Confused about categories, manufacturer and attributes

[CristianCT46]

Hi everyone,

 

Sorry in advance if this is gonna be a long post but I'm very new to Prestashop and e-commerce in general and i'm facing some problems that i can't figure it out so i thought to write here to get some advice from you 

I'm making a store using Prestashop 1.6.1.14 and my hesitations are about setting up a good category tree and display it properly on the top bar menu.

 

My store is going to sell italian wines. Every bottle of wine has a name, a producer (wine cellar), a provenience (from some italian region), a color (red, white, rosè) and some minor attributes (year, viticulture, alcoholic grade etc).

 

What i would like to do is to have a top bar 'curtain' menu that first show the color of the wine, then the provenience and at the end the wine cellar. Example:

 

   Red

      Sicilian (region)

         Firriato (wine cellar)

 

Clicking on 'firriato' the guest should see every bottle of that manufacturer (wine cella), while clicking on 'sicilian' the guest should be able to see every product of every sicilian wine cellar and also every wine cellar available in Sicily.

 

To achieve this i thought to create the categories as presented above, but i feel there is something wrong in what i'm doing.

What seem incorrect to me is that i end up having multiple sub-categories with the same name for every wine color (i will create the same sub-categories 'sicilian' and 'firriato' also for the white and rosè categories).

Also I think if would be more correct to use the menu 'manufacturer' to specify the wine cellar, and features and values to specify the provenience and the color. I tried to do so but then I am no more be able to create the curtain top menu as i want.

 

Is there any way for doing it right?

Edited June 26, 2017 by CristianCT46 (see edit history)

[ecommerce16]

I think you can make it less complcated to use not to many categories but make the selection by giving the products the right features.

 

So (in my opinion) you can have the categories Red Wine and White Wine.

 

By giving the red wine for example the features Region and wine Cellar the visitor can easily filter by using the layered navigation. By doing this you avoid a overload of categories(in my opinion one of the most problems, you know your way in your shop easy, but does the visitor also?)

 

A good and well organized filter(layered navigation) is the best solution, but thats ofcourse my opinion

[CristianCT46]

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. This make more sense to me.

My only concern with 'features' and layered navigation block in prestashop is about setting up a top horizontal menu that reflects them. Can i have the a top menu with the value of my features?

 

... to be clearer i take the example of the demo shop that comes with every prestashop installation. Is it possible to have the 'Women' section on the top menu bar that show 'Cotton' products (which is a feature of some products) instead of showing the women sub-category?

 

I hope i explained it well 

[CristianCT46]

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