Think of your Store Categories as the aisles of your store, except that you can cross-reference them so an item can appear in as many categories as appropriate. For retail businesses, planning your categories might be as easy as looking at the sections of your store - a toy store, for example, has a section for educational games, one for building toys, one for stuffed animals, etc. and so would your online store. Services break down the same way. A beauty and esthetics salon might offer three types of hair removal, a variety of skin care services, a variety of facial care services, a variety of laser services, etc. and for men and women. The service page, or Marketplace Item, for Men’s Laser Back Hair Removal might be cross-referenced under Laser Services, Hair Removal, and Men’s Services.
Tips for your Store Categories:
Don’t be too specific; if there’s only one possible item in the category, it should probably be grouped in with another category instead
Be conscious of the words prospective customers might type in a search engine if they were looking for this group of products or services; these are called keywords. Where appropriate, use those keywords as category labels to help search engines direct the right people to your pages
You can create categories by brand too. A single dress might be listed under Dresses, Evening Wear, and Chanel, simply by checking all three boxes in the Categories in Your Store section of the Marketplace Item editor
Keep category labels short
Too many categories is hard to follow in the catalog; you can create a directory tree by identifying some “top categories” (see Adding and Editing Store Categories) and leaving others, but ensuring that in sub-categories, all the items are cross-referenced in both the top and sub-categories. Now when a user selects the “top category,” they will see all the items there, but will get an opportunity to further filter by sub-category
Related Article: Adding and Editing Store Categories