How can customers fill in product variant options themselves?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Goal: Let customers input Make/Model/Year (YMM) rather than creating exhaustive variants, which quickly hit Shopify’s limits.

  • Solution adopted: Use a custom product options app. An app (Avis) was recommended and implemented; the OP confirms it works well for text fields (YMM).
  • Context: Shopify’s native limit (3 options, 100 variants per product) is restrictive for large catalogs like Auto Parts.
  • Considerations: Product options apps enable unlimited inputs (e.g., text fields) but may not link YMM inputs to inventory tracking.
  • Additional recommendation: Another vendor suggests their app offering multiple YMM input styles (dropdowns, text boxes, product lists) with screenshots illustrating UI. Alternatives proposed include: an Auto Parts–focused theme, a specialized Auto Parts app with brand/YMM filtering, or custom development.

New/ongoing item:

  • The OP asks how to make a top menu item (“Moto”) show a hover dropdown of brands (e.g., Honda, YZ, KTM) instead of linking to a catch-all page. This navigation question remains unanswered.

Status: Initial product-option need resolved via app; navigation/menu setup still open.

Summarized with AI on January 22. AI used: gpt-5.
6

Thank you for helping me on getting the app avis it is working out great. I had one other question…

On the menu bar i have the following

Moto electric bike apparel offroad extra

now if i wanted to put the mouse over say Moto and how could i get it to drop down the different brands i will put under moto? Like it would say Honda, yz, ktm, like that? Instead it takes me to a page with everything but i would rather group by brand under the moto top tool bar area?

Does that make sense?

Thank you for your time.