Categories
Build and organize a category tree that helps customers find products
Categories are how you group products in your store. They appear in the storefront's top navigation and act as filters for the product listings. This article covers adding, editing, and deleting categories, as well as how they appear to customers.
The basics of creating your first category are covered separately in Creating your first category. This article focuses on building and managing a larger category tree.
How categories appear in the store
Top-level categories show up as their own links in the store's main navigation. When a category has children, the link gets an expandable dropdown — and if the structure goes three levels deep, the dropdown becomes a full-width mega menu.
In the example above there are two top-level categories, Pääkategoria and Toinen kategoria. Pääkategoria opens a mega menu containing three subcategories (Housut, Paidat, Komponentit) and one more level beneath them (Farkut, T-Paidat, RAM-Muistit, etc.).
The category tree in the dashboard
The Categories page (Products → Categories) shows your store's full category structure at a glance. Top-level categories sit at the top and subcategories are indented underneath. If a category has subcategories, a small chevron (▾) shows at the start of its row — click it to expand or collapse the branch.
Hovering over a category reveals a pencil icon for quick editing and a three-dot menu that opens an Actions dropdown (the red arrow in the screenshot points to the three-dot menu's location).
Adding a subcategory or sibling category
Open a category's Actions menu and pick:
- Add subcategory — creates a new category underneath the selected one (e.g. Clothing → Shirts)
- Add sibling category — creates a new category at the same level as the selected one (e.g. another category alongside Shirts)
Both open the same form as creating a top-level category — the only difference is that the new category is automatically attached to the right place in the tree.
Maximum three levels deep
The category tree can be at most three levels deep: Top-level → Subcategory → Sub-subcategory. If you try to add a fourth level, the system blocks the save and shows an error.
Editing a category
You can open the edit panel three ways:
- Click the pencil icon to the right of the category
- Open the Actions menu and pick Edit
- Double-click the category name
The form lets you change the name and SEO fields:
- Category name — the name shown in the store and dashboard
- Meta title — title shown to search engines (max 60 characters)
- Meta description — description shown to search engines (max 160 characters)
Renaming changes the category URL
The store URL of a category is built from its name (e.g. Women's shirts → /products/womens-shirts). If you rename the category, the URL changes with it. Any direct links — customer bookmarks and search-engine-indexed URLs — break until search engines re-crawl the new URL.
The category's products and subcategories stay in place — only the URL changes.
A category with this name already exists
Each category name can only be used once per store, even across different levels. If you try to create or rename a category to a name that's already in use, you'll see the error "A category with this name already exists". Use a different name or edit the existing category.
Deleting a category
Open the category's Actions menu and pick Delete.
A category can be deleted only if it has no subcategories and no products. If deletion fails, the system tells you why:
- Category has children and cannot be deleted — delete or move the subcategories first
- Category has products and cannot be deleted — move the products to another category or delete them first
The Delete option appears in the Actions menu only when the category has no subcategories. The product check happens at the moment of deletion.
Related topics
- Creating your first category — the basics and SEO field defaults
- Creating a product — assigning a product to one or more categories