Single Page of Products grouped by Sub-Category header

Hi,

I’m trying to setup my new redesign with a single page setup for listing products but still retaining the sub-category groupings.



I run a store which sells merchandise for bands.

Each Root category is a band’s name. Each sub-category is the type of product they sell, CD’s, T-shirts, Posters, etc. We have about 50 bands and each band links directly to their root category rather than to the whole cs-cart shop, so it operates more as individual shops rather than one big mall type shop. Customers can still buy from multiple bands if they go browsing the store but obviously bands just want to send their fans to their own merchandise so that’s how they link to our shop.



PROBLEM

With the standard cs-cart setup, each Sub-Cat is listed as a thumbnail at the top of the page and the customer has to click and reload a new page to view the products under that sub-category. When there’s only a couple products for that sub-category, it’s overkill to have them reload a new page to view those products.



The other way is to just list everything under the root category and use the Pos. ID number to group them but it still creates a single block of products which can be confusing when there’s similar artwork across different product types. It makes for long product titles to explain this product is a T-shirt and that one is a CD.



SOLUTION

It would be much better to have a single page on the Root category which lists all the products available but divided into groups based on which sub-category they belong too using a

header.



I see this as an alternative Grid layout and should be an option available when selecting how a category will display, Grid, list, ‘single page’ so it doesn’t default every category on the site, only those which have this particular ‘single page’ view selected in admin.



Example of how a single page would be:



BAND’S NAME (root category)

------------------------------------

Description…



T-SHIRTS (sub-category header)

--------------------------------------------

product | product | product

product | product | product



CD’s (sub-category header)

--------------------------------------------

product | product | product



POSTERS (sub-category header)

-------------------------------------------

product | product





It would make for a better layout if customers could just load 1 page and find the product they want by scrolling down rather than having to load new pages or view all products grouped together.



When there’s multiple products that have similar artwork/thumbnails this would keep them grouped and easily viewable so the thumbnail doesn’t have to work to explain what type of product it is.

Is it a t-shirt or a CD? We have to write that in the product title and have clear thumbnails showing it’s a t-shirt and not a CD. This wouldn’t be necessary if they were looking at the products grouped under separate headers. We can just focus on making the best thumbnail featuring the artwork and they can view full images of the t-shirt as extra images on the product detail page.



This is something i’d really like to see as an official option from cs-cart but i’d also like to discuss what it would take to implement as a mod in the meantime.



Is this something a Pro-Customiser would be interesting in working on for me? I’m happy to pay and i’m sure there would be others who would like this setup for their stores so it might be a good addition to any Mod store.



Thanks for reading!



I like the idea. I would use this feature if it exist.

I have managed to create what i wanted for the customer end by using Product blocks and Css on custom wrappers to define the groups of products. So for the customer it's OK but that makes a lot of work and editing for the Admin side when it could be done using information already in the product data, sub-categories.



I either have to have generic block titles or make a lot of different blocks for each product group to have it's correct title.

I'd need 'T-shirts' since that would be the block for every category, rather than having 'Band 01 T-shirts' for Band 01's root category and then 'Band 02 T-shirts' for Band 02's root category, that would mean 2 blocks doing the same thing because i'd need a new block just to get a new title above the group of products. Hard when you have a lot of brands or specific groupings - which is what Sub-cats are useful for.



If it was making these groups from sub-categories then it would title correctly based on the sub-cat title and products would naturally appear in multiple groups if they are listed under multiple sub-categories throughout the shop.



So while this can be done using blocks for small numbers of products like 'specials' or 'hot deals', it's not as practical as it could be for layout out of an entire shop from the Admin side of it, works OK for what the customer sees. It's not as easy to sort products, there's no Pos. number for easy shuffling of order in a block which is a problem when there's a lot of products and you want them in a specific order. Adding Pos. Numbers to product blocks would be helpful there.



If it could be a template option like 'grid', 'list' etc then it could automatically set it self out in this layout by just having an option selected in Admin, “have sub-caterogies & their products grouped and listed” rather than using a thumbnail to a new page.



Maybe it's a giant code mission to do it? But it seems like something that would be a useful feature once it's been done.

Found this topic while looking for something similar but not exactly what I require. Have you looked at the following setting to create what you require, albeit it doesn't as default display each subcategories products in individual containers:



Settings>General>“Show products from subcategories of the selected category” - Checked