Organizing your products into collections is the best way to help customers easily find what they need in your ecommerce store. But how do you easily add products to collections on Shopify?
Shopify gives you plenty of flexibility, whether you want to hand-pick items, bulk-edit products, or use automated rules to sort them for you. In this guide, you’ll learn the simplest ways to manage collections using both manual and automated options.
1. Add Products To Collections on Shopify Manually
Manual collections are groups of products that you curate yourself, one by one. This is useful for small or special collections that you want full control over.
For instance, imagine you sell clothes on Shopify and decide to run a flash sale on select winter apparel. You could create a manual collection called “Winter Sale” and manually add just those specific products to it.
Create a New Collection
- In your Shopify admin, go to Products > Collections and click Create collection.
- Give your collection a title (for example, “Winter Sale”) and an optional description.
- In the Collection type section, choose Manual since you want to hand-pick which products go into it.
- Save the collection.
Add Products to the Collection
After you save the collection, you’ll see a Products section on the page.
- Use the search bar or click Browse to find the products you want to include. For example, search “jacket” or “boots” to pull up your winter items.
- Check the boxes next to the products you want in the collection, then click Add or Done.
The products you select will now appear in the list for that collection. Remember, you can only add full products—individual variants can’t be added on their own. This is one of the most common ways to add products to collections.
Arrange and Save
If needed, decide how the products should be sorted in the collection, such as by best-selling, price, or manual order. If you choose manual sorting, you can drag and drop products into the order you prefer.
Once products are added, they stay there automatically. If you changed anything else on the collection page—like the title or description—make sure to click Save.
2. Use Shopify Product Tags To Create a Collection Automatically
For an easy way to add products to collections without extra work, automated collections (also known as “smart collections”) save you time by automatically including products that meet certain conditions.
One of the most popular ways to use this feature is by product tags. If you tag your products thoughtfully, you can let Shopify populate collections for you based on those tags.
Set Up the Collection With a Tag Condition
- Go to Products > Collections and click Create collection.
- Enter a title (for example, “Fall Collection”).
- Under Collection type, choose Automated.
- You’ll see a Conditions section appear.
- From the first dropdown, select Product tag as the condition field.
- From the second dropdown, select is equal to (so the tag has to be an exact match). In the text field, type the tag you want to use, for example, fall. This means “include products with the tag fall.”
You can add more conditions if needed, but for a simple tag-based collection, one condition is enough.
Save the Collection
After setting the condition, click Save. Shopify will scan your products and include any that have the fall tag in this collection. If you already have products tagged fall, you’ll see them appear in the collection’s Products section right away. If not, the collection will stay empty until you start tagging products.
Tag Your Products
Make sure the products you want in this collection use the exact tag you set in the condition. You can add tags to products by editing each product and entering the tag in the Tags field, or by doing a bulk tag edit.
3. Use Automated Conditions To Add Products To Collections Automatically
Beyond tags, automated collections can use many other product attributes as conditions. This allows you to automatically include products based on things like product title, type, vendor (brand), price, inventory stock, and more.
Shopify lets you add up to 60 different conditions for a single automated collection, and you can decide if a product must match all conditions or just any of them to be included.
Create an Automated Collection
- In your Shopify admin, go to Products > Collections and click Create collection.
- Choose Automated as the collection type.
- Give the collection a name and description as needed.
Define the Condition(s)
In the Conditions section, use the dropdown menus to set your rules. Each condition has two parts: the field (first dropdown) and the operator/value (second dropdown and text field).
For example, if you want a collection of all products under $50—like a “Budget Buys” collection for your store—you would choose Price in the first dropdown, then select is less than in the second, and enter 50 as the value.
This tells Shopify to include any product priced below $50. You could add another condition, such as Inventory stock is greater than 0, to make sure only in-stock items appear.
If you add multiple conditions, decide whether products must match all conditions (AND logic) or any condition (OR logic). For example, with AND logic, a product would need to be under $50 and in stock. With OR logic, a product could be included if it’s under $50 or tagged clearance, depending on how you set your rules.
Save and Review
Click Save to create the collection with your conditions. Shopify will automatically gather all products that meet your criteria and display them in the collection. If you add a new product later that meets these conditions, the item will automatically appear in the collection.
Add Products to Collections and Use Smart Shopify Apps To Optimize Your Store
Shopify apps can help you do more than just create collections or manage store settings. They can streamline your workflow and solve problems that would otherwise take hours to manage manually.
Kiwi Sizing is a powerful example of that. It gives you an easy way to build accurate and visually consistent size charts for every product category you sell. It also offers smart size recommendations, flexible unit conversions, and simple setup tools that help your customers choose the right fit the first time.
If you’re ready to take your ecommerce store to the next level, add a dedicated Shopify size app to your toolkit. Install Kiwi today to see fewer returns, more confident shoppers, and a smoother buying experience from start to finish.
