Advice on Setting up Navigation

Advice on Setting up Navigation

DaniForde
Visitor
2 0 1
 

 We're currently in the process of setting up a new theme. We have a developer we work with, and he's great at the technical things, but I need some guidance in terms of the nav design and setting it up functionally.

 

For a bit of background, at the moment we have around 2000 SKUS.

We currently tag our products with what catalogue we want them in.

So if we want them in the bed linen catalogue, we tag them with 'bed linen'.

Our navigation is very outdated, so at the moment customers have no way of finding 'duvet covers' unless they search for them.

They have to scroll through the 'bedlinen' catalogue and all bedlinen is here. It means that if a customer jumps into our table catalogue they don't know if we stock cutlery, for example. They'd have to check every page.

https://teapea.co.nz/collections/bedlinen

https://teapea.co.nz/collections/table

 

We have redesigned a new skeleton for our Navigation that we think will work better (https://teapeahome.slickplan.com/kdglxkq/sitemap). However, we are now at the problem of trying to figure out how we are going to link products to catalogues.

In the past, we've used tags, but there is a lot of info saying that tags are outdated and that we should be looking into product types and meta fields.

Ideally, I'd like to decide what filters customers can look through in each catalogue. So for example, within the subcategory 'cushions' I'd like to have a filter option available for colourful cushions or neutral cushions.

But then two questions come up, first, how do I put cushions within the cushion catalogue; using tags, or creating a catalogue based on product type or meta fields or both?

And what about for a less obvious product, like a hand wash, it might be a women's hand wash or a men's hand wash and need to go in several catalogues so I couldn't base that catalogue on product type.

But now, I need to fogure out how to do this. We would like to be able to put products in multiple catalogues, but also be able to filter within each category.

I don't want to filter based on product type, I'd like to set my own filters and somehow ensure the prods I want go into those filters. I was told that tagging is a bit outdated, is this the case? I've thought maybe we could base our collections on product types, but then create filters based on meta fields.

So if we make a metafield "pillowslips' and then there might be a way to only include the options of metafields that are within the category. I just don't know if that will work, because some products are in two categories.

Does anyone have experience with this and have any tips or pointers? I'm more than happy to pay to have a call with someone knowledgable. We want the Nav to function the best it can and be easy to continue adding products down the line. Thanks so much!

Replies 3 (3)
DaniForde
Visitor
2 0 1

Thank you, this is helpful, but I still don't understand the 'how'. 

In terms of bedding, i thought we could have 'bedroom' as a category under the main category 'Home & Living', under that I thought we would have the subcategories of 'furniture', bedding' and 'cushions'. Then I was hoping that within the bedding category, we could filter based on pillowcase, duvet, sheets etc.  
Would you recommend basing filters of tags? 
How would you recommend these are added to a collection? Also based on tag, or based on prod types or some kind of metafield info? 

Zqdo
Shopify Partner
803 32 64

Hello Dani,

 

Were you able to figure this out, or did you still need help with this?

banned

SheCodesLiquid
Shopify Partner
6 1 2

Have you thought of using an app from the Shopify Apps Store  to filter products in a collection? The apps will have a more advanced feature for filtering than what is available on the platform.

 

The Smart Product Filter & Search and AI Search, Filter & Recommend have almost perfect reviews.