Categories and Parent Categories - Design Question

[musicforkids]

This is a design question about organizing product.
I'm trying to find a nice way to display products in Parent Categories when I have them subdivided into separate categories from the parent.
Example: Guitars>acoustic>electric>>guitar packages

Asking for advice on what to put in the Parent Category? Put all guitars in Parent Category and have customers click on category bar on Left side to further sort OR put links to each category in the Parent Category Header Field.

In the following example I only put the links to each category in the Parent Category. What ya think?

Here's an example: http://www.musicforkids.com/Merchant...ry_Code=guitar

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks - Gary

https://www.musicforkids.com

[blubbert]

Re: Categories and Parent Categories - Design Question

I would love some guidance on this as well.

We are in the midst of moving to Miva 5 from our miva 4 store. Our thoughts would be to put all the products in the parent categories as well since the categories can now be sorted by price, best-sellers etc.

However, we would love some guidance on this.

[nottheusual1]

Re: Categories and Parent Categories - Design Question

Take a look at how some of the most successful Web properties do it:

https://www.bestbuy.com

We use the parent category to show featured/best sellers from the children or in case of a name brand to pitch the brand and then highlight the "variety" of their products we sell (children) or show overall best seller (using custom category fields).

Think of it as an opportunity to help the customer gain some focus.

[musicforkids]

Re: Categories and Parent Categories - Design Question

I like the idea of showing the overall best seller.

[musicforkids]

Re: Categories and Parent Categories - Design Question

How would one go about organizing products by brand? I sell musical instruments. I have categories for guitars, electric guitars, guitars packages and so on. Miva 5 has the sort feature which can further sort by price, best selling etc. But I would like to sort further - Fender, Pearl, Dean, etc.
It seems I would have to have many more Parent Categories. So instead of having parent category of GUITARS and breaking that down to GUITAR PACKS>ACOUSTIC>ELECTRIC and so on....would I have GUITAR PACKS>ACOUSTIC>ELECTRIC as Parent categories and then break those down to sub categories by brand? Seems very labor intensive and also WAY too many categories on my left side bar.
Help!?
Thanks!
Gary

[Datagg]

Re: Categories and Parent Categories - Design Question

How would one go about organizing products by brand? I sell musical instruments. I have categories for guitars, electric guitars, guitars packages and so on. Miva 5 has the sort feature which can further sort by price, best selling etc. But I would like to sort further - Fender, Pearl, Dean, etc.
It seems I would have to have many more Parent Categories. So instead of having parent category of GUITARS and breaking that down to GUITAR PACKS>ACOUSTIC>ELECTRIC and so on....would I have GUITAR PACKS>ACOUSTIC>ELECTRIC as Parent categories and then break those down to sub categories by brand? Seems very labor intensive and also WAY too many categories on my left side bar.
Help!?
Thanks!
Gary

Hi Gary, we do it like this... http://www.girlfriendslingerie.com/sexy-costumes.html - By using Bills Toolkit, we show all the subs in a narrow selection area.. There are many ways, yet i have been using this method for quite some time....

On a side note, seeing your Best Buy example i see there images use the "Title" in the IMG string.... is that something that should be done cause last i heard people were abusing them so much they ceased to be of any benefit.... hence I left that area alone. Should we re-look at that option as viable, or not?

[musicforkids]

Re: Categories and Parent Categories - Design Question

Hi Dan,
I like having all subs in that narrow area. I'm going to try to work on that.

Thanks! Gary