Categories, brands and collections
Four ways to group products, each doing a different job. Getting them straight saves a lot of rework.
| What it is | Where customers meet it | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | How your shop is organised | The main menu, browsing |
| Brand | Who made it | Brand filters and pages |
| Attribute | An option set like Size | Inside a product, as variants |
| Collection | A hand-picked group | Featured on your storefront |
Categories
Sidebar → Products → Categories.
Every product needs at least one category. Without one it cannot be published, and it has nowhere to appear on your storefront. This is the single most common reason a product is missing from a shop.
Categories nest, so Men → Shirts → Formal works. Keep the tree shallow — three levels is plenty, and customers stop digging after two.
Once your categories exist, Menu Builder → Add all categories turns the whole tree into a working navigation menu in one press. See Menus.
Brands
Sidebar → Products → Brands. Optional. Worth doing if customers shop by brand — electronics, cosmetics, phone accessories — and not worth doing if you sell your own unbranded goods.
You can create a brand from inside the product form without leaving it.
Attributes
Sidebar → Products → Attributes. Reusable option sets — Size, Colour, Material — that products turn into variants.
The list shows Label, Name, Type, Options, Flags and Status. Full details in Variants.
Collections
Sidebar → Products → Collections. A hand-picked group of products that does not follow your category structure: Eid Collection, Under ৳500, New Arrivals.
The difference from a category, put simply:
- A product belongs in one place in your category tree — that is its identity
- A product can be in any number of collections — those are for merchandising
So a red kurta lives in Women → Kurtas and can also appear in Eid Collection, Red for Boishakh and Best Sellers at the same time.
Collections are what you feature on your home page. Build them before a campaign, not during it.
A sensible order to work in
- Categories first — nothing publishes without them
- Attributes next, if you sell anything in sizes or colours
- Products, assigning categories as you go
- Brands if they matter to your customers
- Collections when you plan a campaign
Common problems
“My product is not on the storefront.” No category, or the status is Draft rather than Active.
“My category is not in the menu.” Categories and menus are separate. Creating a category does not add it to navigation — use Menu Builder, and publish the menu.
“Should this be a category or a collection?” Ask whether a product could sensibly be in two of them at once. If yes, it is a collection.
“I deleted a category and products vanished.” Products with no remaining category have nowhere to appear. Assign them another one.