Exclude Empty Commerce Categories

This information refers to SuiteCommerce or the 19.2 release of SuiteCommerce Advanced or later.

The Exclude Empty Commerce Categories feature lets you leave out empty categories from your site when a category branch has no visible items. This makes sure empty categories don't show up on your site. An empty category is one with no available items and no subcategories with available items. Item availability depends on several factors. For more information, see Item Availability.

Excluding empty categories has a couple of key benefits:

• If you have a complex category structure with changing item availability, category navigation updates automatically based on what's available. This saves you time by updating categories and navigation for you, so you don't have to manage them manually.

• If you're using Personalized Catalog Views, the Commerce Category navigation is built based on the logged-in user and the items available to that customer's segment assignment. If a customer can't buy items in certain categories, those categories won't show up on the site. For details, see Personalized Catalog Views.

Here are three examples of how category navigation is adjusted based on item availability.

Example 1: No Items Assigned to Category

You have a Closeouts category with subcategories of Men’s Apparel, Women’s Apparel, Children’s Apparel, and Accessories. You have assigned items to the three apparel categories but you have not assigned items to the Accessories category. Consequently, the category navigation on the site appears as follows:

In this example, Accessories doesn't show up in the navigation because it's empty and has no items assigned.

Example 2: Out of Stock Behavior

You have a Closeouts category with subcategories of Men’s Apparel, Women’s Apparel, Children’s Apparel, and Accessories. Sales depleted your inventory of all items assigned to the Children’s Apparel Category. Because of the nature of your out of stock behavior, items with no stock are not listed on the site. Consequently, no items are available in the Children’s Apparel category and the resulting category navigation looks like this:

The Children’s Apparel category doesn't show up in the navigation because it has no available items.

Example 3: Category Structure with PCV

You have implemented Personalized Catalog Views, and you have a VIP Items item segment that has items from your Children’s Apparel and Accessories categories assigned to it. ABC Wholesaler is assigned to a customer group that can purchase items from VIP Items. Consequently, when the customer logs in to the site, the category navigation for the Closeouts category reflects this structure:

In this example, Men’s Apparel and Women’s Apparel don't show up in the navigation because ABC Wholesaler’s customer segment can't buy anything from those categories.

To exclude empty categories:

1. Go to Commerce > Websites > Configuration.

2. Select the Website from the dropdown list.

3. Select the Domain from the dropdown list.

4. Click Configure.

5. Click the Integrations subtab.

6. Click the Categories subtab.

7. Check the Exclude Empty Categories box.

8. Click Save to finish.

Related Topics

• Set Up NetSuite

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