Setting Up Your Product Catalog

The product catalog shows what you offer as proper product pages: photos, the versions a customer can choose between, the details that matter, and a form to ask about it. There is no cart and no checkout. It is built for businesses where the sale happens in a conversation, whether you make cabinets, sell hot tubs, install windows or rent out event spaces. This article covers switching it on and setting it up. Adding Products & Variations covers the products themselves.

Switching the catalog on

Go to Site Settings → Features and tick Product catalog. Once it's on, your catalog pages go live on your site. Everything else about the catalog, from its name to its wording, is set under Catalog → Catalog settings in the sidebar, right beside Products. Both screens are available to Site Admins; Site Editors won't see them.

You can build products, and fill in Catalog settings, before you switch it on. Products have drafts and live preview like blog posts, so a common approach is to set up your categories and a few products first, check them in preview, and switch the feature on when you're happy.

Name it and choose its address

At the top of Catalog settings are three settings that shape everything else:

• Catalog name: the title of your main catalog page and the name used in its links and breadcrumbs, like Products, Models or Our Work.
• One item is called: the word for a single item, like Product or Model.
• Web address: where the catalog lives. Enter models and it's at yoursite.com/models. Use lowercase letters, numbers and single hyphens.

The web address can't be one your site already uses for a page or a Content Type, since the page would win and your catalog would be unreachable. A few words are also taken by the platform itself, like admin, api, blog, search, preview, media and sitemap. If you pick one of those, saving tells you so.

Categories: the backbone of the catalog

Categories live under Catalog → Product categories. They group your products, and they do something more important: each category decides which details its products list.

• Name: what customers see, like Residential or Commercial.
• Inside another category: optional, one level deep. A parent category's page shows its children's products too.
• Description: a short introduction shown above the products on the category's page.
• Image: shown on the category's card on your main catalog page. Without one, the first product photo in it is used, so no card is ever an empty box.
• Variations are called: what one version of a product is called in this category, like Color, Size, Model or Finish. It starts as Option.
• Variation picker style: how customers switch between versions: Name buttons, Color dots, Image tiles or Image cards with names. The image styles use the swatch image you add to each variation.

Product details

Under Product details you list the details every product in the category shares, like Dimensions, Weight or Warranty. You fill in the values on each product, and they appear as a neat table on the product page. For each detail you can set:

• a Unit, like in or lb, added after every value so nobody types it twice;
• a Group, a heading that gathers related details together, like Size or Performance;
• Show in the summary line under the photos, for the two or three facts a customer wants at a glance;
• Let customers filter the product list by this, which adds that detail to the filters above your products.

Setting details on the category, rather than on each product, is what keeps your catalog consistent: every product in a category answers the same questions in the same order. It also makes comparing work, since products from one category line up row for row. Renaming a detail later is safe; the values already filled in stay attached to it.

Brands (optional)

If you carry products from several makers, including your own lines, add them under Catalog → Brands with a name and a logo. The logo shows beside the brand name on product pages and product cards. If everything you sell is your own, skip brands entirely.

Designing your catalog pages

The rest of Catalog settings is split into sections you can open as needed:

• Product list: the card design for your listing pages, the same card options the blog uses, plus Show filters above the products. Filters are built from your categories, your brands and any detail marked as a filter, and a filter only appears when the products listed actually differ on it.
• Product page: Photo layout (a photo mosaic or a slideshow; phones always get a swipeable slideshow), Inquiry form side, Keep the form in view while scrolling, the Inquiry form, up to two Extra buttons under the form (like Call us or Email us), switches for each section of the page (Feature highlights, Description, Details table, Resources, Related products), a Saved section under every product, and Show price notes.
• Quote list and Compare: how customers collect and compare products. See Quote Lists, Compare & Product Inquiries.
• Wording: every heading and message on your catalog pages, so they say it your way. The form heading (your product's name follows it), the details and Resources headings, the related products heading, the heading over the category cards, the names of the category and brand filters, and the messages shown when filters match nothing or nothing is published yet.

There is deliberately no price field. If you want a line like "Call for pricing" or "Starting at", turn on Show price notes and write a price note on each product. With it off, no prices appear anywhere.

Where it all appears on your site

Address	What it shows
/your-address	Every published product, with filters. When two or more top-level categories have products, a row of category cards sits above them.
/your-address/category/category-name	One category's products, with its description.
/your-address/product-name	A product page. Picking a version updates the link, so a shared link opens on the version you were looking at.
/your-address/quote-list	A customer's quote list, when the quote list is on.
/your-address/compare	A customer's comparison, when compare is on.

Because the quote list and compare pages use those two words, and category pages use category, no product can take one of them as its own address.

Search engines and site search

Products appear in your site's search results and in your sitemap, and each product page tells search engines it's a product, with its photos, brand and category. Each product has its own SEO tab for its search title, description and share image, just like a page. See SEO for Each Page. The quote list and compare pages belong to one visitor, so they are kept out of search results.