Organize products into collections

A collection is a group of products that shoppers can browse together — your New arrivals, Sale, a brand, or a category page. Each collection gets its own storefront page at /collections/<handle>, can be linked from your menus, and can be rendered by collection sections in your theme. Collections are the main way you merchandise a store, so they’re a natural next step after adding products.

You build collections in two ways, and you choose which when you create one:

• Manual — you hand-pick the exact products and can drag them into the order you want. Best for curated, editorial collections (New arrivals, Gift picks).
• Automated — you set rules (for example Brand is equal to Nike or Price is less than 999), and any product that matches is added and removed automatically. Best for category- or attribute-driven collections that should stay current as your catalog changes.

Caution

The collection type is locked after you create it — you can’t switch a manual collection to automated, or vice versa. Pick the right one up front.

Before you start

• Add some products first. A collection only shows products that exist in your catalog. See add products.
• Make sure products are published to the online store. A product that isn’t active or isn’t enabled for online selling won’t appear on a collection page, even if it matches every rule. See product status & scheduling.

Create a manual collection

Open Products → Collection in the admin sidebar and click to create a new collection.

1. Name it. Under Start with a name, type the shopper-facing Title (for example New arrivals). The URL Handle is generated from the name automatically; you can change it later in Advanced settings.

2. Choose how products get in. Under How should products get into this collection?, pick I’ll choose products (the manual option).

3. Add products. In the Products card, click Browse Products and select the products you want. They appear in the list immediately.

4. Set the order. With Sort By set to Manual, drag products by the handle on the left to arrange them. The order you set here is the order shoppers see. (Switch to any other sort to order automatically instead — see Sort order.)

5. Add a cover image and description (optional). Use the Collection Image card to pick a banner/thumbnail from your media library, and the Description field to tell shoppers what’s in the collection. Both are optional.

6. Set visibility and save. Choose Draft, Active, or Scheduled (see Visibility), then save.

Tip

After saving, you can keep editing membership at any time. To rearrange a saved manual collection, the Sort By menu must be on Manual — otherwise the list is ordered automatically and drag-to-reorder is disabled. You can also multi-select products and use Move to Top / Move to Bottom.

Create an automated collection

Automated (sometimes called smart) collections fill themselves from rules.

1. Name it the same way as a manual collection.

2. Choose how products get in. Pick Add products automatically (the automated option). A rule builder appears.

3. Decide how rules combine. Under How should rules work together?, choose:

   • Match every rule — a product must satisfy all the rules (AND).
   • Match any rule — a product needs to satisfy just one rule (OR).

4. Add rules. Click Add another condition, then for each row pick a Field, a Rule (the relation), and a Value. See the field and relation reference below.

5. Set the sort order, image, SEO, and visibility, then save.

Products don’t appear in the product list while you’re still creating an automated collection — they’re matched and shown after you save. Once saved, the Products card shows everything that currently matches your rules.

Automated collection rules

Each rule has three parts: the Field to test, the Rule (how to compare), and the Value to compare against. You can mix standard fields with your own custom fields (metafields).

Fields you can build rules on:

Field	What it checks
Product title	The product’s name
Product type	The standard product type
Custom product type	Your own free-text product type on the product
Category	The product’s category
Brand	The product’s brand / vendor
Product tag	A tag applied to the product
Price	The product’s price
MSRP	The compare-at / list price
Weight	The product’s weight
Inventory count	Units in stock
Variant title	The title of any variant
Custom fields (metafields)	Any product metafield enabled for use in automated collections

The standard fields above are grouped under Standard Fields in the Field dropdown. Any eligible metafields appear in a separate Metafields group, each labelled with its name followed by (Metafield).

Note

Custom fields appear in the Field dropdown only when the metafield definition allows it. Turn on Automated Collections access for the definition under your metafield settings to make it available here. See metafields.

Relations (the Rule dropdown): the available comparisons depend on the field’s data type.

• Text fields (title, type, brand, category, variant title): is equal to, is not equal to, contains, does not contain, starts with, ends with, is set, is not set.
• Number fields (price, MSRP, weight, inventory count): is equal to, is not equal to, is greater than, is less than, is greater than or equal to, is less than or equal to, is set, is not set.
• Product tag: is equal to, is not equal to, is set, is not set.
• Yes/No custom fields: is equal to, is not equal to, is set, is not set.

When you choose is set or is not set, no value is needed — the rule just checks whether the field has a value at all.

Tip

Build broad rules with Match any rule to pool several brands or tags into one page, and narrow rules with Match every rule to combine conditions (for example Brand is equal to Nike and Price is less than 4999 for a Nike-under-5k collection).

Set the sort order

The Sort By menu controls the order products appear on the storefront collection page. The options are:

• Manual (manual collections only — drag to arrange)
• Best Selling
• Name (A-Z) / Name (Z-A)
• Price (Low to High) / Price (High to Low)
• Newest / Oldest
• Date Added (Oldest to Newest) / Date Added (Newest to Oldest)

For automated collections, Manual isn’t available because membership is rule-driven, not hand-ordered. Pick a sort that suits the collection — for example Newest for a New arrivals page or Best Selling for a Popular page.

Set visibility

Every collection has a publish state in the Status card:

• Draft — hidden from shoppers until you publish it. Use this while you build.
• Active — visible to shoppers as soon as you save.
• Scheduled — choose a future Publish on date and time, and the collection goes live automatically then. The schedule uses your current timezone.

SEO, web address & theme template

Open Advanced settings → Search Engine Listing to control how the collection appears in search and which URL and template it uses.

1. URL Handle. This is the /collections/<handle> part of the URL. It’s generated from the name but you can edit it — keep it lowercase, with words separated by hyphens, and unique within your store. Changing it changes the page’s URL.

2. Theme template. If your theme provides alternate collection templates, pick one here. Leave it on Default to use the standard collection layout.

3. Meta Title and Meta Description. Override how the page is titled and summarized in search results. If you leave the meta title blank, your storefront can fall back to the collection name. For deeper guidance see SEO.

You can also attach Custom fields (metafields) to a collection from Advanced settings if your theme or workflows read extra structured data — see metafields.

Add a collection to your navigation

A collection page exists as soon as it’s live, but shoppers still need a link to it. Add it to a menu so it shows in your header or footer.

1. Go to Content → Menus and open the menu you want (for example main-menu).

2. Click Add menu item, type the visible menu item title, and click the link field.

3. From the link picker, choose All collections or a specific collection. When you pick a collection, you can optionally add a Filter by tags value so the link opens a pre-filtered version of the page.

4. Save the menu.

For the full menu, pages, and blog walkthrough, see navigation, pages & blog.

Troubleshooting

A product isn’t showing in an automated collection. Check, in order:

• Rule match. Re-read your rules. With Match every rule, the product must satisfy all of them; a single failing condition excludes it. Numeric rules compare exact values — Price is less than 999 excludes a product priced exactly 999 (use is less than or equal to for inclusive).
• Product status. A product that’s a draft or not yet published won’t appear. Confirm it’s active and (for online sales) enabled for the online store. See product status & scheduling.
• The collection itself is a draft. A draft collection won’t render on the storefront at all. Set the Status to Active.
• Field value mismatch. Text relations are matched against the value you typed — a Brand is equal to rule needs to match the brand on the product exactly. Switch to contains if you’re unsure of the exact text.

I can’t drag products to reorder. Drag-to-reorder works only on manual collections with Sort By set to Manual. If the Sort By menu shows any other option, switch it back to Manual.

I can’t change a collection from manual to automated. You can’t — the type is fixed at creation. Recreate the collection with the type you want.

Next steps

Add products

Stock your catalog so collections have something to show. Add products

Navigation & menus

Surface collections in your header and footer. Navigation, pages & blog

Search & discovery

Add filters and faceted browsing on collection pages. Search & discovery

SEO

Fine-tune titles, descriptions, and handles for search. SEO