To add a collection on Shopify, go to Products > Collections in your admin dashboard, click “Create collection,” and choose either a manual or automated collection type. Manual collections let you handpick specific products, while automated collections pull in products based on rules you define. Both types take just a few minutes to set up, but they work very differently behind the scenes.
Manual vs. Automated Collections
Shopify offers two collection types, and you choose between them at the moment of creation. You can’t switch a collection from one type to the other after saving it, so it’s worth understanding the difference before you start.
A manual collection contains only the products you specifically add to it. You control exactly what’s in the collection and in what order. This works well for curated groupings like “Staff Picks,” gift guides, or a small seasonal promotion where you want full control over which products appear.
An automated collection (Shopify calls these “smart collections”) uses conditions you set to pull in matching products automatically. If you add a new product to your store and it meets the conditions, it appears in the collection without any extra work from you. This is ideal for larger catalogs or collections organized by product type, vendor, price range, or tag. You can add up to 60 conditions to a single automated collection and choose whether products must match all conditions or just any one of them.
Creating a Manual Collection
From your Shopify admin on desktop:
- Go to Products > Collections and click Create collection.
- Enter a title and description. The description appears on the collection page in your store, so write it for your customers, not just for internal reference.
- In the Collection type section, select Manual, then click Save.
- A Products section will appear. Search for products or click Browse to find and add the ones you want.
- Set a sort order (alphabetical, best selling, price, date created, or manual drag-and-drop).
- Click Save again.
You can also add a collection image and adjust which sales channels the collection appears on from this same page. If you sell across multiple channels (online store, point of sale, social media), use the Sales channels section to control visibility for each one.
To add products to an existing manual collection later, go to Products > Collections, click the collection name, search or browse for additional products in the Products section, and save. You can also work in the other direction: open any individual product’s detail page, find the Collections section, and select the collections you want that product to appear in.
Creating an Automated Collection
The initial steps are the same: go to Products > Collections, click Create collection, and enter a title and description. This time, select Automated as the collection type. You’ll then see a Conditions section where you define the rules that determine which products belong in this collection.
Each condition has three parts: a product property, an operator, and a value. For example, you might set “Product tag is equal to summer” to pull in everything you’ve tagged with “summer.” The available properties include:
- Product title, variant title, type, or vendor: Match using “is equal to,” “contains,” “starts with,” “ends with,” or their negative versions. The “contains” and “does not contain” operators require at least three characters.
- Product category: Match an exact category, or include all sub-categories beneath a parent category.
- Product tags: Match or exclude products with a specific tag.
- Price, weight, or inventory stock: Use “is equal to,” “is greater than,” or “is less than” for numeric comparisons. There’s also a special “compare-at price” option that checks whether a sale price is set.
- Metafield definitions: If you’ve created custom metafields (extra data fields attached to your products) and enabled them for smart collections, you can use those values as conditions too. This supports true/false, integer, decimal, rating, and single-line text fields.
After setting your conditions, choose whether products must match all conditions or any condition. “All conditions” narrows the collection (products must meet every rule). “Any condition” broadens it (a product only needs to meet one rule to qualify). Click Save, and Shopify will immediately populate the collection with every matching product in your catalog.
Adding a Collection to Your Store Navigation
Creating a collection doesn’t automatically make it visible in your store’s menus. Customers can still find it through direct links or search, but if you want it in your main navigation or footer, you need to add it manually.
First, confirm the collection is available on your online store sales channel (you can check this in the collection’s settings). Then:
- Go to Content > Menus in your Shopify admin.
- Click the menu you want to edit (typically “Main menu” or “Footer menu”).
- Click Add menu item.
- In the Name field, type the label customers will see (for example, “Summer Sale”).
- In the Link field, select Collections, then choose the specific collection.
- Click Add, then Save menu.
If you want to create a dropdown, drag the new menu item underneath an existing one to nest it as a sub-item. This is useful when you have multiple collections grouped under a broader category like “Shop” or “Men’s.”
Optimizing Collection Pages for Search
Each collection page has its own URL and can rank in search engines independently. When editing a collection, look for the Search engine listing section. Click the pencil icon to customize three fields: the page title (what appears as the clickable headline in search results), the meta description (the short summary beneath it), and the URL handle (the part of the web address after /collections/).
Keep your page title under 60 characters and your meta description under 155 characters so they display fully in search results. The URL handle should be short and descriptive, using hyphens between words. For example, a “Women’s Running Shoes” collection might use the handle “womens-running-shoes.” The collection description you write also appears on the page itself and gives search engines more context, so include relevant terms naturally rather than leaving it blank.
Organizing Collections With Tags and Sorting
For manual collections, you control product order directly. Choose a default sort order like “Best selling” or “Price: low to high,” or select “Manually” to drag products into your preferred sequence. Manual sorting is especially useful for featured collections where you want your strongest products at the top.
For automated collections, sort order still applies, but you can’t manually rearrange individual products since the collection’s membership is dynamic. Choose the sort method that makes the most sense for the collection’s purpose: “Newest” for a new arrivals page, “Price: low to high” for a budget-friendly collection, or “Best selling” as a reliable default.
Tags are particularly powerful for automated collections. If you consistently tag products with descriptive labels (like “organic,” “clearance,” or “gift-ready”), you can build automated collections around those tags without touching each product individually. A well-planned tagging system across your catalog makes collection management significantly easier as your store grows.