How to Display Multiple Collections for Products in Shopify

Understanding Product Collections in Shopify

Shopify’s collection feature is a powerful tool for organizing and showcasing your products. But what happens when a product belongs to multiple collections? This article will guide you through the process of displaying all collections a product belongs to, enhancing your store’s navigation and user experience.

The Importance of Displaying Multiple Collections

Improved Navigation

When customers can see all collections a product belongs to, they can easily explore related items, potentially increasing their time on your site and the likelihood of additional purchases.

Enhanced Product Context

Displaying multiple collections gives customers a better understanding of how a product fits into your store’s overall catalog, which can aid in their decision-making process.

SEO Benefits

By linking to multiple collections from a product page, you’re creating internal links that can boost your site’s SEO performance.

Implementing the Solution

The Basic Approach

To display all collections a product belongs to, we can use Shopify’s Liquid templating language. Here’s a simple code snippet that accomplishes this:

<div>
  <p>This product belongs in the following collections:
    {% for collection in product.collections %}
      {{ collection.title }}
    {% endfor %}
  </p>
</div>

This code will list all the collections the product is part of, but it won’t create clickable links.

Creating Clickable Collection Links

To make the collection names clickable, we need to modify our code slightly:

<div>
  <p>
    {% for collection in product.collections %}
      {{- collection.title | link_to: collection.url }}
    {% endfor %}
  </p>
</div>

This code creates clickable links for each collection, using the collection’s URL.

Handling Multi-Word Collection Names

One challenge you might encounter is with multi-word collection names. Shopify’s URL structure replaces spaces with hyphens, but the default Liquid code might not account for this. Here’s an improved version that handles this issue:

<div>
  <p>
    {% for collection in product.collections %}
      {% assign coll = '/collections/' | append: collection.title | replace: " ", "-" %}
      {{ collection.title | capitalize | link_to: coll }}{% unless forloop.last %},{% endunless %}
    {% endfor %}
  </p>
</div>

This code ensures that spaces in collection names are replaced with hyphens in the URL, matching Shopify’s URL structure.

Advanced Customization

Styling Your Collection List

To make your collection list more visually appealing, you can add CSS classes:

<div class="product-collections">
  <p class="collection-list">
    Collections:
    {% for collection in product.collections %}
      <span class="collection-item">
        {% assign coll = '/collections/' | append: collection.title | replace: " ", "-" %}
        {{ collection.title | capitalize | link_to: coll }}
      </span>{% unless forloop.last %},{% endunless %}
    {% endfor %}
  </p>
</div>

You can then style these classes in your theme’s CSS file to match your store’s design.

Excluding Draft Collections

If you have collections in draft status that you don’t want to display, you can modify the code to exclude them:

<div class="product-collections">
  <p class="collection-list">
    Collections:
    {% for collection in product.collections %}
      {% unless collection.published_at == nil %}
        <span class="collection-item">
          {% assign coll = '/collections/' | append: collection.title | replace: " ", "-" %}
          {{ collection.title | capitalize | link_to: coll }}
        </span>{% unless forloop.last %},{% endunless %}
      {% endunless %}
    {% endfor %}
  </p>
</div>

This code checks if the collection has a published_at date, which draft collections won’t have.

Integrating with Your Theme

Placing the Code in Your Theme Files

To implement this feature, you’ll need to edit your theme files. The exact location will depend on your theme, but generally, you’ll want to add this code to your product template file.

1. Go to your Shopify admin panel
2. Navigate to Online Store > Themes
3. Click “Actions” > “Edit code” on your current theme
4. Look for a file named product-template.liquid or similar
5. Add the code where you want the collections to appear

Testing and Troubleshooting

After adding the code, be sure to test it thoroughly:

1. Check products that belong to multiple collections
2. Verify that collections with multi-word names work correctly
3. Ensure that draft collections (if any) are not displayed
4. Test on different devices to ensure responsive design

If you encounter any issues, double-check your code for typos and ensure that your theme supports the Liquid tags used.

By following these steps, you can effectively display all collections a product belongs to in your Shopify store, enhancing navigation and potentially boosting sales. Remember to always test changes thoroughly before pushing them live to ensure a smooth shopping experience for your customers.