Catalogue, filters and collections

We read every product on the shop, including drafts and archived items, and compared what each one is with how it was recorded. A few things stood out:

• Only half of the live products had the right product type. The SS26 launch had been entered by range, so pillowshams and cushions were recorded as "Bedspread", and the new table linen, throws and seat pads as "House & Home".
• The middle bedspread size was called "One Size". It is the 250 x 260 cm size for a double or king bed, which is what shoppers search for.
• Some collections had drifted. Bedroom showed only 7 products, Kitchen & Garden showed none, and Table Cloths was a copy of Table Linen.

A product's type is used in more places than it looks, so before changing a single one we mapped everything that depends on it:

• Collections. Four collections chose their products by type and eleven by tag. Changing types straight away would have emptied the Bedroom, House & Home and Rugs pages.
• Google Shopping. The ads decide which products to show by their exact type, so a renamed type would have quietly dropped products from the ads.
• The website itself. The theme uses product type in one place: the "The Full Look" heading above the add-on items on bedspreads.

So the change was made in stages. Collections and ads were first set to accept both the old and the new names, the types were then changed, and only after that were the old names removed. Nothing went empty at any point, and a full copy of the previous set-up was saved first so any step could be reversed.

Every product now has one of 18 clear types. Archived home products were included too, so anything brought back from the archive returns with the right information. The Google Shopping campaigns were updated to use the new types at the same time.

Fifteen collections now fill themselves from the product type, so a new product appears in the right places as soon as it is added. The ones in the main menu that are picked by hand were corrected directly.

Cushion Complete was kept as it is. It is the edit of cushions that match a bedspread set, featured on the Bedding page. Cushions holds the full range. We also fixed the homepage "Shop now" button on the September Reset slide, which was leading to a sale page that no longer exists; it now goes to Bedspreads.

Tags were simplified. They had been doing four jobs at once: season, type, size and colour. Now that collections fill themselves from the product type, tags only mark the season, such as SS26.

We added five details to every product. Each one is a pick list, so values are chosen rather than typed and there are no spelling variations. They are managed in Shopify under Content, then Metaobjects.

We filled the five details across all 207 live, draft and unlisted products: 844 values in total. They were worked out from each product's name and description, and every list was read through before anything was saved. Two checks were built in along the way:

• Colours come from the product name only, because descriptions often recommend other ranges ("contrast with our Burford Cream") and would have given products the wrong colour.
• A rule that would have marked every Stonewash product as stone coloured was caught and removed before anything was written.

One gap: Material is blank on 22 products whose descriptions have an empty Material line: all Vintage Stripe, all Heritage Loom and Melbury French Grey. They will join the Material filter once the fibre content is confirmed.

Shoppers will be able to narrow every collection by Type, Size, Colour, Pattern, Material and Features. The filters are set up and are being previewed on a copy of the website before they go live:

• Each page only shows the filters that make sense for it. A filter with just one option is hidden, so Bedspreads does not show Type.
• Size and Colour are open when the page loads; the others open with a click.
• Sizes are a simple tick-box list, and colours appear as swatches.

To make the Size filter read clearly, the middle bedspread size was renamed. It is the 250 x 260 cm size for a double or king bed, which is what shoppers look for.

With the product details in place, new collection pages can be built that fill themselves. We paired every product type with every colour, pattern, material, feature and size, checked how many people search for each in the UK every month, and ranked them. These are the 24 to build first:

A further 15 smaller pages follow, plus a page for each coordinated range (Stonewash, Constance, Olivia, Melbury and more), so shoppers can see a whole set together.

1. Forever EnglandConfirm fibre content for Vintage Stripe, Heritage Loom and Melbury French Grey, so they can join the Material filter.
2. Forever EnglandTwo size names to tidy. Olivia Blue Jacquard's sizes include "(Pre-Order)" in the name, and the Lulworth Duck Egg placemats have a size called "Set of 2 Placemats". Both appear as extra options in the Size filter.
3. TogetherReview the filters and switch them on across the website.
4. Wyze DigitalFill in Shopify product categories, then build the new collection pages, starting with Green, Pink and Blue Cushions and Quilted Bedspreads, each with its own page title, description and short introduction. They will be ready to review before they are published.
5. Wyze DigitalRange pages and the Bedspread Sets page, so every product can link to its matching pieces.