Product Categories
Product categories are a flexible classification system for organizing products. They work independently of families — while a family defines a product’s structure (its attributes), a category defines where it belongs in your organizational taxonomy.
A product can belong to many categories simultaneously, making categories a powerful tool for cross-referencing and filtering your catalog from multiple angles.
Categories vs. Families
These two concepts are easy to confuse, so here is a clear comparison:
| Families | Categories | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Define which attributes a product has | Organize products for browsing, filtering, and reporting |
| Membership | Every product belongs to exactly one family | A product can belong to many categories |
| Effect on data | Determines the product’s fields and structure | No effect on data structure — purely organizational |
| Variant generation | Family variant attributes drive variant creation | No effect on variants |
Think of it this way: a family answers “what kind of thing is this?” (determines its data shape), while categories answer “where does this belong in our catalog?” (determines how it is organized and found).
Example
A “Bluetooth Speaker” product might:
- Belong to the Electronics family (which gives it attributes like Battery Life, Connectivity, Wattage).
- Be categorized under Audio Equipment, Portable Devices, and Gift Ideas (three different ways to find it).
How Categories Work
Categories are hierarchical — you can nest them into a tree of any depth. A product can be assigned to categories at any level, not just leaf nodes.
Example Category Trees
By department:
Electronics
├── Computers
│ ├── Laptops
│ ├── Desktops
│ └── Accessories
├── Phones
└── Audio
By season or occasion:
Seasonal
├── Summer 2025
├── Winter 2025
├── Ramadan Specials
└── Back to School
By audience:
Target Audience
├── Professional
├── Consumer
├── Education
└── Government
A single product can appear in multiple trees — “Bluetooth Speaker” could be in “Electronics > Audio” and also in “Gift Ideas” and “Summer 2025”.
Managing Categories
- Navigate to Product Categories from the Products section.
- Create top-level categories for your broad classification dimensions.
- Add subcategories under each parent for finer groupings.
- Assign categories to products from the product detail page.
Category names must be unique within the same parent. You can have “Accessories” under “Electronics” and a separate “Accessories” under “Apparel” — they are distinct because they sit under different parents.
Categories can be activated or deactivated. Deactivating a category hides it from selection lists but does not remove it from products that already have it assigned.
Tips
- Keep hierarchies to 2-3 levels — deeper trees become hard to navigate. “Electronics > Audio > Speakers” is useful. “Products > Consumer > Home > Living Room > Entertainment > Audio > Portable > Speakers” is not.
- Use multiple independent trees — instead of one giant tree that tries to capture everything, create separate top-level categories for different classification dimensions (department, season, audience). This is more flexible and easier to maintain.
- Products can belong to any level — a product does not have to be assigned to the deepest leaf. If a product spans all of “Electronics > Audio”, assign it to “Audio” directly rather than forcing it into a more specific subcategory.
- Categories are great for access control — product categories can be referenced in row access rules. For example, you could restrict a product manager to only see products in the categories they are responsible for.