If you offer only a few products in your online store, your visitors will find it quick and easy to navigate. However, this changes once you have a wide range of products. In this case, categories (also known as "collections" on Shopify) are helpful for clearly organizing your products.
You can easily create and manage such categories in Shopify. In our guide, we'll show you how to do it.
Our e-commerce expert Adrian has already helped numerous brands launch on Shopify. In his book, Shopify for Dummies, he provides retailers with all the essential information they need to navigate Shopify ( view on Amazon / view at your local bookstore ).
1. How to create a new category or collection on Shopify
1.1. Fill out basic information
To create a new category in your Shopify admin, first navigate to the "Products" section. A side menu will open. Select "Categories" to access the overview. Here you'll see all the categories you've already created.
You can create a new category by clicking on the "Create category" button.
The input mask that now opens is probably already familiar to you from creating products and follows a similar structure:
- Title: Here you specify the name of your category.
- Description: Add a short description if you want to provide information about the products in this category. This is also useful for search engine optimization.
- Image: You can upload an image that will be displayed in the category overview or as a banner at the top of the category page. Please note that only one image can be assigned to each category.
Don't forget to assign appropriate products to the new collection to complete the process. You have two options for this: manual assignment and rule-based assignment.
1.2. Assign products manually
To manually assign products to a category, select "Manual" under "Category Type." After saving this setting, you can individually select the products from your product catalog that you want to display in this category. You can add or remove products at any time.
When creating new products, remember to assign them to the appropriate categories. Our recommendation is: For a small product portfolio, manual assignment is often more practical, while for a larger product range, automated rules may be more useful.
We'll show you everything you need to know about creating products in Shopify in our guide.
1.3. Assign products based on rules
With rule-based category assignment, product assignment is automated based on specific rules. As soon as a product meets your specified rule, Shopify adds it to the category without any additional effort. As soon as you change the product's property that is relevant to the rule, it is automatically removed from the category.
Shopify offers you numerous options for defining rules, including:
- Product title
- Product type
- Product category
- Product provider
- Product tag
- Price
- Comparison price
- Weight
- Inventory
- Title of the variant
Products are assigned to the respective category based on whether they contain, do not contain, or match a specific value or term. A combination of several rules also works.
The most proven method is to assign products to categories using product tags in Shopify . In our blog post, we cover this in more detail and explain everything you need to know.
2. Arrange products within a category
From our agency experience, we know that the order in which products are arranged within a category page can significantly influence the purchase decision. Therefore, it's important to consider which products are displayed first. You can control the order directly through the Shopify admin.
The following options are available to you:
- Bestselling
- Product title (AZ)
- Product title (ZA)
- Highest price
- Lowest price
- Latest
- Oldest
- Manually
There's no one-size-fits-all method for arranging your products. The arrangement of products in your online store can vary greatly depending on your target audience and sales strategy.
For example, a fashion brand might want to display the newest products within a collection first to highlight trends. A bookstore, on the other hand, might benefit from alphabetical sorting by author's name to make it easier for customers to find specific works. An electronics store, on the other hand, might present the most expensive items first to convey a high-quality image. Conversely, displaying the cheapest products first can attract price-conscious shoppers.
Such adjustments help you optimize the shopping experience and tailor it specifically to your desired customer segment.
3. Publish categories
As with products, you can control the visibility of your categories and display them selectively on different sales channels. If you want to showcase certain categories exclusively in your online store without sharing them on platforms like Google Shopping or Instagram, this is easy to manage.
To do this, navigate to the "Publications" section at the top of the page. There, you can decide whether a category should be shown or not for each channel individually by simply checking or unchecking a box. This lets you specify exactly where your products will be shown.
In this video, Adrian walks you through the entire process of creating categories. This clip is part of the VisualMakers Masterclass , which teaches you everything you need to get started successfully with Shopify.
4. Advanced Settings
4.1. Optimize categories for search engines
Findability in search engines like Google is also crucial for your categories. Shopify offers you special optimization settings when creating a category to help it be found and positioned more easily. You can directly store the following search engine information to increase visibility:
- Page title: Here you specify which title is displayed in search engine results.
- Meta description: This is a short text of a maximum of 320 characters that appears below the page title and contributes significantly to optimizing your ranking.
- URL Handle: If you want to change the last part of your category page's URL, you can do so here. Shopify assigns the category name as the URL handle by default, but offers the option to change this and automatically suggests setting up a redirect from the old to the new URL to avoid visitors getting lost.
4.2. Assign template
Just like with products and pages, you can also define a unique design for each category, which is called a template in Shopify. To assign a specific category page template to your category, you must first create it in the Theme Editor.
By default, all newly created categories receive the default category page template. If you want to make general changes to the structure and appearance of the category pages, you can customize this in the "Default Category" template in the Theme Editor.
You can get more insights into Shopify’s Theme Editor in our guide.
4.3. Using metafields
You can also store additional information for categories beyond the standard fields. Meta fields are ideal for this, allowing you to store any amount of additional data for a category. Existing meta fields are usually displayed at the bottom of the page.
If you want to add new metafields to your category, you can do so in Shopify's general settings. These are stored across all stores in the Settings -> Custom Data section. There you'll find the "Add Definition" option. Once you've created a new metafield here, it will be listed in your category creation area and ready for use.
You can learn more about metafields and dynamic sources in our guide.
