Product Taxonomies
How to manage product taxonomies in the Spree open-source eCommerce dashboard
Taxonomies let you organizing products into groups like categories, brands, or collections.
Taxons are individual nodes or items within a taxonomy, representing specific groups like a category, subcategory, or brand.
A well-designed taxonomy enhances search functionality, improves user experience, and boosts sales by guiding customers through a logical and intuitive shopping journey.
To setup taxonomies for your store, navigate to the Taxomonies tab of the admin dashboard, found under Products.
Here you will see three automatically created taxonomies that are commonly used in ecommerce:
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Categories - Groups of products based on type or purpose for easy navigation
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Brands - Organizes products by their manufacturer or label
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Collections - Curated groups of products based on themes or trends
Add a New Taxonomy
To add a new Taxonomy, such as a Category, Collection, or Brand, click on the blue button in the top right corner.
This will redirect you to the Taxonomy creation page where you simply need to type in a name.
Enter the name, and click the blue ‘Create’ button and youll receive a notification that the taxonomy has been successfully created.
You’ll then be redirected to a page that allows you to manage the new taxonomy.
Add Taxons
With the taxonomy created, you can start adding taxons to organize your product catalog more effectively.
To add a taxon, either click the blue ‘+ New Taxon’ button in the top right corner or (in the case of an empty taxonomy), click ‘+ Add One’ in the middle of the page.
This opens up the taxon editor page which allows you to define the taxon and add media.
Presentation
There are four sections that affect how the taxon is presented on the storefront:
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Name - Add a name to be displayed on the frontend and backend
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Description - Add text describing the taxon, optionally displayed on the storefront
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Image - Upload a complimentary image to be displayed on the taxons storefront page
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Square Image - Upload a complimentary square image to optionally be displayed in page sections featuring that taxon
Taxon Type
Taxon Type allows you to choose between a manual taxon or an automatic taxon.
Manual Taxons
As the name suggests, you must add products manually, either by assigning products to the taxon in bulk, curating them one by one, or by adding the appropriate values to the category column when importing a product file.
Automatic Taxons
Allows you to automatically (and dynamically) populate the taxon based on various conditions.
You can choose whether the products must match all conditions or any of the conditions you define.
The condition types are as follows:
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Product tag - products will only be included if they have a mathing tag
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Available on - products will only be included if they were made available within the specified time frame
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Sale - products will only be included if they are marked down (i.e., a Compare At Amount is set)
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Product vendor - products will only be included if they are from a particular vendor
Once you’ve selected the condition type, you can select the value from the dropdown that the condition should be equal to, not equal to, contain, or not contain
Feel free to add more conditions to further curate the taxon by clicking onn ‘+ Add One’.
Navigation
Here you can select where the new taxon should be nested.
The dropdown list will show a list of all taxons available within the taxonomy your currently managing. Simply select the taxon you’d like to nest the new taxon in.
Start typing the name of the taxon you’d like to nest within to filter the results.
Search Engine Listing
Here you can set the meta title, meta description, and the slug for the new taxon.
Create Taxon
Once you’ve added the name and defined the taxon type, click the blue ‘Create’ button at the bottom of the page to create the taxon, and you’ll receive a notification that the taxon was successfully created.
Add Products
Once the taxon is created, you can add products to the taxon directly in taxon editor page by clicking ‘+ Add Products’, if and only if you chose the manual Taxon Type.
This will open a window that allows you to search for and select the products you’d like to add.
Check the boxes of the products you’d like to and then click the blue button.
You’ll then see those products listed in the Products section of the taxon editor.
Note: You can removed individual products by clicking on the red trash can button in the far right column.
Sort Order
For merchandising purposes, you may want to change the order in which products in a taxon are presented in the storefront.
To do so, you can select the sort order from the dropdown menu in the Products section of the taxon editor.
If you choose manual sort order, you can rearrange the ordering by clicking on the 6 dots on the far left and drag and dropping the products into the desired order.
Important: Make sure to hit ‘Update’ at the bottom of the page if you want to save any changes you’ve made to taxon.
Build A Taxonomy Tree
If you’d like to create multiple levels of the taxonomy tree, you can add add subtaxons (i.e. nested taxons) to an existing taxon.
Simply click on the 3 dots on the far left of the taxon and select ‘+ New Nested Taxon’.
The rest of the process is the same as adding any other taxon.
With some careful consideration, time and little effort, you can create a very deep and detailed taxonomy tree.
If you’d like to reorganize your taxonomy later, you can do so by drag and dropping taxons into their new positions.
Import Taxons
Taxons can be automatically imported if you add the appropriate values to the category columns in a product import file. Just make sure to use the correct naming convention for the taxons to make sure nesting is respected after import, e.g.:
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Categories -> Fashion -> Men
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Categories -> Fashion -> Women -> Footwear
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Categories -> Electronics -> TVs
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Categories -> Nutrition -> Supplements -> Vitamins
To learn more about imports, please refer to the Import Products article.
Editing Taxonomies
If you’d like to change the name of a taxonomy, navigate back to the main Taxonomies tab.
Find the taxonomy you’d like to rename, and click the Edit button the far right side.
Simply rename the taxonomy and click ‘Update’.
Editing Taxons
To edit a taxon, find the taxon you’d like to edit in its respective taxonomy, and click the Edit button on the far right.
You’re free to edit the name and description, swap out images, change the nesting, and update search engine listing settings. Make sure to click Update if you do.
Important: You cannot edit the Taxon Type of a taxon once created. If you want to change a taxon from manual to automatic (or vice versa), delete the old taxon and create another.
Translations
If you’re store is multi-language, you can add translations for both taxonomies and taxons.
To learn more about translations, please refer to another support article.
Real-Life Examples ofCategories, Collections, and Brands
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