to see Shopify add subcategories. The absence of multilevel navigation has been a huge stumbling block in setting up a usable storefront.
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so Shopify?? still no sub category? So it is not just the POS that has issues but the online portion as well???
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I'd also like to request this feature. It's an absolute must.
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I have come to add to the noise.
WE NEED SUB CATEGORIES!!!
This is one of the most expensive e-commerce platforms I know. Can you guys please listen to your customers?
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While we're waiting for this, I wrote an article on how I went about creating sub-collections. Let me know if you have any thoughts: http://www.mealeydev.com/blog/how-to-create-sub-collections-in-shopify/
It's easy and straightforward and I find it works well.
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I would love to move over to Shopify but this is the deal breaker for us. We have 100,000 unique SKUs and organising the lot of them is one of the most vital components for us,.