Managing Categories in Your WSM Store

How Categories Work

Your store organizes products into categories that can appear in several places:

• In your site navigation/menu (such as the homepage menu)

• In the sidebar on catalog and category pages

• On your catalog page (typically yourstore.com/catalog.html), where shoppers can browse by category and by manufacturer/brand

Categories can also be nested. A parent category contains one or more subcategories, letting you build a browsing structure such as Suspension → Lift Kits → Shocks.

Adding a New Category

You can add new categories—including parent categories with subcategories—to expand or reorganize your product structure. Common examples include adding product lines such as new furniture collections or vehicle-specific parts.

When planning new categories, it helps to:

• Decide whether the new category should be a parent category (top-level) or a subcategory under an existing category.

• Choose a clear, descriptive name that matches how customers search.

• Determine which products should be assigned to the category.

Tip: If you're setting up a larger structure or reorganizing many categories at once, our support team can help you plan a strategy before you make changes.

Making a New Category Visible

If you've created a category but it isn't appearing on your site, the category may need to be set to visible/enabled. A newly created category will not always display in your menu or on your catalog page until it is activated.

Each category has a visibility setting that controls whether it is shown or hidden on your store, and in many cases you can toggle this yourself from your category management area in the WSM admin. After you've done the preliminary setup for a new category, check this setting to make sure the category is marked visible.

If your category still doesn't appear after enabling it, contact support with the category name and the page where you expect it to show. Please include a link to the relevant page so we can locate the category quickly.

Assigning Products to Categories

A category will look empty to shoppers until products are assigned to it. You can assign products to one or more categories so the same item appears wherever it's relevant (for example, a part that fits multiple model years).

Customizing the Catalog Page

Your catalog page can display browsing options such as Shop by Category and Shop by Manufacturer. If you'd like to change which of these sections appear—for example, showing only manufacturer browsing—contact support with your request and a link to the page you'd like changed.

• Deleting a category can remove it from your site navigation. During cleanups or reorganizations, categories that are removed will no longer appear under "Shop by Category." If a category was removed that you still need, contact support to have it restored or recreated.

• Be careful when deleting imports or import profiles. Deleting an import profile you use regularly (for example, a recurring product-import step) can interrupt your ability to import new products until that profile is restored. If you rely on a saved import process, avoid deleting its profile.

For category setup, restoring a removed category, reorganizing your structure, or customizing your catalog page, contact WSM support. To help us resolve your request quickly, please include:

• Your store URL

• The name of the affected category

• A link to the page where the issue appears

• A short description of what you'd like changed

Note: One of the source items reviewed for this article contained a request to "meet the team" page/photo layout, which relates to page design rather than product categories and is outside the scope of this guide.