Hi all. I'm experimenting with how I display my categories, I think it's somewhat confusing for customers, but it's also unique, I kinda like it (I'm open to opinions! My store is in my sig). Basically, I have broad genres, such as Gothic, Tattoo, Rockabilly, etc, and then the subcategories are clothing and different jewelry in the different genres. I like the genres along the top as clickable categories, the way I have it now, but the only way to have it like this (as far as I know), is to set these as my top level categories. This is fine, but then customers may miss all of the products I have available if they don't click on each of the Genres/Categories to open up the subcategories.

Two fixes are to either have the Subcategories always show, even on the home page, but when I've googled how to do this, I only find really old plugins, nothing recent. The other option is to be able to set up completely different categories in the side box. For the top I'd keep the top level categories as is, but then have another different set of top level categories for the side box (instead of Genres such as Gothic, Rockabilly, etc., my categories would be something like Women's Clothing, Men's Clothing, Jewelry, Footwear, etc., categories that are more well known to shoppers).

If I can simply explode the categories in the side, this would be the most simple solution. Any suggestions for either of these ideas? Thanks!!