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vodka
Starting Member
35 Posts |
 Posted - January 22 2006 : 13:34:25
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When you have a lot of products and a wide and deep category structure, helping visitors find products is VERY important for a successful site.
We sell products that have several features that make them unique out side of our chosen category structur and product assignment. which is 15 and 300 subcategories.
All of our products have a feature or multifeatures features from a set of 12 that care of interest for use by customers. Making these features categories would make the navigation categories 12 times larger that how we do this now.
What would be nice is that on entry into the cart a visitor could preselct one or two of these features and then ONLY the products available for thos features wouuld show in the shole site...keeping the site as we want with the current navigation structure.
Sort of a site filter on a product field that limits the whole site to show just those products and categories that match that feature?
OK that's my attempt at verbalizing this question Any help out there? Questions? Run away! |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - January 23 2006 : 23:44:48
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This reply doesn't relate to the customer-side, but might help you out if you've got a deep/wide/large category structure....
2 addons available to generally help you more easily maintain/view your category data/structure (and to check/fix the "prodcategories" data)....
1. Admin Category Tree Screen:
http://www.bigyellowzone.com/shopexd.asp?id=31
2. Prod/Cat/ProdCat Check/Fix Tool:
http://www.bigyellowzone.com/shopexd.asp?id=74
Also, you could (if you wanted) add the categories which are currently not being shown, and apply them to the relevant products; in theory you should be able to use a normal category tree for that kind of filtering, as products can be in multiple branches and at multiple levels.
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
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vodka
Starting Member
35 Posts |
Posted - January 24 2006 : 18:54:05
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| Ihave those tools and they work GREAT. Thank-you. But, I'm trying to work out some solutions where we have a client with a HUGE category requirement. And their resons for all the categories are pretty good. Even if they weren't its what the customer requires. Will hundreds of categories and thousands of products in thos multiple categories, just assigning a product to a category is goning to be an issue. The drop down and improvements in V6 are a real improvement. But it gets to be a really long drop down and many clicks when assigning a product to multiple categories. |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - January 24 2006 : 21:40:00
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with that many categories etc, I think I'd go for some kind of custom-built screen which is dedicated to them doing the category assignments for their products.
Maybe create a new screen which is linked from the product-details screen which is basically just a giant multi-select-list of categories in category-tree format (ie showing the full tree in the descriptions) with the product name/code shown at the top for info only as text, and use that screen to show/process the prodcategories for that product.
That'd allow you to continue to use the normal vpasp logic, but also have the option of being able to delve into the custom-built screen to do a quick tick-'em-off process.
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
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vodka
Starting Member
35 Posts |
Posted - January 24 2006 : 23:20:31
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Simon,
Thank you for your consideration
Good thought!
They client wanted a "quick side menu" with flyouts that let them drill down to the exact product category the visitor wanted. At the bottom of each category tree are two common product types. If I leave them there the number of categories becomes huge if I break it into three scheme I think it could work. How to break it into three scheme and not be overwhelming to a visitor is the first challange.
The two common product types at the bottom of each category tree are always:
1. Machine or file format (these are graphics files for photo labs as well as psd files for home consumers)
2. Size of the output. (card stock dimensions 4x8 5x7)
If i add them into the category structure it become very large. add about 25 mor categories on each tree branch over a thousand total. And the best part is for some visitors the tree should start with the bottom categories at the top. (A dynamic tree based on visitor type?)
My thinking was to make them 3 seperate fields in the product table. Original VPASP category, size, and machine/file type. Then I was trying to figure how I could let the visitor pick from the size and machine files they were interested in and have the vpasp site category structure work as usual. Only change would have the selection of machine and size reduce or filter out just those products for the WHOLE site.
Example 1: visitors that wanted 5x7 size output would only see products in the resulting site and category navigation that could produce 5x7 output.
I thought a twisted product match scheme could handle that "somehow" but as you know that requires some familiarity with a site overview and that takes time to figure out.
Example 2: would be if a visitor wanted Kodak Photo Machines for file output and all the products that could be used on that machine would be the only products to display in the site.
Product can appear in many categories and more so each of the criteria would still produce many results in each of the VPASP occasion categories. Thats where a product can have several sizes, be in 80% of the machine types and half dozen occasion categories.
I believe there are actually three navigation structures that are needed. One where the highest category is size(8), one with machine/file type(12) being on top, and lastly the normal occasion or sentiment tree for end users(holiday, special occasions, etc) 17 top categories and about 3 levels deep.
Customer entering into the site are if three groups. Those looking for products by:
machine-type, then size, then occasion (equipment manufacturers and distributors)
size, machine type, occasion (photo lab)
occasion, machine type (the consumer)
I have looked at some of your BYZ modules and well it could help me with that custom page idea you posed at the top. That would solve pet of this. But the issue of having three types of visitors entering and looking for a different TOP level structure has me a litlle fuzzy yet....did I say little. Definition is everything.
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Edited by - vodka on January 24 2006 23:24:38 |
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