what is product type in shopify

hey what's up guys today i just want to,go over,um some some confusion and a lot of,issues i've been getting from,um from the team members and and you,guys as well,regarding shopify's collections versus,product,types tags versus vendors and how to use,them properly,um i just see a lot of people doing it,kind of kind of in a messy way or using,the app which is not always optimized,so there is a lot of i think uh,flexibility with,shopify to to do everything correctly,out of the,default basic plan uh so i just want to,share that so let's get started,so first of all uh the source of the,confusion um some of it might come from,just like if,you're coming from woocommerce you know,they use categories and attributes,uh so in shopify it's just called,collections,okay so and then they work a little,differently too so i'm gonna get to that,um,product types in shopify tend to get,confused with collections as well and,then some clients,you know they'll just say random stuff,they'll just say stuff like,subcategories or subtypes and types,uh but basically uh you'll see that,collected in shopify there's collections,and then there's product types so so,those are two two very different things,i'm gonna go and then kind of just allow,me to show you kind of,in in product what that looks like right,so you have product type,right so this is a whole thing this is a,whole thing that we're going to go over,right and then you have collections,totally different,than product types okay so i'm going to,continue,um and then another source of confusion,and maybe it's not so much confusion is,like,clients don't don't understand why what,to do if,these fields are not enough so you have,product types,you know you have product types you have,tags vendors and sometimes it just,doesn't fit what they want to do right,and then they want to get creative with,it,so we're going to go over how how to,make that happen uh and then you can see,here,really at the most basic level you have,product types,vendors and tags so let's keep going,then,okay so so so it's a pretty easy concept,for most people but,um if you want to visualize it nicely,like i do,i i usually kind of just like visualize,a grocery store where,you know you have a collection which you,can put,as a product type now now i put an,equals on here but,but really what i mean to say here is,the collect a collection can be anything,right but typically you want to you want,to at least have a collection,that that is related to a product type,so the collection,that's a product type equals anything,that you call,bakery so so you can say if product type,equals,bakery put it into this collection put,into the bakery collection,so sorry that's confusing but if you,look at here go to collections,we have that right if beer style equals,ipa,see if product type is equal to ipa put,it into,the beer style ipa collection and then,we go in here,and then you can see i'm i'm using the,auto condition,right so this gets populated,automatically which is what we always,want to do,right we never want to do do kind of a,manual collection so so how it works,with collection is when you create a,collection,only when you create a new collection,you have this chance to determine if,it's going to be a manual or all,automatic right,always try to choose automatic because,no one's going to have time to,really like do a manual like maybe if,you only have a few products you can do,manual,but generally you're you're going to,want to do a smart collection using,automatic automatic and,you can see here there's all these,conditions which you can explore,later and you can see how this this,feeds,into a collection right going back to,here,so the this is the linkage this is the,feed i'm using product type,but you can also use product title you,can use,vendor right you can use you can use a,combination of all these things to get,what you want,and i think this is a very powerful tool,and i think at the very beginning of,shopify they didn't have this they,didn't have variant title so this is,very powerful right,so you can do all sorts of fun stuff,with this so let's say here,see you can do uh if product title does,not contain gift card inventory is,greater than zero,and product title does not contain druid,and i just wanted to exclude that,product,from the top selling beer collection,right so that's what that looks like,here,right and then you can,even sort it so that's collections i,think it's very powerful,it's very unique and uh in my experience,there hasn't been any bugs it's very,fast it's very it's very smooth right so,i like,of course i think i think you have to,use collections and then the problem,happens when clients feel like they,don't have enough uh,sorry about that they don't have enough,uh,sub levels to go on because beyond the,collection,you have what what uh what you can do is,you can filter by the tag so you can,filter by for example if a bread,tag attached to it uh attached to any,bakery product,right or a muffins tag and then,and then clients will sometimes say well,you know that that's just not enough i,want more,and more subcategories until you know,like you're kind of like amazon where,you have like a million products and,then you need,you need just just like so many layers,of departments right,uh so so we'll get to that solution as,we move to this lesson,okay so just another recap about uh,collections,so collections one product can be in,many collections,okay so just like the store aisle you,can put like a piece of bread,really in the bakery section or you can,put it in the top seller section,right and these are,of course collections are ideal for,displaying on the front page and i,should say,uh they're kind of like the only way you,can't,you can't really just display a group of,tags on the front page,uh what it is you build a collection,first and then you link the collection,to the tags,what you're really doing is displaying,the collection so collections can be,made smart,just like what i said here so for,example with uh,clothing stores you have men and women,so so you should,you know ask your client to to title,your products correctly so,you can use this condition where product,title equals min,product title does not contain women,right,because you need to exclude this case,where if there is a woman in the title,technically men is in women so you have,to kind of uh,do this kind of logic to exclude it and,this would this would work correctly,okay so can i have a sub collection,of course so so that's what we have here,by default we have a sub collection and,this is my,recommended way of dealing with that,right,and now here's the part where in the,menu,you can see how a sub collection would,work so so so when you're building a,menu you'll see this one though here,so this would be the the the name of the,menu,right new arrivals so this is where you,link,a collection to right so in the this is,not the right collection that i link to,but just an example,right and then this is where you filter,by by tag so the important thing is,you can only filter by tags um yes a lot,of people get frustrated right here,because,what if you didn't know this right what,have you been trying to organize,everything,using i don't know what else you would,use but maybe you were using a different,collections or you're,trying to get really really smart with,the collections right but then you can't,filter by collections you can only,filter by text,so just be aware of that from the,beginning and you should be able to help,figure out how this works,and then the clients all will always say,what if can i have a sub sub collection,you know just keep going deeper and,deeper,so this is where shopify kind of like,draws the line on the sand and i was,reading some,other shopify support on this and then,they just kind of,find that you know most stores don't,need this,and if they do need it it's probably,confusing to the customer,um i found that most customers just use,a search bar anyways,shopify has a really really fast search,bar,and you know this is very very fast,right like much faster than,some other uh e-commerce platforms right,like like how how hard is it,and most people do use just the search,bar right,so but you know if you're a very,difficult client he's still going to,request this so so,let's see what workarounds we have for,this,so this is the one workaround we have,and is using kind of a,sub sub menu to get to the sub sub,collection right,so all these are collections like this,is just a collection,this is a collection too right we're not,using text for this anymore because it's,impossible like,like i think at this point you can you,can do a tag if you want another one,right if you want something very very,specific but to keep it simple we just,did,we just manually built these collections,so so,we have how many collections are here,there's six collections here,right so in in the website the,collection was titled,men jersey and then it would be titled,men jackets,and we keep going like that and you saw,that in the previous example,here we would do another set of six,collections it would be called women's,jersey right women's jackets keep going,like that right,that's the uh that would be the only,option,only option be before resorting to apps,right if you don't want to use the app,this would be the cleanest option,and usually this is this works very fast,as well because you're just going down,to collections,okay and i i would prefer we,we kind of stick with this method if,they're asking for sub sub categories,and you can just keep going,it's a lot of manual work to set this up,at first but i i would prefer we just,you know keep it clean i'll avoid too,many apps because you'll see that,there's always problems with apps down,the road,and the clients have to pay for it,upfront and it takes like a long time,for for the,for the for the business to launch right,and and if they even need this if they,actually,need this you know chances are they're,going to take a lot of time just,building up,just uploading the products right so so,i i think this,i think shopify is right in this case,where in most cases you,in most cases you just need this okay,okay so another part is vendors or tags,right,um yeah people will sometimes may ask,you to use,vendors instead of a tag and i think in,some cases that'll work very well,um so so here you can see this is a,product type,vendor right we're going here,product type vendor so what is the,difference really there to me i don't,think there is one,because when you go down to build a menu,you go down to add a menu or whatever,here you go to here,um,you know it's not like you can link,something like directly to,vendors and you see you only get tags,right you only get tags,so what is it used for really you you,want to go into here,and remember when you're adding a,collection you can do collection by,vendor so what so let's say i wanted to,do,vendor only or whatever vendor,so i go to product vendor is equal to,whatever vendors i have,right it is a useful,um a lot of people don't use it to be,honest so so don't feel bad if you don't,use it in this case like for for this,client,he wanted uh easy drop down of all the,vendors in this case their breweries,of where he gets his beer he wanted an,easy drop down format just like this so,so that's what we did right um so now we,talk about tags,so if you're trying to follow along,earlier i might have spoken too fast i i,did mention that uh,you know the recommended way is filter,by tags,and tags are essentially your your sub,category,okay it's how you can get around having,a sub category in shopify,right so the rest of this is going to be,about,uh quite a bit about tags so if you,already know how tags work,you can kind of uh skip forward go ahead,um so i'm just going to try to get,through this,as concisely as possible uh,so vendor product type one product can,be only assigned to one vendor and one,product type it doesn't make sense but,it works for shopify,vendor field often gets neglected,because when i was when i had my own,store i wanted to use the the vendor,field,with a url field to tie it to my,supplier url and i wanted to manage my,supply chain using the vendor field but,but i couldn't you know,shopify is only going to let you have,one field for vendor and that's it,okay so tags are much more liberal,because you can have many tags to a,product,but if you show the text to the public,they're going to see all your tags so,you need to decide like,if you're going to use text for internal,purposes,you know then then you're not going to,show your clients you you can you you,can just,do it for whatever you want a lot of,people will tag like black friday sale,tag like christmas sale to their thing,right,am i recording okay good,so you'll see that later as well and and,again tags are the best way to do sub,collections as i mentioned before,so here here's how text can work so in,in this theme,we have we just had a lot of products,and then and i had to kind of customize,going to shopify developers and,pull up this code snippet where where,they build you this nice tag cloud,right and and what else can you do in,this case,what if the the customer really just,wants a one window to show,all his different sub items right so,this this is,in the beer category and with a beer you,have all these,you know you have these different um,brands of the beer,that's it,uh so kind of to give you an example of,what you want to be careful about is,so and then this is another shopify plus,store is if you're,using tags in kind of like a seo kind of,way i,i don't think that works right so if you,look at here,is this person is just using tags kind,of like if it's a wordpress blog,or or like it's for youtube i i don't,think that works i don't think it works,like that at all,um you know correct me if i'm wrong but,i,i don't think youtube sorry i don't,think google is really,searching like searching shopify tags,they're going to search,your seo metadata they're going to,search your url your handle,they're going to search how they're,going to know how long customers visit,your page for,they're going to look at the product,description as well they're going to,look at the alt tags all that,but i don't think they're going to look,at this because people have been abusing,tags for a long time,from going back to the wordpress era so,in any case you know it is what it is,people will just,sometimes kind of throw whatever they,want on to tank right,and then you can see here this is a,shopify plus store they do have a lot of,auto collections,right so this is just under one product,but that one product,gets pushed under these collections and,they're all auto okay,so what what what if the client will say,oh still is not enough i i want to store,you know some some supplier info i want,to store some uh,you know nationality info regarding to,my product like,what country is my product from or i,want to store some other stuff so so,there's various solutions here,you can store it in the sku or the,barcode up to,255 character limit so here you can see,under the sku i just stored it,but of course this is not a solution for,everyone if they do shipping and they,might want to use a sku,uh you can also use apps right so what,would happen is,there's an app where in the top right of,the product field and there are more,options you can,edit custom fields so if you click this,it'll take you to,a separate website hosted,hosted by the app developer okay so it's,very important,you're you're tying into another service,completely when you're when you're doing,this kind of stuff right,shopify is not that generous they're not,gonna host,apps for us for free or like built in,with a plan right,so so just just be aware of the world,war heading down or using apps,i mean i don't think there's anything,wrong with it but but really,you got to do the testing you got to,verify it works you got to verify,you know and then when something goes,wrong you can't do anything because,you're not the developer right the app,developer,knows what's wrong with their app not,you right so a lot of times it's,difficult to fix someone else's code,all right um and and also just be,careful don't pollute the vendor,the product type don't pollute these,fields because,if you pollute it manually it'll be hard,to reverse so by polluting i mean like,you know filling it with like uh stuff,that you're not gonna use,uh this is i think this is very normal,because like if if this is your first,store,you're not gonna know what to do with,this you're gonna pollute it and you're,never gonna have time to fix this it's,just gonna,be there forever right so if you're,running a new store and you see this,hopefully you understand and if you,don't understand what's going on with,tags just ask me a question,okay so don't pollute it because uh it's,all manual work and then a lot of people,will say,why can't we just like make up our own,product fields you know when i was a,what this was my question uh like four,or five years ago when i had the store,right,so why can't like organization they only,have product type and vendor why can't i,add another field that's called,supplier url right i would i would have,loved to do that um,but after learning and you know trying,out different platforms i kind of,appreciate how shopify works,uh generally app developers they'll,break things you can't help it like,like it just happens right because,there's no magic wand to say yeah this,code is to work perfectly,and and also shopify's product search,after using bigger stores,after using like shopify plus store it's,very fast it's much faster than,woocommerce,um it's very smooth too so so i wouldn't,touch it you know,i just just would not touch the system,that's working very well,you know in in in some other platforms,let's say you have like,4 000 products good luck like like if,you type something like 10,it'll just like freeze right but look,how fast shopify is like look how,and this this is relatively this is not,a tiny store but,i have uh bigger stores that i'm not,allowed to show right now but,but my point is the system i don't think,you should take it for granted it's very,fast and it works right,and and then here you can see you can do,some filters here,some some vendors here so so it is kind,of useful,it is kind of useful but you probably,won't use it,okay um,and uh just last slide i want to show,you is uh,kind of the reason why i made this video,is the a client wanted kind of like an,organizational strategy for all their,stuff this client,has over 200 beers in their inventory,they want to keep track of stuff like,product type they want to do subtype,they want to keep track of the brewery,and they want to keep track of the,country that the brewery is in,so this is a strategy that follows my,recommended route okay,so for the product title we're going to,include the,beer name and we're going to include the,location,beer name location okay so here i said,append you know product country location,append it to the product title,that's it because you can always use,uh shopify's collection to say if,product title contains ireland put it,into the,ireland collection right so that's that,and then the the client like was really,you know adamant about,you know having a primary category,and then the sub category of that right,and the subcategory has to be filterable,by tag,so this works out really well for me,initially we we we didn't have this idea,but we kind of evolved into this idea,where,you know the main product type would be,the beer type,and then there's like a sub beer type so,ipa is a popular,kind of type of beer and then you know,west coast ipa there's all kinds of ipa,types of beer american ipas and whatever,ipa,but this can be in a tag filter so,that's really cool that's really useful,that's really exactly what the client,wanted and of course for the,product vendor we just link it to the,brewery name,right and this can be put into the menu,basically everything here,can be put in into the menu but only,this can can uh,be the filter so so if you think about,it,this is kind of like the last step on,the customer journey,in discovering what beer they want,because you know they they,first they're like oh i want a beer from,ireland and i want this brewery,uh but maybe i i really want this ipa,and then what do i have here and then oh,okay and then i'll go into the sub,type of an ipa and find my beer,so that that's it i i hope i was clear,and concise enough uh there if there's,any questions uh please uh,shoot me an email thank you so much bye,i record

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