Shopify Metafields Guide: Overview, Types, Manage 2.0 Metafields

With the updated version of Shopify Store, i.e. Online Store 2.0, Shopify merchants have many ways to improve their store design and the customer shopping experience. As a store owner, you can design your own web page templates for products, collections, blogs, etc., and also define your own metafields to show customized store content.

Here, you will learn about how to create Shopify metafields and display metafield values in your store. Also, know how to use Shopify metafields to display images on your store.

Shopify 2.0 Metafields

The Shopify Metafields lets you save additional information about your products, variants, collections, customers, orders, blogs, and many more in your store. For example, you may need to attach a user manual (that users can download) for electronic products on the product page.

By default, Shopify offers you great data storage in your store admin, but that’s common for all stores. Therefore, using Shopify 2.0 Metafields you can store unique data about any object you want in your store.

After creating metafields, you can attach them to your products, customers, collections, or orders as unique attributes and use them anywhere to customize your Shopify store design.

Old VS New Shopify Metafields

Old Shopify Metafields

Earlier, there was no in-built metafield feature available in Shopify. We had to use Shopify liquid code or install a third-party Shopify App (offering metafields) to add and manage metafields.

Creating metafields using liquid code is quite complicated, so you need to hire Shopify experts in case you don’t have technical knowledge.

New Shopify Metafields

Now, Shopify has its in-built metafield feature in the store admin for the store owners or Shopify merchants. Therefore, you don’t need to spend extra money on hiring Shopify experts or using any third-party Shopify App for metafields.

Log in to your store admin and go to the Settings, you will find the Metafields card there.

Shopify Metafields Types

Shopify metafields are basically categorized based on the places where they can be used:

1. Products,
2. Variants,
3. Collections,
4. Customers, and
5. Orders.

Shopify Product Metafields

With product metafields, you can build complex page designs to enhance user interfaces based on product types. The product metafields are used to store additional product information. Here, you can define metafields like product specifications, size charts, user manuals, badges, and many more. Learn how to customize your store using product metafields.

By default, Shopify provides 4 product filters in your stores. Therefore, you can add custom product filters using the product or variant metafields to allow your shoppers to find products by their variants on the collection page. See how to create custom filters using product metafields.

Source: Myntra

Shopify Variant Metafields

The Shopify variant metafields are used to store additional information related to the product variants such as variant description, color code, fabric prints, flavors, etc. You can show these metafields on the product page for the selected product variants. See how to add Shopify variant metafields in your store in the next section. Learn how to customize your store using variant metafields.

The below picture will demonstrate the use of variant metafields.

Source: Amazon.com

Shopify Collection Metafields

The collection metafields are used to store additional information about the collections. You can either attach additional collection descriptions or build brand profiles for collections using the Shopify collection metafields. Learn how to customize your store using collection metafields.

Here is one of the best examples of collection metafields:

Source: Samsung store on Amazon

Shopify Customer Metafields

You may need to show the special deals to your customers based on their preferences. The customer metafields are used to store additional customer information. Learn how to customize your store using customer metafields.

Here, you can define metafields such as a customer’s birthdate, gender, loyalty status, and many more. You can also use customer metafields to create customer profiles.

Shopify Order Metafields

As an online store owner, you may need to set priorities for your orders. The order metafields are used to store the additional order information. Using the order metafields you can also mark the orders for express delivery or normal delivery or store order delivery date or packaging status. Learn how to customize your store using order metafields.

How to Add Metafields in Shopify

Ready to expand your store content with metafield? Thanks to the inbuilt Shopify Metafields, you can now easily add metafields to your store and use them anywhere you want.

Creating the Shopify 2.0 Metafields

Learn how to create metafield definition, add values to the metafields, and display them on the storefront based on the Shopify metafield types:

1. Product metafields
2. Variant metafields
3. Collection metafields
4. Customer metafields
5. Order metafields

The first step of creating metafields is the metafield definition.

Defining the Shopify 2.0 Metafields

When you create a metafield definition, you actually create an attribute that can hold the same type of value (content). The metafield definition makes sure that the values added to the metafields are of appropriate format like text, numbers, image, link, date & time, etc.

Shopify currently offers two types of metafield definitions:

(1) Standard metafield definition: Shopify has offered some special metafield definitions for you, that are compatible with all the Shopify apps, themes, and other places in your store.

(2) Custom metafield definition: You can create your custom metafield definitions based on your requirements and use them in your store whenever you want.

Deleting the Shopify 2.0 Metafields

If a metafield is no longer in use, then you can remove it from your store. Deleting the Shopify 2.0 metafields is a quick and easy process. You can delete metafields in two ways:

(1) Delete definition and all metafield values

This will let you remove the metafield with all its associated values. But before you choose this option to delete your metafield, you need to check and make sure it’s not connected to any block or section in your current theme.

(2) Delete definition only

This will only remove the metafield definition from your store, but its value remains as it is on the online store. After deleting the metafield definitions using this option, you may find some errors in your theme editor.

If you face any other error with metafields in your Shopify store, you may find the solution in the fixing metafield errors guide, or you can find other ways to get help for the issues.

Steps to delete metafields from your store

Step 1: In your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Metafields.

Step 2: Click on the metafield you want to remove from your Shopify store, e.g. Size Chart.

Step 3: Click on the Delete button.

Step 4: Choose any from the deleting options.

Step 5: Click on the Delete button to permanently remove the metafield from your store.

Wrapping Up!

That’s it, we got the end here. Hope you got what you were looking for. For more in-depth information, you can visit our blog section.