Product Page Settings
The largest number of presentation options falls under the Product Page Settings category. The following screenshot shows the available options:
Product Page Settings
Product Display:
Select Theme:
Select what product group you want to display on the products page:
Sort Product By:
Show Breadcrumbs:
Product Groups/Products Display:
Replace Page Title With Product/Category Name:
- C Yes P No
Product Groups Only (All products displayed) O Sliding Product Groups (1 product per page)
Unless you purchased any of the Gold Cart upgrades, there is only one view available next to Product Display. Have no fear, the Gold Cart is not required for a fully operational e-commerce site.
There are three options available next to Select Theme: Default Theme, iShop Theme, and Marketplace Theme. These options have nothing to do with your choice of theme for WordPress, but are rather for how your shopping cart is displayed. For instance, take a look at the following screenshots showing a sample product. All that changes in the three images is the theme.
Default Theme: The following screenshot shows how the default settings look with the standard Add To Cart button:
iShop Theme: This theme has more of a subtle look with a rounded, aqua-style Add to Cart button, as shown in the following screenshot:
Marketplace Theme: This theme features slightly larger text and a more-prominent ADD TO CART button, as shown in the following screenshot:
Sample CD
Music Test Shop » Example category * Sample CD
This is a sample CD.
SampleCD - Meta: some meta description here Price: $5.00
As you might guess, there is only an aesthetic difference between the three shop themes, not a functional difference. Feel free to try each of them before settling on a theme.
The drop-down list next to Select what product group you want to display on the products page is one of the more important settings for defining how your store will look. When customers visit your online store, they first arrive at a default products page. This products page could contain a full listing of your product catalog, or only a single product category. For example, our sample music store will sell printed sheet music, PDFs, audio CDs, and perhaps a few posters. If we wish for customers to see all of our items upon first glance, we should be sure to choose Show All Products from the drop-down list, as shown in the following screenshot:
Select what product group you want to display on the products page:
Sort Product By:
Show All Products
Show list of product groups Show all products + list Categories
Example category
On the other hand, if we want customers to only see our printed sheet music by default, we can choose the appropriate category. Customers can view the other items by clicking on the related category link later. For now, we have not yet created our other categories, so feel free to stick with Show All Products. We can always change this setting after we have completed our product catalog.
The Sort Product By option allows for three choices: Name, Price, or Time Uploaded. Sorting is from top to bottom, therefore:
• Name: The option Name sorts your products alphabetically
• Price: The option Price sorts your products from lowest to highest price
• Time Uploaded: The option Time Uploaded sorts your products from oldest to newest
When enabled, the Show Breadcrumbs option simply displays a hierarchy of navigation links (colloquially known as "breadcrumbs") at the top of each individual product page. Notice that Music Test Shop and Example category are both active links in the following screenshot:
Sample CD
Music Test Shop » Example category » Sample CD
The Product Groups/Product Display toggle gives you a choice between displaying all of your products when a certain category is displayed, or between displaying only a single product at a time under that category. Most shop owners are likely to opt for the first option by default. However, depending on the nature and number of your products, the latter option may be right for you. When in doubt, just give it a try.
Last, but certainly not least, is an often-overlooked option to Replace Page Title With Product/Category Name. What does this option do? Let's take a look. If we keep this option set to No and click on any group name for our store (for example, Wind Ensemble), the breadcrumbs that we enabled will update to that group name like this: Music Test Shop >> Wind Ensemble. However, the heading for the page will still display as the generic Products Page, as shown in the following screenshot:
Products Page
Music Test Shop s- Wind Ensemble
It looks, innocuous, right? While it isn't harmful at all, it certainly isn't very descriptive. Now, let's go back and change the Replace Page Title With Product/Category Name option to Yes. If we refresh the previous category page, the breadcrumbs will stay the same, but the page heading will be updated to the name of the group or category, as shown in the following screenshot:
Wind Ensemble
Music Test Shop » wind Ensemble
Though it's a seemingly small difference, the inclusion of the category name in the page heading is more descriptive and may even provide a little boost to search engine optimization. Most users should leave this option enabled.
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