Organizing Categories

[Speeder]

I'm in a process of building an online store (where i currently don't have much experience), and I have a question about organizing categories.

 

Different people have different browsing preference. I guess the most common ones are browsing by make, browsing by product type, and by some other common product characteristic.

 

What's the best way to accomodate various browsing choices without having too much clutter and confusion?

 

Have 3 main categories (make, type1, type2) and then sub and sub categories? Or is there some kind of a dynamic method of doing it?

 

Thanks!

[Guest]

I'm in a process of building an online store (where i currently don't have much experience), and I have a question about organizing categories.

 

Different people have different browsing preference. I guess the most common ones are browsing by make, browsing by product type, and by some other common product characteristic.

 

What's the best way to accomodate various browsing choices without having too much clutter and confusion?

 

Have 3 main categories (make, type1, type2) and then sub and sub categories? Or is there some kind of a dynamic method of doing it?

 

Thanks!

Kirill,

 

It depends on your product. You use the example of a category hierarchy like make, product type, and characteristic. If I was buying something where Make was my first consideration, that makes sense. Consider auto parts or musical instruments. I want to find Honda windshield wipers or a Yamaha keyboard, so that would work for me.

 

I work on a shop that sells custom martial arts weapons. For that site, you are looking for a training knife, staff, or bokken. The product type is the first level category, then characteristics. On another site close to being launched, the products are all animal novelty road signs. The broad charactreistic, Dog Crossing or Cat Crossing, is the first level category and the specific characteristic, Dachshund or Dalmation, is the next level.

 

On top of that, I like to move the search box up to the header and make it easy to find. That way, someone who isn't looking for something in the same way the categories provide it can simply do a direct search.

 

ed