Tutorial on how to create and set up a Product Line Collection for your Shopify website.

The Product Collection Collections on the Shopify standalone site are what we usually think of as the product categories on a website, and the Shopify frontend Menu is also generated by calling the Product Collection we set up in the Shopify backend.

The difference with the Category we usually understand is that the Product Collection can not only be used as a Product Category, it can also be used to automatically categorize products according to various product classification rules we set up to make various types of product sets.

For example, all products tagged with New Arrival are automatically categorized into the New Arrival product group and displayed on the frontend of the site, or all products priced under $10 on Shopify are automatically categorized into a Collection called Low Price, and all discounted products into a Collection called Sales, etc. etc. etc. etc. Collection, and so on and so forth. After we set up the product classification rules, all the newly added products will be automatically added to the product group as long as they meet the product classification rules set up above.

Shopify Website Create a Product Line Collection

Click the "Create Collection" button shown above to open the product collection creation page as shown below. We need to submit the title and description of the collection, select the type of collection, set the SEO of the sales channel, the sales channel, and the collection image.

Titles and descriptions of product lines / search engine product pages

Because the Collection page is the most important SEO traffic acquisition page in the whole website besides the homepage, we should put the keywords that are not put on the homepage into the title and description of the product collection page as much as possible. Specific strategies recommended to read my book on eCommerce SEO Mastery book notes, the conditions of the recommendation to buy the original book to read.

Product Family Availability

That is, the product line to be displayed in which sales channels, this we according to their own needs to check, but, for our independent site sellers, at least to check the "online store" this sales channel. The safest thing is to check all the boxes.

If we don't check the "Online Store" box, the product line won't be found on the Shopify Indie frontend.

Product Series Pictures

Collection images are displayed on the collection listing page, which is the "yourdomain.com/collections" page on our Shopify site. If we also call a product range on the home page of our website, then the product range images we set up will also be displayed on the home page of our website.

Because these images will be used as background images, it is generally recommended that there is no text information on the image, otherwise it will look messy. The image below is the product system image displayed on the product category listing page in Shopify. Most of the themes will automatically add a background color to the images when they call our uploaded images to highlight the text and buttons on the images. If you don't have this effect, you need to use PS or Canva to process the image to get a better display effect.

Product Series Types

Shopify offers two types of product families: manual and automatic. The main difference between the two is that the manually created product family type is "dead", if we need to add a product to the manual type of product family, we need to manually associate the two, which is very inflexible; the automatically created product family type is "live", as long as it meets the rules set by the automatic product family, it will be automatically added to the product family. The automatically created product line type is "live", as long as the products meet the rules set by the automatic product line, they will be automatically added to the product line.

Note that manual and automatic types cannot be switched between each other after they have been created.

In general, the use of manual and automatic types of product series creation, in the operation of the difficulty will not be very big difference. However, when you have a large number of products and you are filtering products based on some complex criteria, the advantage of the automatic type becomes apparent. For example, if I want to add all the products that sell for less than $50 on Shopify to a new product line for a promotional campaign, using auto-typing, even if there are tens of thousands of products on the Shopify site, the product line can be created with a few clicks of the mouse. For the same conditions, using the manual type, it may take several days to complete.

In addition, after determining the independent station to sell what products, we should be a simple classification of the products they want to do, it is recommended that the site's general directory structure written on paper or Excel sheet inside, to pet supplies to the following table as an example

Pet	Dog	Dog Leash
		Dog Collar
		Dog Clothes
	Cat	Cat Toys
		Cat Treats
		Cat Bed

Based on the table above, we can have a general idea about product categorization. Then use manual or automatic rules to create these product families in the Shopify backend, and when you add products later, you can manually or automatically categorize the new products into the product family it belongs to according to the preset rules.

Creating a manual type product line

Manual type product families are created in 2 steps: the first step is to create a manual type product family; the second step is to add products to that family and sort those products.

As shown in the figure below, create a manual type of product series, in the product series type select "Manual", the other options in accordance with the above we have said to fill in order, and finally submit.

Once the manual product family has been created, the page will automatically refresh and the "Products" section will appear as shown below. From here, you can search for a product keyword or click the "Browse" button to see all the products on the Shopify website and check the ones you want to add to this manual type of product line. These products will appear in the list below.

Then, we can further sort these products by "Sales, Product Title Initials, Price, Product Upload Time, or Manual Drag and Drop" through the "Sort" option. Products are added and sorted automatically.

The product sorting set in the backend is also the product sorting on the frontend of the site. It is important to note that if you sort by sales, the Shopify system is based on the last 30 days of sales, not total sales. And multi-attribute/variant products are not ranked according to the sum of all variant sales for comparison. Also, the rankings are updated every week.

After completing the addition and sorting of products, we can view the actual display effect in the website frontend. The following figure: website background and website foreground product sorting is consistent. Specific product categories of the title, description, and how the picture is displayed, each theme is different, refer to the theme we use to set up tutorials to complete the relevant settings.

We can also select the products we want to add to a Product Line Collection on the All Products list page, and then batch edit to add these products to a product line, as shown in the following figure:

In addition, when uploading new products in the Shopify backend, we can use the "Product Organizer" - "Product Families" textbox on the right sidebar of the product upload management page to select one or more of the already-created product families, and add new products to them.

Creation of auto-typed product families

Automated type product families allow faster creation of more complex product portfolios.

It will be based on the filtering rules we set up to meet the conditions of all the products automatically included in this product line. Filtering conditions can be very simple, consisting of one or two rules, can also be very complex, consisting of a number of rules; rules can be "or" relationship, as long as any of the conditions can be satisfied, can also be "and" relationship, must meet all the Products must satisfy all the rules to be included in the designated product line.

The filtering rules we've created for product families apply to all products that have been published on Shopify, as well as products that haven't been published yet. Newly uploaded products will automatically be categorized into each eligible product family as long as they meet the rules we've set up.

The process of creating an automated product line is largely the same as the process of creating a manual product line, with the difference that when we select the type of product line to be automated, each of the filtering conditions will appear directly below. The entire product screening process is divided into 2 steps, the first step is to determine the type of conditions to meet all the conditions, or to meet any one of the conditions, the second step is to determine what specific conditions.

As you can see in the image below, I've created a product line with the title "Black Friday Sale" for Black Friday. I've filtered out products on Shopify that are priced between $10 and $50 and have the keyword "Baby" in the title.

"All Conditions is a "with" relationship, meaning that products that meet all of the filters will be added to the Collection. Any Condition" means that products that meet any of the following filters will be added to the collection.

As an example.

• Condition 1 - "Product Type is T Shirt" products: A,B,C,D,E,F
• Condition 2 - "Product Price less than $10" is satisfied for: A,D,F,G,H,W

If we choose "All Condition" All Condition, then the filtered products are those that satisfy both condition 1 and condition 2: A,D,F.

If "Any Condition" is selected, the products that meet condition 1 or condition 2 are filtered out: A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,W.

Shopify supports filters including: "Product Title, Product Type, Product Category, Product Vendor, Product Label, Price, Original Price, Weight, Inventory, Multi-Attribute Header"; each filter will have its own matching method, such as "equals, does not equal, begins with, ends with, contains, does not contain" and so on. end with, contains, does not contain" and so on.

After setting up the filter conditions, save the page, after the page is automatically refreshed, a list of all the products that meet the filter conditions will appear below the filter conditions, and at the same time we can further sort these products. And manual type of product series, the background of how the product is sorted, in the front of the site how these products are sorted from left to right, from top to bottom.

When we upload a new product, as long as the title of the product contains the keyword "Baby" and the price range is between $10-$50, the "Product Organizer" - "Product Line" section of the product page will automatically be tagged with the "Black Friday Sale" tag, which means that the product has been added to the "Black Friday Sale". "Product Range" section of the product page will be automatically tagged with "Black Friday Sale", which means that the product has been added to the "Black Friday Sale This means that the product has been added to the "Black Friday Sale" product line.

If you want to move this product out of this product line, you can either delete "Baby" from the product title, change the price outside of the "10-50" range, or simply change the filter criteria and rules for this product line.

Add product range to website menu

Once the product lines have been created successfully, we can add these product lines to the menu bar on the frontend of the website. The specific operation can be viewed:Shopify Navigation Menu Settings - Adding and Managing Navigation