Can anyone tell me how to make my items appear in the actual categories on my website?
I have watched so many youtube videos and tried so many things that I am getting so confused and pulling my hair out. I have paid the extra money to have categories as I discovered they are not available otherwise. I have put all my products into categories, I’ve worked out that I needed to change my theme to Dawn so that a menu actually appears on my webpage. Because the theme I had didn’t even have that. But now I finally have the categories there, they are empty.
I have seen on youtube videos that I need to add tags to each product and select either manual or automatic, however I can’t seem to see those options when I go the page they are referring to.
Failing this, can anyone tell me of a different website creator that is more user friendly and simple to set up?? Something that is aimed at someone who just wants to sell items. It shouldn’t be so complicated I don’t think.
Welcome to the community. But sorry your message is a bit unclear. If you can please share your website and maybe some screenshots of what exactly is wrong?
What do you mean you had to pay extra to have categories? In Shopify collections are how you group products, and it is free
I think you have mis-stated the word Categories, and actually mean Collections. Collections and Pages are what you see in the Menus. Many, if not all, themes have some sort of Menu system in the header.
Thank you so much for your reply. I appreciate you offering to help me! I think Shopify refers to categories as collections. But I think Shopify also uses the word categories to mean something else? It is very confusing. When I say categories I just mean the English Dictionary meaning of the word. Eg. When you go to any website, you can browse by category. So if you look at a store’s website you can click on a category such as “women’s shoes” so you don’t have to trawl through all the mens shoes, the kids shoes etc. It’s a pretty standard thing for a website to have the option of just looking at the category of items someone is interested in.
Collections/categories for the customer to see are not free on Shopify. They are “free” when you upgrade to an expensive plan. So I don’t consider that to be free. The very first sentence in the link you provided states this.
I have upgraded my plan and have paid the $500. I initially chose the Spotlight theme, but discovered that it doesn’t show any categories/collections at all (maybe I should be saying “menu” there. No menu is visible to the customer). So I have changed my theme to Dawn as advised, and now have menu/categories/collections visible on the website ( I tried to attach a screenshot of this but it says because I’m a new user Im only allowed to attached one image for some reason). But when you click onto a category/collection it is empty (screenshot attached).
I appreciate you offering to help, thank you. My website is zoeriver.com.au
I think Shopify refers to categories as collections. But I think Shopify also uses the word categories to mean something else? It is very confusing. When I say categories I just mean the English Dictionary meaning of the word. Eg. When you go to any website, you can browse by category. So if you look at a store’s website you can click on a category such as “women’s shoes” so you don’t have to trawl through all the mens shoes, the kids shoes etc. It’s a pretty standard thing for a website to have the option of just looking at the category of items someone is interested in.
There are actually several meanings of category. When you create a product, you can add a “category” but this is for tax purposes. And then there are certain themes that use categories like menus only they function more like independent links than menus, again probably not what you’re trying to accomplish.
A collection in shopify works the way you are thinking. Women’s Shoes is a collection. Whether it’s under the url /collection/womens-shoes, well that’s just up to the creator. But generally this is the standard format.
The first thing you would do for this is click products, and Collections appears. There you create your collection and add products to it.
The second thing you would do is click Content, where Menus appears. This is where you Format how the menu and submenu appears. Like Clothing, and within Clothing would be Men’s and Women’s, and with Women’s would be Women’s Shoes.
Now you edit the header and place your menu. Go to Online Store-Theme-Customize and click on the header. On the left is where you control the settings for the section you highlighted. See where it says Menu and choose the menu you created. By default, it’s called Main Menu. So when you go to your settings in the customizer, you select Main Menu as the type of menu you want.
Different themes are gonna have different methods and looks, but ultimately it’s the same concept. You’re linking the menu you created to the menu in the theme. All of this is completely free, it is a part of how Shopify functions. It’s part of every plan.
As far as the Spotlight theme, here is where the Menu is:
Yes, collection = category in Shopify, I know a few other eCommerce solutions that do use “category” word. But @Maximus3 explained well that you just need to set menus, and link that menu in theme header. And that issue is not a theme but just a setting in menu. All themes can do that just to point to right menu.
And I checked your site and you do have categories in menu but those have links to pages. What you need are links to collections, and you do have collections. Here is link to all collections you have
https://zoeriver.com.au/collections
and you do have this link to one of collections
https://zoeriver.com.au/collections/brooches
What you need to check is in admin Content > Menus and create a new menu. Depending how many collections you have you can make them top menu items like now are Home,Catalog, Contact or place them in one menu like Categories.
Also wanted to check, did you have Starter plan and had to update to Basic, and you payed for a year ? Starter is very limiting and for specific purpose, and it does not have a lot of features. Basic is truly one you start with. You can check in Settings > Plan.
I think Shopify refers to categories as collections. But I think Shopify also uses the word categories to mean something else? It is very confusing. When I say categories I just mean the English Dictionary meaning of the word. Eg. When you go to any website, you can browse by category. So if you look at a store’s website you can click on a category such as “women’s shoes” so you don’t have to trawl through all the mens shoes, the kids shoes etc. It’s a pretty standard thing for a website to have the option of just looking at the category of items someone is interested in.
