Categories are an important part of the navigation of your online store. Create categories to help your customers quickly find what they're looking for, and assign products to categories.

To create categories go to Creating categories.

Once you add products to a category, you can determine the order by which products in the category are displayed to your customers in your online store. See see Reordering and managing products in a category.

Add products to a category:

• Using the Products page
• Using a bulk action
• Using the Categories page
• Using the Import tool

Using the Products page

1. Create your categories.
2. On the left menu of the Back Office go to Products > Products and click the product you want to work with.
3. In the CATEGORIES section click Select Category to specify the category or categories to add the product to.
4. A pop-up displays. Select the categories. You can add the product to multiple categories.

   NOTE: You can remove an existing category from a product by simply deselecting the category in the pop-up.

5. Save your changes.

Using a bulk action

1. Create your categories.
2. On the left menu of the Back Office, click Products.
3. Enable the checkboxes beside the products you want to modify or select all products on the page by clicking the checkbox icon on the top left-hand side of the table.
4. Open the Bulk actions drop-down menu and select Add category.
5. From the pop-up window that displays, select or type-in the category that you want to add the products to.
6. Click Save.

Using the Categories page

1. Create your category.
2. On the left menu of the Back Office go to Products > Categories and click the category you want to work with.
3. Scroll down to the PRODUCTS section.
4. Click the Manage Products button. A pop-up showing the products in the category displays. The products that make up the category are displayed in a grid on the right, and products that you can add to the category are listed on the left.
5. To add a product to the category, place your cursor on the product in the list on the left, and click the plus symbol that appears. When you add a product, Lightspeed eCom automatically positions the product in the grid according to the sort order you've set for the category. If you've set the Sorting type to Sort manually, you can reorder the product to adjust its visibility, as needed. For more information about sorting products, see Reordering and managing products in a category.

   NOTES:

   • To remove a product, place your cursor on the product in the grid on the right, and click Select. Then, click the Remove Products button at the bottom.
   • You can remove multiple items by selecting each item individually as described above; the Remove Products button indicates the number of items you've selected.
   • To remove all items, click Select All, and then click Remove Products.

Using the Import tool

Importing is a much faster way to add products to new categories because it creates the new categories for you. When you import a category title that does not exist, the import tool creates it in eCom automatically.

Importing categories is safe. It cannot affect existing category/product relationships nor can it delete categories.

1. Create a product export in Tools > Exports.
2. Create a seperate import file that is different from your export file in Google Sheets or other spreadsheet software. Copy these column titles into your import file:
   

   Internal_ID

   Internal_Variant_ID

   XX_Title_Short

   XX_Category_1

   XX_Category_2

   XX_Category_3

3. Copy all the internal IDs and product titles from your product export and paste them in your import file. Type the new category, subcategory and sub-subcategory titles for each product in XX_Category_1, XX_Category_2, XX_Category_3 respectively.
4. Import the spreadsheet in Tools > Imports.

Read Editing products through import for complete instructions.

Importing categories can be used to create and assign many different categories in one import by duplicating the internal ids and product titles. For example: