Product: Nexternal

Article Link: http://help.truecommerce.com/en/articles/4559003-nexternal-product-catalog-management-three-key-boolean-options

Turning on the “Hide Inactive” boolean option is highly recommended. It makes Canceled/Discontinued/Inactive Orders, Categories, Products, Vendors, Customers, Coupons, Gift Certificates, Affiliates, and Users disappear from your Order Management System (OMS) screens, and from most lists on OMS detail screens (e.g. Product Sales, Products in Category, etc.). When hidden, the data isn’t deleted from the database, so search results will still include these items, and you can always turn off this Boolean option temporarily if you want to see all of the data. However, keeping it on makes your product catalog much easier to use on a day-to-day basis, especially as time goes on and you have more and more data in your database.

The Product Status Sort boolean option controls whether or not in-stock products are always displayed on the store page above out-of-stock products when default sorting is used in the Online Store. Using this option ensures that the products that are available for immediate purchase are always the items that your customers see first.

If the option is on, Product Status takes precedence in a default sort (i.e. when you don’t select any specific sort order). Products with Normal status are displayed first, followed by Preordered, Backordered, and finally Sold Out. Only after sorting by Product Status does the order set on the category level, the Product Name, and/or the Keyword Match score (in the case of a Keyword Search) become relevant. If the option is off, Product Status is not considered during sorting.

Note: This option does not apply when you select a specific sort order as made available via the Sort By Options (Settings / Site Options / Sort By Options).

The Show Empty Categories boolean option controls whether a category is visible in your Online Store when it contains no visible products. If this option is on, all categories appear, provided that they have an appropriate Visibility value; if this option is off, empty categories do not appear. It is helpful to keep this on when setting up your Nexternal store so you can see all your categories whether or not you have added products to them yet. But keeping it on when the store is live and exposing customers to empty categories which are "dead ends", does not create a great customer experience.

Therefore, Nexternal recommends that most clients keep this turned OFF when your store is live, and turning this option on only if you offer a large number of categories (i.e. 500+) and/or a deep category hierarchy (i.e. 4+ levels). Keeping it off allows significantly faster category navigation in your online store.

rev: 10/21/20