In this guide 6 sections
A sporting goods catalogue must hold what players ask about. A bat needs hand and willow grade, a club needs loft and shaft flex, and goggles need age band and lens tint, each stored as a filterable field. Stock is counted per size, and clubs get team accounts.
One product template cannot describe every sport
A cricket bat, a seven iron and a pair of swim goggles share almost nothing, yet the buyer of each one asks a different set of questions before paying. One form cannot cover them.
Most store templates offer a title, a colour, a size and a description box. Everything else gets typed into that box, where a filter cannot read it and a shopper has to scroll to find it.
Listen to the shop floor for a week. Write down every question a customer asks before buying a bat, a club or goggles, in the customer’s own words. Those questions become your fields.
- Cricket bat: left or right hand, willow grade, short handle or long handle, weight band, toe shape
- Golf club: hand, loft, lie angle, shaft flex, shaft material, grip size
- Swim goggles: lens tint, mirrored or clear, strap type, nose bridge, adult or junior fit
- Football boots: studs for firm ground or soft ground, upper material, narrow or wide last
Group the fields by sport, then let filters read them
Build field sets, not one long form. A common set covers brand, sport, age band and playing level, and a product set adds loft for clubs or willow grade for bats.
Give each field a fixed list of values. If one supplier writes Regular and another writes Reg, the shaft flex filter shows two options and splits your range, so buyers see only part of what you stock. Units matter as well: loft in degrees, weight in grams, length in centimetres.
Mark which fields are required and block publishing until they are filled, so no bat goes live without a hand value that a left hand player can filter on. Hand is the field to enforce first.
Stock belongs to the size, not to the product
Boots in one colour are really many items. Size 7 sits on the shelf while size 9 has sold out, and a page that says in stock hides that and invites an order nobody can fill.
Give every size its own SKU and barcode, and count stock against that line, so the shelf count and the website agree after every sale and every return. Keep one size chart per brand. The same number runs small in one make and large in another.
Juniors need two guides. Parents buy by age, yet children grow by height, so show both on the chart.
- One SKU and one barcode for each size and colour
- A size chart for each brand and each age band
- A reorder point on every size line, not on the product
- A notify me button on a sold out size
- Returns logged by size, to show which charts mislead
Team accounts change how clubs and schools buy
A coach does not buy one jersey. A coach orders a kit for a squad: sizes for each player, names and numbers on the back, the badge on the chest and one invoice for the treasurer.
A team account holds the roster, the sizes already worn, the approved logo in a vector file, the billing contact and the ground where parcels are received. Next season’s reorder starts from last season’s list.
Add an approval step. The coach confirms the spelling of every name and number on a proof sheet before printing starts, because a misspelt shirt cannot be unprinted.
Test the catalogue with five real customers
Pull five past orders that caused trouble. A left handed junior batter, a golfer replacing a single iron, a swim squad wanting two lens tints and a school ordering house kit all make good tests.
Enter each order through the website as a stranger would, with nobody on the phone to fill the gaps, and mark every place where a fact had no field. Each gap is a missing field.
Add those fields to the category first, because retrofitting a field across a large range later means opening every product page one at a time. Then load the next batch.
Sport by sport attribute sheet
One page, one row for each field. The columns are sport, product type, field name, allowed values, unit, required or optional, shown as a filter, and varies by size. A separate section covers team accounts: roster, sizes, logo file, billing contact, delivery ground and the person who approves spellings.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
How many fields should one product carry?
Only the ones a buyer uses to choose, or that cause a return when they are wrong. Leave the rest in the description. A short set that is always filled beats a long set that sits half empty on most products.
Do I need a separate catalogue for each sport?
No. Keep one catalogue and attach a field set to each category. Shared fields such as brand and age band stay common, and the sport specific ones appear only on the products where they belong.
Should each size be a separate product?
No. Keep one product page with a variant for each size. Every variant carries its own SKU, barcode and stock count, so the page stays tidy while the shelf count stays true.
What does a team account need to hold?
The roster with sizes, the approved logo file, a billing contact, a delivery address and whoever signs off the spellings. Past orders sit beside it so a reorder takes minutes.