Shopify Filters: Create Custom Filters Without Coding

When the products in the collections are in multiple hundreds or thousands, it’s quite difficult for shoppers to find the right product. To ease their problem, you should add searching filters to your store so that they can search products as per their requirement in less time. This guide will help you know about Shopify filters. Also, you can find a few FAQs on Shopify filters.

Shopify Filters

Shopify allows you to enable filtering so that your customers can find products with their interests. But you can show the Shopify filters on your online store only if you are using Shopify 2.0 themes. You can locate the filter options in your store: Online Store > Navigation in your Shopify admin.

There are two types of Shopify Filters you can add to your collections: (1) Default Filters, and (2) Custom Filters.

Default Filters in Shopify

As you can see in the above picture, by default, Shopify provides 4 product filters in your stores. When you enable these default filters, your customers can search products by availability, primary price, product type, and vendor (brand).

Custom Filters in Shopify

The custom filters are the existing product variants (you define while creating the product) and metafields (product and variant metafields) which you use in your store. Therefore, you can enable the custom filters to let your customers find products by their variants and other information (metafields).

How to Create Custom Filters in Shopify

You can add up to 20 custom filters to your collection in addition to the 4 default filters. As the custom filters use the product variants and metafields to determine with filter options to show on the storefront, you can create these custom filters either creating a product variant or creating a metafield.

Let’s learn how to create custom filters in both ways.

Creating Custom Filter via Product Variants

In Shopify, you can have up to 100 variants and up to 3 variant options for each product. To create a custom filter via Product Variants, you need to add variants to your product.

Follow these steps to add variants to a product:

1. Go to Products > All products from your Shopify store admin.
2. If you already have a product, edit the product, otherwise, create it by clicking on the Add product button.
3. In the Options section, select the This product has options, like size or color checkbox.
4. In Option name, enter a name for the option, such as “Size”.
5. In Option values, enter each option value in a separate field.
6. Click the Done button.

If you want to add more variant options for your product, click the Add another option and repeat step 4 to step 6.

Once you are done with creating the variant options, you can see the product variants are automatically created under the Variants section. All you need to do is add images, set the prices, quantity (stock based on location), SKUs, barcodes, etc. for each variant. You can also use the Bulk edit option to fill the product variants faster.

Next, save the changes by clicking the Save button.

Now, you can check whether this product variant is visible as a filter option in your store. Also, you can add it to show on your collection page by following the below steps:

1. Go to Online Store > Navigation from Shopify store admin.
2. Click on Add filters.
3. In Product options, select the recently created product variant, i.e. “Size”.
4. Click Done.

Result: Showing the Custom Filter on the Storefront

Creating Custom Filter via Shopify Metafields

Similar to the product variant, you can create custom filters by creating metafields either for product or variant. While adding a metafield for custom filter use, you need to make sure the content type should be one of the following:

• Single-Line Text
• Integer or Decimal Number

Follow these steps to create a metafield definition:

1. Go to Settings > Metafields from your Shopify store admin.
2. Select the type of metafield you want to create. Let’s say, Products.
3. Click the Add definition button.
4. In the Name field, enter a name for your definition, such as “Age Group”.
5. Next, enter a description for your metafield values (optional).
6. Click Select content type, and then select the content type (Text or Number).
7. If the Content type is Text, select “Single line text”. And for Number content type, select either Integer or Decimal.
8. In the Validation section, configure the Additional rules to limit the range of accepted values (optional).
9. Save the changes.

After creating a metafield definition, you need to add values to this metafield. Follow the steps to add values to the product metafield definition:

1. Go to Products > All products from your Shopify store admin.
2. Click on any product.
3. Scroll down to the metafields section, enter the value for the recently created metafield, i.e. Age Group.
4. Save the changes.

Horray!! You’ve successfully created a custom filter by creating a metafield. Now, you can check whether your recently created metafield is present in the filter options or not. Also, you can add it to show on your collection page by following the below steps:

1. Go to Online Store > Navigation from Shopify store admin.
2. Click on Add filters.
3. In Metafields options, select the recently created metafield, i.e. “Age Group”.
4. Click Done.

Result: Showing the Custom Filter on the Storefront

Common questions about Shopify Filters

Here are a few commonly asked questions related to Shopify filters. Have a question that’s not mentioned below? Feel free to write in the comment box. I would love to find the answers and add them below.

How to add Filter by Size variant?

First of all, add a product variant option as “Size”. Now, go to Online Store > Navigation, and click on Add filter. Check the “Size” option in the product options section to add the Filter by Size variant. Find the step-by-step instruction.

After saving the changes, you can check the collection page on your online store.

How do I add color filter Shopify?

Add a product variant option as “Color”. Now, go to Online Store > Navigation, and click on Add filter. Check the “Color” option in the product options section to add the Filter by Color variant. Find the step-by-step instruction.

After saving the changes, you can check the collection page on your online store.

Why are the filters not visible on my storefront?

The reason can be one for the following:

• Using a theme that’s not a Shopify 2.0 theme. Filters can only be used if you have the Online Store 2.0 theme installed. You can still view and set up filtering options for your store if your Online Store 2.0 theme is installed but not in use, but customers will not be able to see them.
• The Product collection contains above 1000 products. If your collection has more than 1000 products, then the filters will not be visible on your online store.

How many filters I can add to my collection?

You can add a maximum of 4 default filters and up to 20 custom filters to your store.

How can I customize the filter on a collection page?

For now, the default filter of Shopify does not support you to do the task. You need an advanced Shopify filter app to help you customize the filter tree as you want.

Wrapping Up!

Hope this guide helped you to know about Shopify filters. If you have any queries regarding this topic or any other, don’t forget to comment below. I would love to work on them.