Collections: Curated Sets of Products With Their Own Page

Overview

A collection is a named set of products, such as Summer edit or Gifts under $50, with its own page on your store at /collections/<web address>. Your store also lists every collection you show at /collections.

Open Catalog → Collections, or click Collections at the top of Catalog → Products. Collections are on every plan.

There are two kinds, and you choose when you create one:

• Picked by hand. You choose each product and the order they appear in.
• By rules. You set conditions, such as Tag is summer and Price is less than 40, and every active product that matches is in the collection, including products you add later. Nothing needs updating when a product changes: the collection is worked out again each time it is shown.

The kind cannot be changed afterwards. To switch, create a new collection and delete the old one.

Create a collection

1. Click New collection.
2. Enter a Name and, if you like, a Description, which is shown at the top of the collection's page.
3. Under How products get in, choose Pick them by hand or Use rules. For rules, add at least one condition (see below).
4. Leave Show on your store as soon as it is created ticked to publish it straight away, or untick it to keep it hidden while you fill it.
5. Click Create collection. The collection opens so you can add products, an image and its order.

The web address is made from the name, such as summer-edit. If another collection already uses it, a number is added.

Add and remove products by hand

In a hand-picked collection:

• Click Add products, search by name or SKU, tick the products and click Add. Products already in the collection are shown ticked. New products go at the end.
• On Catalog → Products, tick products, choose Collection in the bar that appears, then Add to or Remove from and the collection. This works for up to 500 products at a time.
• To take a product out, click the × beside it. The product itself is not changed.

A product marked Draft, Archived, Waiting for review or Not on your store stays in the collection, but shoppers do not see it until it is active and published to your store.

Rules

Each condition is a field, a test and a value:

• Products must match all conditions or any condition.
• Capitals do not matter for the product name, category, brand or SKU: Brand is acme matches Acme.
• A tag must match the whole tag exactly, capitals included: Tag is sum does not match summer, and Tag is Summer does not match summer.
• Price is in your store's currency, such as 40 or 39.99.
• Only active products are ever in a collection.
• A condition with no value, or a word where price or stock needs a number, is not saved, and the page tells you which.

Click Save rules after changing them. The list of products under the rules updates as soon as they are saved.

The order products appear in

Choose Order on the store above the product list:

• Your order: the order you set with the up and down arrows.
• Best selling, Price, low to high, Price, high to low, Newest first or Name, A to Z.

Whatever the order, you can:

• Pin a product with the pin button. Pinned products always come first, in your order.
• Click To the end to show a product after all the others, without taking it out. Back in place undoes it.

The list on this page is in the same order shoppers see. The arrows move a product within its group: a pinned product moves among the pinned ones. For a collection of more than 500 products, the page shows the first 500 and offers pinning and To the end only.

Details, image and web address

Under Details you can change the name, description, image and web address, and whether the collection is shown on your store. Click Save details.

• Image: upload a photo for the collection's card on your /collections page and for links shared on social media. It is checked and resized like a product photo.
• Web address: lower-case letters, numbers and single hyphens, such as summer-edit. If the collection has ever been shown on your store, BestWebby sends visitors from the old address to the new one, so links, bookmarks and search results keep working. You can see these under Channels → Sites → Redirects. Two collections cannot share an address.
• Show on your store: untick it to hide the collection. Its page then answers as not found and it leaves your /collections page; the collection and its products are kept.
• Search engine listing: an optional page title and meta description. Left empty, search engines are given the collection's name with your store's name, and its description.

Changes reach your store within about a minute.

On your store

• The collection's page shows its products in your order, 60 to a page, with sale prices and price rules applied, and in the shopper's chosen currency, exactly like your products page. A product shows only on a storefront where it is published and priced.
• An empty collection that is shown still has a page; it says there is nothing in it yet rather than answering as not found.
• Your /collections page lists every collection you show, in alphabetical order, with its image and description. Add it to a menu on the Navigation tab of Channels → Sites so shoppers can find it. The same collections, and this page, are listed in your store's sitemap for search engines, within about an hour of a change.
• In a page of your site: in the site builder, add a Collection section and pick the collection under Collection / category. It shows the collection's first products in the same order as its page, and the builder shows those same products while you edit, for the site you are building. Choose Newest products for your latest products, or A category, or another address to type a category name. A hidden collection is listed with (hidden): until you show it, the section shows the category of that name, if there is one.

French

To give a collection a French name and description for shoppers reading your store in French, open Catalog → French for Québec: collections still missing French are listed there with Add French. See French for Quebec (Bill 96).

Delete a collection

Click Delete on the collection, or beside it in the list, and confirm. If the collection was ever shown on your store, visitors to its address are sent to your /collections page, so old links and search results still land somewhere; the redirect is listed under Channels → Sites → Redirects, where you can point it elsewhere. Site sections set to show it stop showing its products. The products themselves are not deleted.

If you later create a collection with the same web address, the redirect is removed so the new collection's page shows.

Who can do what

Anyone whose role can see products can view collections. Creating, changing and deleting them needs the Owner, Admin, Manager or Staff role, the same as editing a product.