Setting up Filters in Shopify - Search & Discovery

In a Shopify or Shopify Plus store, it's important for your customers to easily find the perfect product for them through an intuitive user experience on your online store. It's essential to utilize a combination of user interface design and powerful features to provide your customers with the best experience and help them find the products they are most likely to purchase.

Product discovery should be considered in four key areas of your online store: site navigation, the search bar, collection page filtering, and page content. These areas create a pathway for customers to discover product recommendations that are most appealing to them.

Using the Shopify - Search & Discovery app, this article will help you enhance product filtering in your Shopify online store, enabling customers to find the most relevant product for them

What is Shopify Filtering?

Shopify filtering is a feature that allows customers to view collection pages displaying groups of products. On these pages, customers can select specific attributes such as size, color, price range, and more. The aim of filtering is to assist customers in narrowing down the number of results within a collection and finding the products they're looking for based on their selection criteria.

The Shopify Search & Discovery app

The Shopify Search & Discovery app provides Shopify or Shopify Plus store administrators with complete control over how customers can segment collections to search for specific products through custom filters based on preconfigured product attributes. This allows customers to refine their searches across multiple categories.

Additionally, it enables the creation and editing of synonymous product groups, ensuring that the product descriptions match the terms your customers use in their searches. This is particularly useful when the products in your online store can be named or searched for in more than one way.

Another advantage of this application is the ability to set up product recommendations, allowing users to quickly see more products that are commonly purchased together for convenience, business decisions, or typical offerings.

The application is available in the Shopify App Store and is free to install and use in any Shopify store, regardless of the plan subscribed to.

Shopify Search & Discovery: Customize your storefront search | Shopify App Store

Default Filters

The Search & Discovery app comes with 4 pre-loaded filter types that can be enabled with just one click. These are: 'Product Availability,' 'Product Price,' 'Product Type' (based on the product type loaded in the 'product organization' section), and 'Supplier' (brand).

However, this is just the beginning, as the app allows store administrators to create custom filtering options, such as color and more, to provide an enhanced user experience.

These are the default filter types provided by the application.

How to Create a Custom Filter in Shopify?

In addition to the 4 pre-loaded filters in the Shopify app (recall: Availability, Price, Type, and Supplier), you can create filters using 3 (three) parameters of your products:

1. Variants: Variant filters refer to the different variety options within the same product you have created. This allows the user to find the desired product more quickly if they have a specific idea in mind. For example, if you have a clothing item available in different colors or sizes, you can create color and size options as custom filters.
2. Tags: Variant filters refer to the different variety options within the same product you have created. This allows the user to find the desired product more quickly if they have a specific idea in mind. For example, if you have a clothing item available in different colors or sizes, you can create color and size options as custom filters.
3. Metafields: Here's where it gets exciting. Metafields are used to give specific properties to your products based on their unique characteristics or even your stock management. For example, if you have a lighting fixtures store and find it useful to group fixtures based on the warmth level of each lamp, creating a metafield for these values is a good idea. While it's not an inherent product option, it's still a filterable value, making it useful for a user specifically searching for one of these values.

Advanced Filters Based on Store Technical Requirements: Product Metafield (lighting warmth) and Size (Variant sizes S, M, L, XL, XXL)

It's important to consider the perspective of users and potential buyers, contemplating what types of values they would like to filter. Ask yourself what criteria your customers may want to explore when browsing through your products.

Filtering vs Sorting

You're right, filtering a group of products is not the same as sorting them.

Filtering removes from the search any product that does not meet the filter conditions selected by the user. For example, if the user filters the search for products of the type 'Pants', all products that do not meet the 'Pants' condition, such as Shirts, T-Shirts, Accessories, etc., will no longer be displayed.

On the other hand, sorting refers to the ability to change the order of the product list, as chosen by the user, such as 'Best Sellers,' 'Lowest Price,' or 'Alphabetical Order,' among others. Shopify allows store administrators to manually program the sorting order for a specific collection page

Are there limits for the Shopify - Search & Discovery app?

Shopify allows store administrators to add up to 20 custom filters to a collection page in addition to the 4 default filters mentioned earlier.

Why Does Filtering Improve Sales in Your Shopify Store?

Filtering in a Shopify or Shopify Plus store plays a crucial role in improving sales and the customer experience. By providing filtering functionality, customers can quickly access the products they are looking for. If a potential customer can't easily find a product in your online store, they are less likely to make a purchase.

By updating filters and displaying results in real-time, the effectiveness of filtering is maximized, ultimately maximizing orders. Consider two key concepts to understand this:

• First, our natural tendency to form ideas based on the available information. If your customers find a wide range of options and can filter results according to their preferences, they are more likely to feel satisfied and find what they are looking for.
• Second, the difficulty we experience in making decisions when faced with a wide variety of choices. If your customers are overwhelmed by a large number of products and cannot narrow down their search or easily find relevant products, they are likely to consider leaving the store without placing an order.

It's essential to consider these concepts and ensure that your customers have the ability to filter and find products efficiently in your Shopify online store.

If you're interested in enhancing, implementing, or analyzing your filtering solution on Shopify, we encourage you to get in touch with us for more information and optimize the shopping experience in your Shopify or Shopify Plus online store.

Do you need a customized and tailor-made solution?

There are cases where the filtering requirements for an online store exceed the capabilities of the native functionality of Shopify's Search and Discovery app. For instance, filtering by a unique variable, filtering by a date value, etc.

If you need more filtering options, consider us as an agency to advise you and initiate a project for a completely customized solution.