Culminating a flurry of activity at Scubbly, we’ve finally launched a much-requested new feature that will help sellers keep their stores organized. They’re called “Store Sections”, and here’s how they work.
When you click “sell” (in the top bar) to manage your products, you will see a new interface. On the left, there’s a hierarchy tree where you select store sections. Click one of those sections, and on the right, you’ll see the products that are in that section.
Right now, your store will not have any sections. So, on the left you’ll see just your store name, with all of your products in it.
After adding some sections, your store sections could look something like this:
If you click “Add a section”, it opens a simple form that allows you to add a new section. That form looks like this:
Choose a name for the section, and save it by clicking “Add”.
To remove a section, or rename an existing section, there are links spanning the top of the right panel:
The “delete this section” link will delete the currently selected section. If there are any products in a section you’re deleting, Scubbly will NOT delete the products. Instead it will move any products into the section’s parent section, or into the “root” section, which is your store. The “rename this section” link reveals a form you can use to rename the section.
Try it! It’s easy to use, and you’ll get used to it in no time.
Also on the back end: you can assign products into a section while editing product details. And if you’re viewing a section and click “Add a Product”, you’ll go to the uploading tool as usual – but when the file is uploaded it’ll be added into the section you had chosen. It’s intuitive: if you’re in the “e-books” section of your store and you click “Add a Product”, it’ll add the product into the e-books section. Simple.
One more important thing. There’s a quick way to move a product from one section into another. First go to your store management tool (click the “sell” tab). See how each product has a thumbnail image? Those are draggable. Click & drag that image over to the tree on the left. As you hover over sections, they will be highlighted. Drop the thumbnail image onto one of the sections, and that product will be reassigned into that section. It’s not *exactly* like using a Windows Explorer or Finder, but it’s similar enough.
By dragging those thumbnail images into sections that you’ve created, you can organize a store pretty quickly.
Try it!
Out in the public space, your store looks a little different now. Where before all your products were lumped into one paginated list, now a buyer can browse your sections, and see products grouped intelligently.
This is what people will see in the righthand column, when viewing your store:
See the parenthesized numbers to the right of each section name? That’s the number of active products that are in each section. Note how in this example, the section “Cross-Stitch Patterns” has 82 products in it. But up above when we were managing the store, the section contains zero (0) products. That’s because there are actually no products in the “Cross-Stitch Patterns” section itself, but there are products in several sub-sections – “Pentacles”, “Wands”, etc.
In the public store, if a buyer selects “Cross-Stitch Patterns”, they will see all the products in that section and all sub-sections, together in one paginated list. So someone can browse all the Cross-Stitch Patterns, and see products that are in “Cups”, “Wands”, “Swords”, and so on. If they’re only interested in one section, they may click on it and view a more focused selection.
If you decide not to organize your store into sections, all your products will stay in the “root” section, which is called by your store name in the store management tool, and called “All Products” on the public store view.
I hope you like this new feature! If you have any questions about this, drop your question into the comments (below). You can also use Scubbly’s FAQ to ask any questions you have.
Enjoy!
