How to efficiently bulk edit bullet points in product descriptions?

[GrJohn]

My client has 200+ SKUs and each of them have bullet points in the description. These bullet points change on a regular basis and we are looking for an easier way to edit these in bulk. I know we can do it through a bulk import, but the bullet points show up as HTML code in the description of the CSV and not in their own columns.

What would be the best way to easily edit these bullet points as needed without using the bulk import?

[MastersHub]

Best solution is special development. You should hire a Shopify developer. A web application or an app will be made. When you upload files here, the data will be updated.

[Ablestar_Daniel]

One way to handle this would be to move the bullet points out of the description into a metafield or using metaobjects. This would require some changes to your theme and you might need/want an app to bulk edit the metafields but it would be easier to maintain.

Using a list of strings metafield

If each product has a unique set of bullet points you could create a definition for a metafield that's a 'list of strings', something like this:

Then you could edit them separately on the product detail pages:

The problem with this method is bulk editing the data. You can copy/paste the values from different metafields in the bulk editor in the Shopify admin but you're still modifying products one by one and the Shopify product imports don't support metafields. There are apps like our Ablestar Bulk Product Editor that you can use to bulk edit metafields (with or without a spreadsheet) but it depends on if your client accepts the extra cost.

Using metaobjects

Metaobjects let you create a new type of data, in the same way that your store has 'products', 'orders' and 'customers'. What you would do here is create a new 'Bullet Point' metaobject definition and then create sets of bullet points that you could assign to different groups of products.

This is more complicated to set up but the advantage is that it's easier to maintain. Each time you wanted to update the bullet points for a set of products that have the same data you would only need to do it once. This method would work if you have lots of products that would share the same set of bullet points.

Conclusion

Generally we recommend moving structured data (like these bullet lists) out of the description and into metafields/metaobjects because otherwise they become too hard to manage with the changing HTML. It does take some more time to set up at first but it's more maintainable. Happy to answer any follow up questions you might have on how to set these up or getting them to display in your theme.

Best,

Daniel