Get Started with Categories by BTP

Get Started with Categories by BTP

Preface

Categories by BTP allows you to configure your collections in a nested and hierarchical manner and display them as a navigational tree to your shoppers. Providing your shoppers with a tree for navigation allows for better organization of your products and leads to higher conversions since they will have an easier time locating the product they are looking for. It also helps improve your search engine visibility by providing search engines with your category structure.

It is important to note that Shopify allows for two different types of collections:
  • Custom Collections: allow you to hand pick products to be included in your collection
  • Smart Collections: automatically include products that meet certain conditions (e.g. tags, product type, product title, etc.)
Categories by BTP uses Smart Collections and you will not be able to add custom collections as categories. If you currently have Custom Collections, you will have to create new Smart Collections either through the Categories by BTP app or through Shopify directly.


Categories by BTP saves your category hierarchy and your storefront tree to the selected theme. This theme is defaulted to your currently published theme, but can be changed to any theme via the dropdown located at the top of the app. If you change your theme to one you haven't configured with Categories by BTP, your tree will not automatically transfer over. However, there are tools available to you under the Settings tab which allow you to transfer all of your Categories by BTP assets between themes.


Configure Your Categories

To configure your categories, select the Categories tab from within the app. From there, you can add existing or create new Smart Collections to be used as your categories. Use the simple drag-and-drop interface to easily configure your category hierarchy quickly. More information on configuring your categories can be found here .

Check Your Settings

Categories by BTP provides you with the ability to decide how your designating your collections as categories affects them. Select the Settings tab from within the app to adjust your settings and to ensure they are configured to your liking.

Deploy Your Categories

Once you have your settings set the way you want them, select the Categories tab again and click Deploy Categories . This will save your configured categories to the selected theme at the top of the application and generate your storefront tree.

Add Your Categories to Your Storefront

We provide you with a series of snippets that make displaying your categories on your storefront a breeze! To begin, you will need to make sure that the latest versions of the snippets are installed in your theme. Select the Install/Update/Repair Status tab and click Deploy All .


btp-categories-tree

This snippet is used to display your categories in the form of a tree. There are several styles you can pick through via the Settings tab. By default, the Sidebar style is selected, which is best suited for themes that allow for a sidebar. Simply copy and paste the code below into your theme wherever you want your tree to appear:


{% include 'btp-categories-tree' %}

btp-categories-collectionbreadcrumbs

This snippet is used to display the breadcrumbs for your categories on collection pages. It is created to match most themes, but can be customized as needed to fit your specific theme. We recommend installing this into the same file that your theme uses for the current breadcrumbs. Simply copy and paste the code below:
{% include 'btp-categories-collectionbreadcrumbs' %}

btp-categories-productbreadcrumbs

This snippet is used to display the breadcrumbs for your categories on product pages. It is created to match most themes, but can be customized as needed to fit your specific theme. We recommend installing this into the same file that your theme uses for the current breadcrumbs.
To use this to its full capacity, you should  use the tags that this application automatically generates for your categories by default.

Simply copy and paste the code below:
{% include 'btp-categories-productbreadcrumbs' %}


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