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A good practice in Magento is to organize your catalog in categories and subcategories, but this is not enough when you have thousands and thousands of products.
So what can you use to help customers navigation experience? use Magento filters!
What is a filter?
Magento filter is not so much different than an attribute. A filter is an attributes abstraction with a set of values based on the current products selection. When a filter is selected from the layered navigation area, all products that have that specific attribute and the selected value as well, will be shown into the page. This allow customers, for example, to show all "red shoes" instead of "blue shows".
How we use filters on ShopRigomma
Let's go through and see how to set a filter and how it works in a real Magento ecommerce.
One of our client, Rigomma (http://www.shoprigomma-pneumatici.it), specialized on selling tires, required us to develop a very fast and smart way to help customers to find the right tire trying to don't get them frustrated. Having more than one thousand products, filtered navigation was the answer.
Let's take a look to the select box called "Larghezza" (Width). Larghezza is a tyres attribute and those numbers are values.
In order to create a filter:
- 1.Go to the admin panel -> Catalog ->Attributes -> Manage Attributes -> Add New Attribute
- 2.Fill in all the required fields;
- 3.In the "Frontend Properties" select "FIlterable with results" on the "Use in layered navigation" option;
- 4.Pay attention to the suggestion written above the previous option at the point 3: attribute input type MUST be Dropdown, Multiple Select or Price to be used as a filter;
- 5.in the "Manage Label/Options" tab, create all the possible values and translations as well, of the attribute that will be assigned to products.
That's all! Wasn't that easy?
Filter tuning: frontend appearance.
Default layered navigation of Magento is basically a list of link that customers can use to define products selection. In order to see how it works, visit Magento Demo store on http://demo.magentocommerce.com
How about having a select box with all the possible values and select them without changing page?
This is what we have done for ShopRigomma using a Magento Module called "Advanced Navigation" developed by GoMage. You can find it on the Magento Connect: http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/GoMage/extension/4990/gomage_advanced_navigation
After installing it, on the attribute page in the back end, you will find an extra section in the properties tab called "Advanced Navigation Properties".
By setting the "Filter Type" option to "Dropdown" we changed the current filter link to a select box. That was exactly what we needed for ShopRigomma. As you can see on the image above, there are many options that you can set based on your needs.
By enabling the "Use ajax" option, you will avoid Magento to load the current page again increasing website performance. Customers will appreciate it a lot. In the next image you can see the loader in action when a filter is.
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