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Sorting categories

Sorting is where you decide the order of products inside each category. The list shows every category with products and where its ordering stands; the workbench shows the category as a shopper sees it, and lets you pin products and change the rules while you watch the order move.

You find it in Catalog > Merchandising > Sorting. You need the Owner, Admin or Editor role to publish.

Read the sorting list

ColumnWhat it shows
CategoryThe category name and its path. Smart categories, whose products are chosen by a rule, are marked smart.
ProductsHow many products the category holds.
RankingPublished with the date of the last publish, Unpublished changes if a strategy was applied and nobody has published it yet, or Inherited if the category has no order of its own. On a sales channel, Inherited means it follows the Global order.
StrategyThe strategy the category follows, or Local rules if its rules are its own.
PinsHow many products are pinned in this category.

Type in the search box above the list to find a category by name, and click Products or Pins in the header to sort. Click a row to open the category in the workbench.

Start merchandising a category

Steps

  1. In Nucleo, go to Catalog > Merchandising > Sorting.
  2. Click New merchandising.
  3. In Category, choose the category.
  4. In Starting rules, choose one of:
    1. Local rules (blank) to start from the category's own rules.
    2. A strategy, to start from its rules. See Strategies.
  5. Click Open workbench.

If the category already has a published order or unpublished changes, the dialog says so and you continue from them. If you started from a strategy, its rules are applied without publishing: review the order, then publish or discard.

Read the workbench

The header shows the category's status: Published, Not published or Inherited from Global. The cards above the grid sum up the category:

CardWhat it shows
ProductsHow many products are in the category, with its path.
Pins in top 20Pinned products in the first 20 positions, split into local and master pins.
OOS in first pageOut-of-stock products in the first 8 positions.
PublishedHow many products the published order holds, when it was published, and how many products were deleted since.

The grid shows the category in order. Switch between the desktop and mobile preview with the buttons at the top right. The grid first shows 60 products; click Show 60 more or Show all to see the rest. The order is calculated on all of them either way.

On a tileWhat it means
Colored dotStock: In stock, Low stock or out of stock.
Out of stockThe product can't be bought.
Incomplete sizesCore sizes are missing.
NewA new arrival.
−20%The product is on sale, with its discount.
▲3 or ▼2How many positions it moved since the last publish.
Pinned or MasterA local pin or a master pin holds the product at its position.

Turn on Signals+ to see, on every tile, the product's sales, sell-through, returns, core sizes, margin, momentum, discount, repurchase, days of stock cover, total returns and units sold in the last 30 days. On any tile, click Why is it here? to see how much each signal adds to or takes from its score, or whether a pin decides its position.

Pin a product to a position

A pin keeps a product at an exact position, whatever the rules say.

Steps

  1. Open the category in the workbench.
  2. Do one of the following:
    1. Drag the tile to the position you want. You can also focus a tile and move it with the keyboard.
    2. Hover over the tile and click the pin icon (Pin here) to pin it where it is.
    3. Open the tile's More actions menu and click Pin to top.
  3. Publish your changes. See Publish or discard your changes.

To release a product, click the pin icon again (Unpin), or choose Unpin in the tile's menu. If two pins ask for the same position, the first one takes it and the other moves to the next free position.

Choose the rules for the rest of the category

Products that aren't pinned follow the rules in the panel on the left of the workbench.

Steps

  1. Open the category in the workbench.
  2. In Strategy, choose a strategy, or Local rules to give the category its own rules. A badge shows Attached · follows updates or Local rules · this category only.
  3. In Base order, choose how the products are ordered:
    1. Custom weights: by a score built from the weights below.
    2. Newest first, Bestsellers, Price · low to high or Price · high to low.
    3. Manual only: the category's own product order, changed only by your pins.
  4. If you chose Custom weights, set each weight from 0 to 100, in steps of 5. At least one weight must be above zero. Signals marked with a minus sign, Returns (not size) and Discount share, push products down the higher they are.
  5. Turn on the guardrails you want. See the table below.
  6. Publish your changes. See Publish or discard your changes.
WeightWhat it rewards
NoveltyProducts that arrived recently.
SalesProducts that sell the most.
Sell-throughThe share of stock already sold.
Core sizesProducts with their main sizes in stock.
MarginProducts with a higher margin.
Returns (not size)Pushes down products returned for reasons other than size.
Momentum · 30 vs 90 daysProducts selling faster in the last 30 days than in the last 90.
Discount sharePushes down products that sell mostly on discount.
RepurchaseProducts people buy again.
Carry-overProducts that stay in the range across seasons.
GuardrailWhat it does
Out of stock to bottomMoves out-of-stock products to the end.
Incomplete sizes to bottomMoves products missing core sizes down.
Hide out of stockRemoves out-of-stock products from the order.
On sale to topMoves discounted products up.
Under 14 days of stock to bottomMoves down products whose stock covers less than 14 days of sales.
Note
Guardrails never move pinned products. A pinned out-of-stock product stays where you put it, flagged on its tile.

If the category follows a strategy and you change a rule here, the category is detached from the strategy and its rules become local.

Publish or discard your changes

There's no draft in the workbench: your changes are either published or discarded. While you have changes, the Unsaved changes bar appears at the bottom of the page. If you try to leave the page, the bar shakes instead of letting you go.

Steps

  1. In the Unsaved changes bar, do one of the following:
    1. Click Discard to go back to the last saved state.
    2. Click Publish to make your changes the category's official order.
  2. If you chose Publish, review the summary in Publish to followed by the channel: Local pins, Master pins active here and Out of stock in first page.
  3. Click Publish.

A message confirms how many products the published order holds. If a category had never been published on this channel, Discard also removes any unpublished changes left by a strategy, and the category goes back to inheriting.

Note
When collections are set to write to Shopify, publishing on Global or on your Shopify channel also sorts the category's Shopify collection: it becomes a manually sorted collection in the order you published. Products not yet on Shopify are skipped. See Choose who updates whom.

Sort a category differently for one channel

Each sales channel inherits the Global order until you change it for that channel.

Steps

  1. Open the category in the workbench.
  2. In the top bar, choose the channel in View as. See Viewing as a channel or language.
  3. Make a change. The message This channel inherits from Global is replaced by This channel has its own ranking.
  4. Publish for that channel.

To drop the channel's own order, click Go back to inheriting from Global, and then confirm. The channel's rules and pins are removed and it shows the Global order again. Nothing is deleted from Global.

Considerations for sorting

  • In a smart category, the rule decides which products are in it. The workbench controls the order only.
  • If pins refer to products no longer in the category, a message says so: click Remove them to clean them up.
  • Products that aren't searchable, such as drafts or products with no channel or title, can't be ordered here. A message says how many there are.
  • A signal with no data, such as the sales of a new product, doesn't count as zero: its weight is spread over the signals that have data.
  • There's no scheduling: a published order applies until you publish another one. There's also no boost or bury for a single product; use a pin or the weights.
  • The workbench needs a connected store: it orders the real products of a real category.

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