Shopify subcategories: how to create and display them

Why Shopify has no subcategories

In most ecommerce platforms a category can contain another category. Shopify does not work that way. A Shopify store has collections, and every collection sits at the same level as every other one. There is no field that says “Running Shoes belongs inside Shoes”.

That single missing field is what people are looking for when they search for Shopify subcategories, nested collections, or a category tree. The collections themselves are fine; what is missing is the relationship between them, and a way to show that relationship to shoppers and to search engines.

Three ways to build them

There are three honest options, and they are not equally good.

• Navigation menus. Shopify menus support nesting, so a menu can look like a category tree. But a menu is only navigation. It does not change breadcrumbs, it does not add anything to a collection page, and search engines read it as site-wide navigation rather than as the structure of your catalog.
• Tags and filters. Filters narrow a collection down. They do not create a browsable child page with its own URL, so there is nothing for Google to index and nothing for a shopper to land on from search.
• A real category tree over your existing collections. You declare which collection is the parent of which, once, and everything else reads from that: breadcrumbs, subcategory blocks, and the BreadcrumbList structured data that search engines use to show the path in results.

The third option is what this page is about, and it is what Breadcrumbs & Categories does. No theme code, and your collections stay exactly as they are.

How to create subcategories, step by step

1. Create a collection for each category and subcategory. If you want Shoes › Running Shoes, you need both as collections. A subcategory with no collection behind it has no page to link to.
2. Turn on the app embed in your theme editor. One toggle, no code. This is what lets the app render anything on your storefront.
3. Build the tree. Drag each collection under its parent, or import an existing Shopify navigation menu and use it as the starting shape. Nesting is unlimited, so a three or four level catalog is fine.
4. Add the blocks to your theme. The breadcrumbs block goes on product and collection pages; the subcategories block goes on collection pages where you want children listed.
5. Check a product that sits in several collections. This is the case that breaks most setups, and it is worth verifying before you call the job done. See how a breadcrumb path is chosen.

The full walkthrough with screenshots lives in the category tree documentation.

Displaying subcategories on a collection page

Building the tree is half the job. The other half is showing it, so that somebody who lands on Shoes can see Running Shoes, Boots and Sandals without going back to the menu.

There are two subcategory block styles, and the choice is a real one: text below the image reads better for long category names, while text overlaid on the image is denser and works well for a small number of children. Both are covered in the blocks documentation, and compared side by side in text links vs cards vs slider.

Two settings to decide early: whether to show a product count on each child, and how the block should behave on mobile, where most of your traffic actually is.

A structure that works

A category tree is a navigation decision before it is a technical one. The shape that holds up over time is shallow and wide rather than deep and narrow: a shopper should reach any product in three clicks or fewer, and every category should be a phrase a customer would actually say.

Two guides go deeper on this: how to structure Shopify subcategories for the shape itself, and organizing them for product discovery for what the structure does to conversion. If your catalog is already large, the collection hierarchy guide covers migrating an existing flat catalog without breaking URLs.

Mistakes that cost you traffic

• Building the tree but never adding the block. The most common support question we get is subcategories not showing on the catalog page, and it is almost always this.
• Treating the mega menu as the structure. A menu and a category tree solve different problems, and you generally want both. See mega menu vs breadcrumbs vs subcategories.
• Leaving products in several collections unresolved. If a product belongs to Sale, Summer and Running Shoes, something has to decide which path its breadcrumb shows. Left to chance, the same product shows a different path to different visitors.
• Naming categories after internal jargon. Category names end up in breadcrumbs, in structured data, and in search results. Guiding customers to subcategories covers naming that works for both shoppers and search.

Common questions

Can you create subcategories in Shopify natively?

No. Shopify collections are flat, with no parent and child relationship. You can nest a navigation menu, but that only changes the menu; it does not create subcategory pages, breadcrumbs, or structured data. To get real subcategories you add a hierarchy on top of the collections you already have.

What is the difference between a collection and a subcategory?

A collection is a Shopify object that holds products. A subcategory is a collection that has been declared the child of another collection. The collection does not change; what changes is that the store now knows Running Shoes sits inside Shoes, and can show that path.

Do subcategories help Shopify SEO?

Indirectly, and the honest version matters. A hierarchy gives search engines a clear crawl path from the homepage to deep product pages, and it produces BreadcrumbList structured data so Google can show the category path instead of a bare URL in results. It does not raise rankings by itself.

How many levels of subcategories can I have?

As many as your catalog needs, though most stores are better served by three levels or fewer. Depth costs clicks, and every extra level is one more place a shopper can give up.

Which path shows when a product is in several collections?

That is decided by a seven rule priority system, running in order from the path the visitor actually browsed, down to the order collections come back from Shopify. The full order is in the multi-collection documentation.

Do I need to edit my theme code?

No. Setup is an app embed toggle plus dragging blocks into your theme in the Shopify theme editor. Nothing is written into your Liquid templates, so removing the app leaves your theme as it was.