Product visibility
What can make a Product appear or disappear from your website?
There are a number of settings governing Product visibility:
- Category assignment
- Temporarily enabling or disabling a Product
- Scheduling a Product launch
- Scheduling an expiry date for seasonal products
- Regional availability
Category assignment
Unless directly linked into your navigation, Products are listed within a Category. A Product may be assigned to one or more Categories. This allows Products to be found via multiple navigational routes. If your product isn't appearing within a Category as expected, check its Category assignments (see Adding products to categories).
Enabling/disabling a product
Disabling a product is a quick way to remove a Product from your site whilst maintaining all other settings. Typically, a Product is disabled temporarily whilst addressing an issue or prior to deletion. Enabling or disabling a Product will immediately affect your website's Category listings, site search and XML sitemap, but could take up to 24 hours to be removed from some feeds such as your Google Shopping Feed (see How to disable a product).
Scheduling a Product launch
Scheduling Product launches ahead of time is a great way to prepare seasonal or anticipated products, without the last-minute rush. A Product's Publish Start Date trumps enablement, which means a Product may be enabled yet still not visible to the public until the start date (see Scheduling Product visibility).
Product expiry
Scheduling Product expiry gets you ahead of the game when it comes to seasonal Product management. A Product's Publish End Date trumps enablement, which means a Product may be enabled yet still unavailable if it has expired (see Scheduling Product visibility).
Regional availability
International sites utilising regional Locales may target Products per Locale. This means a Product may be enabled in the UK, but unavailable in the US, for example.