If you read my previous blog entry, The CartGT Difference, you may be wondering why Departments are such a big deal to me. First off, Departments are not something I just dreamed up, it's how most retail stores are setup. And for good reason, having brands and products grouped within distinct departments helps organize a store for both the shoppers and the merchants. When you walk into any home center, clothing store, sporting goods store, floor covering store, grocery store, etc.. you start looking around for the department that has what you are looking to buy. It makes shopping faster and easier.

If you are a store owner beginning to setup your product catalog for a e-commerce web site you understand immediately the idea of Departments. Within each Department I can add my Brand names and Products that belong to that Brand in that specific Department. 

It makes more sense than using Categories like most shopping carts do today. Imagine setting up a store and you are told you need Parent Categories at the root and then add child categories. Plus, you can add child categories to child categories and eventually one of those child categories will point to products. That may seem clear to a programming geek but to the average retail store owner that sounds daunting to manage and confusing. Plus, in a large product catalog you may have a long, long list of parent to child categories to sort through everytime you want to make a change.

If you have ever setup a store with a lot of parent to child categories you will love using the CartGT Department concept!