How to Make Collections on Shopify

Both printed and online catalogs usually don't present product lists as a single list arranged alphabetically or with increasing price. They classify the products into various collections according to their similarities. They even do this in malls; men’s wear and women’s wear aren't lumped together, but they occupy different areas of the same floor (or even occupy different floors!). Therefore, it is simply wise to do the same thing with your online catalog. We can do so on Shopify by using tags, product types, and collections.

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Creating Tags and Adding Tags to Products

Once you are on the Products list page, you can do the following steps:

Step 1: Select the products that you will tag. For our case, we will add a tag to a single product.

Step 2: Click the More actions button on the top. A drop-down list will appear. Click Add tags.

Step 3: A pop-up window for adding tags will appear. You can either type the name of the new tag in the text box or choose existing tags listed below the text box. If you will type two or more tags, separate them by adding a comma. If you type an existing tag, that tag will gray out on the list below. 

How to Add Product Type in Shopify

Another way to help us classify our products better is by adding the product type to our products in our Shopify store. 

To do so, go to the Products page where all your products are listed, then select a product where you want to add a product type. Scroll down until you see the Organization box on the right side of the page.

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When you click the text box below Product type, a drop-down list of existing product types will appear, that you can select. If you want to add a new product type, simply type it, and an option for you to add it as a new product type will appear.

After adding it, click Save.

That’s it! The product type will now appear on the Products list page.

Creating a Collection

We are now ready to create a separate page for our collection. 

Step 1: On the left bar, click the Collections listed under Products.

Step 2: The Collections list page will be loaded. Click the Create collection button on the upper-right corner.

Step 3. The Create collection page will be loaded. Fill in the name and description of the collection.

Step 4. Scroll down until you see the Collection type. Select Automated, and choose either Product tag or Product type as the condition and specify is equal to on the next drop-down box on the right. You can type in the name of the product tag or product type on the text box.

Step 5. Click Save. 

The page for our Wonder Foods collection will look like this:

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Adding the Collection to the Main Menu

While Shopify automatically generates a page for our new collection, this is not yet included in the page navigation of our online store. The next steps will show how to include it to the main menu.

Step 1. Scroll back to the top of the page, and look for Collection availability on the right side. You should see something similar to this:

It will say “To add this collection to your online store's navigation, you need to update your menu”, where “update your menu” is a clickable link. Click the link.

Step 2: The link will bring you to the Navigation settings of the Online Store. Click the Main menu. 

Step 3: The Main menu page contains the list of pages that will be listed in the main menu. Click the Add menu item.

Step 4: A pop-up window will appear where you can add a menu item. Type the name of the menu item. 

Step 5: Click on the textbox below the link. A drop-”down” list will appear above the textbox. Since we will be adding a collection, click Collections.

A list of collections will appear next. Click the name of the collection. For our example, the Wonder Foods collection is selected. 

Click the Add button, then save the changes in the Main menu by clicking Save on the upper-right corner of the page.

The Wonder Foods page is now included in the main menu, making it easily accessible:

You can do this to other products as well, classifying them until you have neat collections in your online store. This will make online shopping for your prospective customers easier, thus increasing your sales!

Adding the Same Product to Multiple Collections

Let’s say we have created a new collection named All Our Foods. Our collection is originally empty:

To add products, simply go to the Product list by clicking Products on the left sidebar, and then clicking on the product to add. Scroll down the product info page until you reach the Collections box on the right side of the page. Simply click on the text box. The collection you just created will appear. In our case, that is the All Our Foods collection. 

Click the collection name, then save the changes by clicking the Save button on the upper-right corner of the page that will appear. The product will now appear on our collection page.