A question I get a lot from clients is about Shopify Collections. What are they, how do I set one up, and what the heck are the conditions? A core Shopify function that’s simple but can also be quite confusing. Let’s break this down and get a firm grasp of what these things are.
What is a Shopify collection?
Remember those anchor stores that used to be in malls? They were huge stores with all kinds of different departments. A clothing store could have women’s, men’s, kids, luggage, and beauty departments. Each with different products. Shopify collections are essentially the same thing. Different pages on your website that will contain products that match what the collection is.
How do I set up a Shopify collection?
Inside your Shopify admin, go to Products and then click Collections. That takes you to the main collections screen, where you can see the collections that already exist in the store. Some of them may be published to customers, and some may only be there for internal use – more on this later.
In Shopify admin, start in Products and then open Collections.
From there, click Add collection in the top right. Shopify will open a brand new collection page where you can fill in the title, description, collection type, products, image, SEO details, and publishing settings.
The collections screen shows what already exists and where to add a new one.
Start with the title
The title is what customers will see when they shop your store, so keep it clear! New Arrivals, Best Sellers, Under $100, Staff Picks, or Summer Collection. You get the point – the name does not need to be clever. It just needs to tell people what kind of products they’re going to find.
Do not skip the description!
Honestly, this is something I see most brands skip, and unless it’s a collection for a short promotion or just something that’s only going to be up for a limited time, skipping the description is a mistake.
This is where you’ll want to write details about the products that are in the collections. “These t-shirts are part of the lux line collection. Each shirt is made from 100% cotton and handcrafted…” – you get the idea. Will a customer read the description? Probably not. But, search engines will, and if you have quality content and enough of it, it can help your store rank in organic SEO and GEO. It’s a long game, and depending on your industry, it may be a very congested space, so YMMV, but what’s it going to hurt, right?
The add collection screen is where you name the collection, write the description, and choose the collection type.
Let’s talk Manual vs Smart collections.
Shopify gives you two collection types. Manual and Smart. The names are a little clunky, but the difference is easy to understand once you see it in action.
A manual collection is a collection that requires you to add the products manually. You search for the products, click the box next to the ones you’d like in this particular collection, and hit add. Easy! This is usually pretty simple and fast. However, it can be difficult to maintain, especially if your store has a large catalog. In those situations, and really for the majority of stores we’ve worked with, smart collections are the way to go. What makes a collection “smart” is the fact that you can set conditions on what products you want, and Shopify will automatically curate the collection for you in the background. Work smarter, not harder, right?
For a manual collection, you select the products yourself and then add them to the collection.
How do smart collection conditions work?
When you select a “Smart” collection type, you’ll see a new conditions field show up. This is where you set the “rules” for what products will show up in your collection. Shopify has done a good job lately with adding the types of conditions available. 9 times out of 10, what we see stores doing is setting tags for the collection.
Let’s say you set the condition to be Tag – Is equal to – New. What’s going to happen is any product in your store that has the tag New will show up in the collection. If you set it to Tag – Is not equal to – New, then you’ll have any product that does NOT have the New tag on it. Starting to make sense?
You can have multiple conditions if you’d like to really start to get detailed. The option to add custom meta fields as collection conditions is something that Shopify rolled out not too long ago, and for us it’s been a bit of a game changer.
Check this out: we have one client that has a huge number of SKUs and multiple IRL locations as well as a large online presence. The issue that we were running up against was items showing in collections that were actually sold out online but had stock in-store. Shopify doesn’t offer a way to differentiate between these yet. What we were able to do was create a custom app that ran in the background. Anytime a product would sell out online and only online, we would add a custom metafield to the item. This metafield was then added as a condition to the store’s collections.
SO, any sold-out item in the collection was automatically removed without the owner or staff having to do anything. This frees up so much time and really makes the customer experience better by not having to sift through pages of sold-out items.
This is the “rule-builder” that runs a smart collection.
Collection merchandising
Once products are inside the collection, the next step is merchandising. That is just a fancy marketer’s way of saying you decide how the products should be sorted. Maybe you want best sellers at the top. Maybe you want newer products first. Maybe you are pushing a promotion and want certain items to lead.
Shopify gives you the usual sorting options, and you can also sort manually when you want tighter control. That can be helpful if you are matching products to a campaign, a seasonal theme, or even just the way the product photos look next to each other.
After the products are in the collection, you can control the display order.
Put on the finishing touches
The last bits of setting up a collection in your Shopify store are adding the featured image, tweaking the SEO, and publishing the collection to your sales channels.
You’ll find the image on the right-hand side of the page. This image is used for various things depending on your Shopify theme or any connected sales channels. If you don’t add an image, it’s not the end of the world. Most of the time, the first image of the first product in the collection will be used automatically. If you do add an image, just make sure not to forget to add the alt text to the image. Alt text is just a description of what the image is. It’s essential for accessibility and can be nice for SEO.
And speaking of SEO, at the bottom of the page you’ll find a box titled Search Engine Listing. You don’t HAVE to do anything here. Shopify will automatically take content from the collection and fill it out for you. However, if you have a specific title and description you want to show up when people find you through search engines, this is where you update that information.
Almost done! The final step is to publish your collection so your customers can start shopping. You’ll find this at the top right of the page in the box called “Publishing”. Hit the manage link, and in the pop-up you can choose the sales channels you’d like the collection to appear in.
There are instances when a store doesn’t want a collection to be published. This can be a great way for internal teams to organize products that they need to work on. Pro tip: for these types of collections that are for staff use only, add something to the title to make it very clear, like “INTERNAL USE ONLY”. This will help prevent any accidental publishing of a collection that’s not meant for customers.
Shopify lets you edit the collection’s page title, meta description, and URL.
And there you have it – the basics of Shopify collections and how to set them up, along with a couple more advanced use cases. If you have any questions or would like to know more, feel free to contact us through this site or ping us on social media. We’re always happy to chat about all things Shopify!