Managing categories is one of the most important parts of running an eCommerce store. As eCommerce stores have hundreds, thousands and most probably tens of thousands of products in the database, customers look for the categories first. If you are not properly managing categories in your eCommerce store, your potential customers will find it hard to navigate through the store and they will have to rely on the search function.
It is because categories make it easier for your customers to find the product they want. If it is easy and fast to find a product in your store, your customers will stick to your store after ordering for the first time. As you now know the importance of managing categories on an eCommerce store, let’s see how to do it in OpenCart.
OpenCart provides an awesome user interface to manage categories. You can also set category images, order categories based on priority and set icons for new categories. There are all the important features you will ever need to manage categories in your store. So, let’s get started with the tutorial.
Add Categories in OpenCart
First of all, log in to the admin panel of your OpenCart store. Then, click on the Catalog -> Categories option given in the left sidebar of the admin panel.
On this page, you will get a list of categories available in your OpenCart store. On this page, you can also set the new sort order. Sort order allows you to order your categories as you need. A smaller number will push the category on top, and a bigger number will push it back on the list.
To delete a specific category, select it in the first column using a checkbox, and then click on the Trash button given on the top-right corner of the page.
You can click on the Edit button to edit a specific category. However, To add a new category, click on the “+” button given on the top-right corner of the page, just like the following image.
It will redirect you to a new page containing a form to enter the details of the new category. You can set information like Name, Description, Meta Name, Meta Description and much more in the General section, just like the following image.
If you want to create a sub-category, click on the Data section and select the parent category. In the same Data section, you can also set the icon, image, and status for the new category.
After entering all the required information, click on the Save button given on the top-right corner of the page. It will save the category in the database and redirect you back to the category listing page.
Once the category is saved, OpenCart will redirect you back to the category listing. Then, You can set the sort order and update other categories if needed.