Managing an online store using Shopify often involves navigating around the platform's infamous product variant limit. This restriction can impede e-commerce shops from scaling their inventory and offering a wider variety of products. However, seasoned merchants have found innovative ways to bypass this limitation and maximize their business potential. This article will help you understand Shopify's variant restrictions, explore possible workarounds, and provide comprehensive tools to optimize your online store.
Understanding the Shopify Variant Limit of 100 per Product
Shopify is a renowned e-commerce platform empowering online businesses to sell products without constraints. However, one caveat to consider is the Shopify variant limit. Merchants can only create a maximum of 100 different combinations of product options such as size, color, and material. Nevertheless, with the right strategy and tools, this limitation can be outsmarted.
Businesses can consolidate multiple variations into customizable options or use specialized apps designed to provide more than 100 variants per product. Metafields can also be utilized to add extra options to a product. Understanding and capitalizing on these solutions can enrich the shopping experience on your Shopify store.
Workarounds for the Shopify Variant Limit
Running an online store on Shopify opens a wide array of possibilities, but Shopify’s product variant limitation can render inventory expansion challenging. However, multiple solutions can help you overcome this roadblock, including using product options instead of variants, creating multiple products for one item, utilizing third-party apps, or leveraging Shopify's API for custom resolutions.
Using Product Options Instead of Variants
Presenting a broader range of options is pivotal in today's e-commerce market. Instead of producing numerous variants for each product, businesses can use Product Options. Utilizing this feature facilitates a better management process, rapid page loading, and improved SEO rankings while staying within Shopify’s variant limits.
Metafields can be utilized to store additional attributes for each option. This enhances user experience, making the whole operation more user-friendly. It’s important to organize your product pages with clear images and descriptions, allowing shoppers to make informed decisions without feeling overwhelmed by the numerous options.
Using Multiple Products for One Item
Creating different variations of the same product and separating them across multiple pages can effectively circumvent Shopify’s variant limit. It's crucial to keep your naming convention concise and consistent when representing each variant. Accurate product information and a clear inventory count on each page can enhance the customer experience and help avoid overselling mishaps.
Using Third-party Apps to Extend Variant Limit
Third-party apps such as Product Options by Bold Apps, Excelify, Bulk Product Generator, and Infinite Options allow merchants to bypass the 100 variant limit and offer a wider range of choices to their customers. They provide unique features, making your products customizable and helping to streamline the customer journey.
Using Shopify’s API for Custom Solutions
If advanced customization is your need, deploying Shopify’s API can offer flexible solutions. This allows merchants to provide improved customer experiences and smooth operation of their stores. The use of Shopify’s API can assist Shopify stores in scaling beyond the default limitations and delivering personalized experiences.
Shopify’s Limit of 1000 Variants per Day and Workarounds
Shopify Plus offers unlimited variants per product, providing a good solution for businesses operating at scale. Additionally, third-party apps like Excelify and Bulk Product Generator can streamline the process of variant creation and efficiently bypass the daily limit.
Using Metafields for Additional Product Customization
Metafields offer a new workaround within Shopify 2.0, allowing businesses to store additional information and create supplementary variants and product options. It promotes improved search functions and customization of product pages.
Dividing Product Variants and Using Internal Links
By dividing product variants into collections, using tags to filter products, and adding anchor links to product pages, online retailers can provide a seamless shopping experience for their customers. It's crucial to present clear and detailed product titles to effectively manage product variants, especially for online stores with numerous product variations.
Enabling Order Notes for Extra Information from the Customer
Enabling order notes to allow customers to provide extra information can prove advantageous for businesses looking to cater to unique customer needs. However, demanding too much information can complicate the checkout process and lead to cart abandonment.
In a nutshell, business owners using Shopify have several strategic tools and workarounds to outsmart the variant limit, creating a more personalized product catalog and providing an enriched customer experience. While these workarounds may require some technical know-how, the long-term advantages of offering a diverse and comprehensive product list outweigh the challenges. However, remember to consider the potential impact on site load times and SEO before implementing these changes.