Often categories will be decided by brand or product type.
For a coffee supply business the categories might be:
For a toy shop the categories might be:
- Water Play
- Lego®
- Boardgames
Categories will often be hierarchical. In other words, there may be top level categories, with sub-categories underneath them. For example, if Lego® was the top level category it may have sub-categories of:
- Bricks
- Minifigures
- Sets
- Duplo®
- Technic®
Best practice is to have categories as:
- Mutually exclusive
- Permanent
For example a clothing shop has
Dresses don’t change into Pants and Tops are not Pants – so these are mutually exclusive – clothes that belong in Pants will not belong in Tops and vice versa.
Pants don’t change over time to become dresses – the product type is permanent.
Similarly with our Lego®. Minifigures are not bricks and bricks are not minifigures. Minifigures don’t become bricks with the passage of time – they stay permanently as minifigures.
It is common for each category to be given an image, and for those images to link to their respective category page. Here’s an example of 3 product categories with images that appear on the homepage of a skincare shop.