ShopSite provides a number of ways to arrange the order of how page links and products appear. From database uploads to backoffice automatic and manual sorting, merchants can setup the order of links/products using various methods. There is also a quick undocumented tip to easily insert a product at any location on a page without re-arranging the entire order.

Auto Sorting

Auto Sorting in ShopSite

Under Pages -> Edit Page Layout is a section where you can set the auto sorting to either ascending or descending, and choose the sorting field for products (SKU, Name, Price, Description) and pages (Name, Link Name). This will automatically sort items on the page based on these settings.

Manual Sorting (Arrange Items)

Manually Arrange Items

Under Pages -> Arrange Items a merchant can manually set the sort order for page links and products appearing on a page. Using this feature will override the auto sort set for a page. On this screen you can either set a manual order (using numeric ranking) or “Sort by Name” for a quick alphabetical sort.

Database Upload

For products on a page, the order can be set by uploading a pages database file with the field “Product Links“. The order of the products in this field will determine the order they appear as long as automatic sorting is set to “None“. Since this field is a list of all products that appear on the page (i.e. exclusive absolute list), it can be used to manually sort products on a page.

Insert Products Easily

Many merchants have a manual sort method for pages to allow them to place popular items near the top of a page. However, this can lead to complications when they need to add a new product near the top or in the middle of the list of products. In looking at the manual sort image above, inserting a product as the number two item would involve re-numbering the rest of the entries. If you have 25 or 50 items on a page, this would be quite time consuming and cumbersome.

Luckily, ShopSite supports the use of decimals on this page. So, if you wanted the product to be the number two item on the page, you can assign it to the page, go to “Arrange Items” and set the number for it to “1.5“. Upon saving, ShopSite will insert the product between the number 1 and 2 products, making it the second item on the page. If you needed to insert a bunch of products between two items, you can use multiple decimals such as 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc…

Auto Sort with Custom Arrangement

If you use an auto sort method for your products, but need to be able to insert new products at the top, you can use a simple trick to make this possible. You can add a hidden html comment in the beginning of either the product name or product description (depending on your sort method) of the format:

<!– aaa –>Widget A
<!– aab –>Widget B

This will force these new products to sort above the other products. Once they are no longer required to be at the top, simply remove the html comment.

Have other tips for sorting page links and products in ShopSite? Share them in the comments below.