Shopify Filtering Disaster - Search & Discovery

Shopify Apps
1

Am I the only one who thinks the filtering process in Shopify is now a total shambles?

We sell books - specifically, we sell regionally specific walking guides. In the past, when people arrived at one of our collection pages, they could easily filter their results in the left-hand sidebar by region.

Then we had to update our theme and that functionality vanished. So we tried using the Search & Discovery app. But if we use that and attempt to set up a new filter by tag, it displays every tag we’ve ever created. We can’t choose specific tags (regional ones like Berkshire or Hampshire for example) without seeing all the authors names and other weird legacy tags we don’t want people seeing.

So I contacted Shopify support and they tell me it can’t be done. We can set up a product metafield, but this only allows for one region per product. What about products that straddle multiple regions? Again, we used to be able to do this no problem. But now we can’t!

At least, that’s what Shopify support tell me. But it seems to me that this is such a basic requirement, so completely elementary, that it absolutely must be possible without me having to pay for a third-party app.

Has anyone else encountered this?

1 Like
2

Yes, this is painful. Unfortunately, filtering by tags is an ugly duckling in Search and Discovery app.

However, old filtering by tags did not have any standard filtering/grouping/selecting a subset of values functionality – this was all implemented by theme.

So, basically, if your theme does not allow you to filter the list of tags supplied by the system and shows all of them, then this can be amended by the theme edit. (this is not ideal, as will make further theme updates difficult).

It’s also possible to add an old tag-based filtering via “custom liquid” section/block if your theme allows.

Finally, it’s possible to filter filter values :slightly_smiling_face: with JS, again added as “Custom liquid” section.

However, the proper way would be to move this data from tags to metafields.

You can have a metafield with a type “list of single line text” – this will allow you to assign multiple values on one product, just like tags.

Then you can add a filter by this metafield and it should fully replicate your old functionality.

You can use an app (like Flow) to perform this migration automatically.

With metafields you can also move from “list of single line text” to “list of metaobjects” which will give you new options.

Basically, metaobject is a custom set of data of different types, say, for a region you can have “name” as text, “map” as image, “long description” as formatted text. You create them in your “content”=> “metaobjects” area of your admin and then they will be available as a drop-down to assign to your product metafield.
You will be able to use this data on product pages and if you update metaobject content, all these pages will update automatically.

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-store/search-and-discovery/filters#add-metafield-filters

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/custom-data/metaobjects

3

Thanks Flair122, appreciate your reply. Great to know I’m not alone here! What a shame to have to get help from someone for what appears such a simple requirement. Shopify have dropped the ball on this one.

I see another response here that has a suggestion for how we might fix it. If that doesn’t work, I will take you up on the offer of an intro!

4

Thanks Tim, I appreciate you taking the time to reply to this.

It sounds like the metafields solution is the way to go.

Weirdly, I spent most of the afternoon with Shopify Support yesterday and they couldn’t find a way to assign multiple values on one product.

Thinking about it now, it could easily be that the particular adviser I was speaking to wasn’t sufficiently knowledgeable to get this done.

I will work my way through your recommendations and see how I get on.
Again, big thanks for taking the time to set this out so clearly.

1 Like