Organising Products in Magento: A Complete Guide
🎯 Why Product Organisation Matters
How products appear in your store directly impacts the customer experience. Well-organised product listings help customers find what they need quickly, while strategic ordering can highlight bestsellers, new arrivals, or promotional items.
This guide covers two key aspects: reordering products and customising how product listings display.
🔄 How Do I Reorder Products in Magento?
Magento offers several methods for controlling product order, from quick filters in the admin to precise manual positioning.
🔍 Using Filters to Find and Sort Products
The admin product grid includes powerful filtering options:
🔤 Keyword Filter — Search for products by name, SKU, or other text attributes
⬆️⬇️ Attribute Sorting — Order products by any attribute value in ascending or descending order (A-Z, 1-9). You can also filter products within specific value ranges.
⚙️ Advanced Filters — Filter by specific and/or ranged values across every attribute your products have
These filters help you quickly locate products for editing, but they don't change how products appear on your storefront.
📂 Controlling Storefront Product Order
To change how products appear to customers, you'll need to work with categories:
1️⃣ Navigate to Catalog > Categories
2️⃣ Select the category you want to reorder
3️⃣ Open the Display Settings tab
4️⃣ Edit the Default Product Listing Sort By option to set automatic sorting rules
✋ Manual Product Positioning
For precise control over product order within a category:
1️⃣ Select your category in the category tree
2️⃣ Open the Products in Category tab
3️⃣ Locate the Position column
4️⃣ Enter numerical values to set exact product positions (lower numbers appear first)
5️⃣ Save the category
💡 Tip: Use position values with gaps (10, 20, 30) rather than consecutive numbers (1, 2, 3). This makes it easier to insert new products later without renumbering everything.
🖼️ How Do I Customise My Product Listing in Magento?
Magento offers two primary display modes for product listings, each suited to different shopping experiences.
📊 Grid View
Products display in a visual grid format showing:
- Product image
- Product name
- Price
✅ Best for: Quick visual comparison between products, browsing-focused shopping, image-heavy catalogues
📋 List View
Products display in a vertical list format showing:
- Product image
- Product name
- Price
- Product description
- Add to cart button
✅ Best for: Information-rich products, customers who want details before clicking through, reducing clicks to purchase
⚙️ Configuring Default Display Mode
To set your default listing style:
1️⃣ Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Catalog
2️⃣ Expand the Storefront section
3️⃣ Find List Mode
4️⃣ Uncheck Use System Value
5️⃣ Select your preferred default display:
- Grid Only — Only grid view available
- List Only — Only list view available
- Grid (default) / List — Both available, grid shown first
- List (default) / Grid — Both available, list shown first
6️⃣ Save the configuration
💡 Best Practice: Give Customers the Choice
Rather than forcing one view, allow customers to switch between grid and list views at their preference. Select either Grid (default) / List or List (default) / Grid to enable the view toggle on your storefront.
This accommodates different shopping styles — some customers prefer visual browsing while others want detailed information upfront.
⏱️ Managing Organisation at Scale
These manual processes work well for small catalogues. However, as your product range grows, maintaining consistent organisation becomes increasingly time-consuming:
- Repositioning products across multiple categories
- Ensuring new products appear in the correct order
- Maintaining consistent categorisation as ranges expand
- Updating seasonal or promotional positioning
🚀 Streamlined Organisation with PIM
A PIM system centralises product organisation:
📂 Category Management — Manage category assignments across your entire catalogue from one interface
🔄 Bulk Updates — Reposition or recategorise hundreds of products simultaneously
📤 Automatic Sync — Push organisational changes to Magento automatically
🎯 Consistent Structure — Maintain the same category logic across Magento and all other sales channels
Book a demo to discover how OneTimePIM can simplify your Magento product organisation.