Commerce Categories in SMT
This information refers to SuiteCommerce or the Vinson release of SuiteCommerce Advanced or later.
Commerce Categories let you to create a hierarchical structure of product categories, subcategories, and products so you can present a well organized catalog of products to your visitors. You can create Commerce Categories in NetSuite or in Site Management Tools. Any categories management you perform in NetSuite is available in SMT, and any categories management you perform in SMT is also reflected on the commerce category record in NetSuite. For information on managing Commerce Categories in NetSuite see Commerce Categories.
When managing categories through SMT, best practice is to limit the total number of categories to 1,000 or less. Categories in excess of 1,000 can impact performance.
Hiding Empty Categories
This information refers to SuiteCommerce or the 2019.2 release of SuiteCommerce Advanced or later.
The Hide Empty Category feature dynamically adjusts category navigation based on item availability in the categories and subcategories. By default, this feature is disabled, but can be enabled in NetSuite. See Exclude Empty Commerce Categories for information on how to enable and use the feature.
Category Pages
When you create categories with SMT, a category page is created. This page lists the products and subcategories that are assigned to the category. Similar to landing and enhanced pages, a category page lets you set the page attributes, including name, heading, path, title, meta description, addition to <head>
, and meta keywords. These settings are displayed in the Category Settings in the side panel. The following screenshot shows each of the three category settings subtabs.

1 – Visibility |
Here you can set the visibility options.
See Visibility Dates. |
2 – Name |
This field lets you specify the name for the category. The name identifies the category in NetSuite and can also be used in category navigation. |
3 – Heading |
The heading is displayed at the top of the category page if the page template file supports it. |
4 – URL Fragment |
The URL Fragment specifies the section of the URL that is used to go to the category page. The full category page URL is a concatenation of the domain, any parent URL fragments, and the URL fragment you specify here. |
5 – Title |
The Title field specifies the value to set for the |
6 – Meta Description |
The description you enter here is an important Commerce web store consideration. It is normally the description that is included on search results pages. The description is set as the value for the content attribute for the meta description element for this category page. |
7– Meta Keywords |
This field specifies the value to populate the content attribute of the meta keywords element on the category page. |
8 – Add to <head> |
The Add to <head> field lets you specify code such as HTML, CSS, or javascript to include between the |
Unlike content and pages, Commerce Categories are always in a published state and are displayed to visitors based on the visibility options you specify for the category.
For more information about Commerce Categories, see the following:
Related Topics
- Site Management Tools Overview
- Site Management Tools Versions
- Installation and Implementation
- Users and Roles in Site Management Tools
- User Interface
- Published and Unpublished Content
- Visibility Dates
- Review and Publish Your Site
- Published Content
- Theme Skin Manager
- Preview Screen Sizes
- Content and SEO
- SMT NetSuite Records