Alphabetical Listing of Products

Hi,

I can't think of where else on the forum to post this so hope its ok here. I'm using zen cart v1.3.8a and MySQL 5

i'm looking for suggestions on the best way to have an alphabetical listing for my products (basically like an index in a printed catalog).

The problem I'm runnning into is that the category/ subcategory //sub sub category list is too big. Customers wont take the time to drill down through the lists and because a lot of parts are called different things, they cant find them when they use the search facility.

i've spoken to someone in the same business as me to see what their experience is and they confirmed that customers usually end up sending an email to see if they stock a certain product - even though its already listed in the shop.

So I was thinking of setting up a category called something like "Alphabetic listing" and then sub categories for each letter of the alphabet. I can then link the products (disabling images, hopefully so it only appears as text) into the correct letter sub cat. The user site map should also pick this up.

A lot of the products i have can belong to 4 or 5 categories and are called different things depending on where somebody is from e.g. Universal Joint, u joint, hardy spicer, hardy spider, harvey spicer, and, cross joint are all the same thing and thats not even listing all the names I've heard this one product called! The unusual thing is that if a customer is shown a list of product they can usually pick out what they want even if its listed under a name they wouldn't normally think of

I know i have a habit of complicating things so hopefully someone here will see a simple solution to what I'm after.

Thanks

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=276

Adapt this?

~Melanie