What are Metafields?

If you've been using Shopify for any length of time, you'll know that it's an online store platform with a lot of built-in functionality. This means that there are lots and lots of ways to customize your store without having to write code or install extra apps. One big thing that is usually needed is some type of custom field (Shopify calls them Metafields) where you can input a specific type of content. This can be care instructions for nice cashmere sweater, specific delivery times for made-to-order products etc.

Reasons for using metafields

Metafields are everywhere in Shopify nowadays. We use them to build custom landing pages, adding additional information to products, simplifying content input and much more. Any content you want to separate from the standard Shopify fields you can create a Metafield for. A few additional examples we've implemented are:

• Adding product codes or any additional stock keeping information
• Showing current stock levels and availability
• Entering custom descriptions for products
• Descriptions of additional features and images of a specific product.

Metafields are useful for storing additional information on a product that you might want to display in the store, but not actually store as part of the product. For example, if you want to display a blurb about shipping times on your product page and keep it consistent across all products, metafields would be a good way to do it.

They are also useful for storing content that is used on every page of your site (such as an image slider).

Metafield apps are the past

Previously metafields were only available via custom apps but now all features are available via the native Shopify admin interface which takes the ease of use to a very good level. Most of the third-party metafield apps were really bad if we're being completely honest here. (A bit like the current multlingual apps).

Used extensively

You can't really build any unique experiences on top of Shopify without metafields and we use them extensively across all of our projects and themes.

Interested in getting a bit of guidance on how to structure your metafields? We love to talk with fellow developers and shopkeepers and finding new solutions together. Drop me a line.

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