What are you going to be able to do on your store with this feature?
Overview
The latest change to the new metafield definition system(mfdefs) lets them be added to orders, collections AND customers in the native admin. Mfdefs on customers is really powerful as it can let you put together a low effort Customer Management system.
https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/metafields-now-available-on-orders-collections-and-customers
For an example, you can add your customers’ birthdates or loyalty status in Customers, or order delivery date or packaging status in Orders.
This allows adding even deeper data to resources and enable more sophisticated customizations for notifications or online sales channel themes, and data exports with the existing 11 different types without an external app.
- See the metafield definitions admin https://shopify.com/admin/metafields.
- Read more about metafields for adding custom data to your store and displaying it on in themes https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/metafields .
Sample usages without apps- Orders
- add a custom message for specific future notifications to the customer,staff, or fulfillments.
- reference specific product to upsell in future notifications like order confirmation, or offer an alternative staff-curated productVariant in order cancellations
- provide a url to their previous order, thanks you page.
- personal shoppers could add a permalink for a curated set products for the customer to checkout with
- surface specific shipping/fulfillment information
- mark if a return seems likely for sales to step in
- Collections
- add more images to a collection using url to file assets or untested -the filetype metafield definition
- define specific variant references
- add PDF file for all products in that collection
- add url to the collection with tag filtering for a specific group of items
- Advanced - add a handle relating collections together or as “subcollections” instead of using menu linklists
- Advanced - use a string or list to control showing only certain variant options on the collection pages
- Advanced - make a collection to disable some products add-to-cart buttons with an off/on toggle button
- Customers
- Make a note of alternate account names or emails as text type. there is no “customer”-type mfdef like there is for products
- Site Personalization - Display a specific product for just that customer on the home page
- Display a custom message just for that customer, a low tech 1 way chat/message/notification system!
- Related customers together in ways not suitable with just tags like parents and children names
- add addtional info: age, gender, date of birth, zodiac sign, favorite color, review quotes
- untested - staff adding a profile picture the customer provides through email
- Low tech CMS:
- a url to their social media accounts, facebook page, instagram, pinterest
- track sentiment of their last interaction , rating-type
- assign a staff name as account manager
- add a next contact date to follow up for personalized services
- best time of day for contact
- human referrer
- account verifications
- total spent on specific productVariants or in a collection or a specific sale,etc
- Low tech rewards program -may want to have logging with that though
Sample usages with automation apps or services
Making even some of the above metafield definitions dyanamic using an app really ups the power as the data you need is surfaced in the native admin without having to always go into some other apps interface.
Automation apps like usemechanic , arigato, airpower that can be used to really power this feature (be sure to check feature support first before commiting to automation apps in the app store)
There are also lowcode services like zapier and integromat that can be leveraged for this.
- Orders
- display inventory forecast
- Customer lifetime value
- VIP shipping status, etc
- Collections
- ABC analysis list. note the highest selling product , the middle and the lowest in a collection.
- Add 1 field for a customer review and another off/on to toggle approval everytime the review is updated
- Customers
- A rewards program with basic external logging for auditing if need be
- Affiliate tracking and and revenue generation by their referral customers orders history.
- Customer rating for customer support or staff interaction
Questions
Are there some existing customizations or discussions on the forums(url please) you think could be improved with this new feature?
What do you think your going to be able to do on your store with this feature or need help figuring out?