The Categorization Problem Nobody Sees
Your customer searches for "running shoes." Your store has 40 pairs of running shoes — but they're spread across "Athletic Footwear," "Running," "Sport Shoes," and "Men's Shoes" depending on who added them and when. Your search returns a fraction of your inventory. The customer sees 12 options instead of 40 and leaves.
Inconsistent product categorization is invisible to store owners but immediately frustrating to customers.
How Categorization Inconsistency Happens
Multiple team members, no standards: Team member A categorizes a product as "Women's Tops," team member B calls it "Ladies' Clothing," team member C calls it "Tops."
Categories added organically: You started with 10 categories. You now have 47, many of which overlap or duplicate each other.
Sohovi automatically finds every duplicate in your dataset — including near-matches — and shows you exactly which rows are affected.
Platform migrations: You moved from one e-commerce platform to another, and the category mapping wasn't exact. Some categories split, some merged, some got lost.
Seasonal additions: Holiday products got added under "Holiday" and "Christmas" and "Seasonal" and "Gifts" depending on who was working that week.
Auditing Your Category Structure
Export your catalog to CSV. Isolate the category/collection column. Use UNIQUE() to list all distinct category values.
Look for:
- Categories that mean the same thing ("Womens" vs. "Women's" vs. "Women")
- Categories that overlap (a product that should be in "Tops" is in both "Tops" and "Blouses")
- Categories with very few products (often a miscategorized one-off or a deprecated category)
- Products with no category (they won't appear in navigation)
Building a Category Taxonomy
Before fixing categorization, design the right taxonomy:
- Decide on top-level categories: These are your primary navigation links. Typically 5–8.
- Define subcategories: Usually one level is enough. More than two levels confuses navigation.
- Write category definitions: "Women's Tops: any top worn by women above the waist, including shirts, blouses, tanks, and sweaters." Definitions prevent future ambiguity.
Fixing the Catalog
Once you have the target taxonomy:
- Export your catalog to CSV
- Create a mapping column: "Old Category → New Category"
- Do a find-and-replace for each mapping
- Re-import with updated categories
- Verify in your live store that products appear in the correct collections
Maintaining Categorization Going Forward
- Add category assignment to your product addition checklist
- Review the category column in your monthly catalog audit
- Require category selection before a product can be published (configure this in your platform if possible)
