“Metafield” sounds a little technical. But stick with me, because once you know how to use them, metafields are one of the best tools in Shopify.
What is a Shopify metafield?
A metafield is a custom field. It lets you add extra information to individual products without creating a brand-new page design every time, and without turning your product description into a giant wall of text.
A real example: Ipswich Cake Room
I work with a small business called Ipswich Cake Room, and we use product metafields to show ingredient information on certain products.
Ingredients matter for customers checking for allergies, dietary requirements or specific ingredients. But is ingredient information the first thing every person wants to read when they land on a cake product page? Not likely.
Your product description still has a job to do. It needs to explain the product, set the scene and make people want it. So you don’t want ingredient-type information clogging up the main description on every product.
Instead, I create an Ingredients metafield and connect it to a section in the Shopify customiser. If a product has ingredients in its metafield, the Ingredients section shows on the page. If it’s a decorating tool or a spatula, there are no ingredients to add, so the section doesn’t show at all.
Same product template. Different information where it’s needed. No extra clutter, no separate page designs to maintain, and no copying the same layout across multiple templates every time you update the store.
What else you can use metafields for
- Size guides
- Materials
- Care instructions
- Dimensions
- Fit notes
- Shipping details
Or anything else that matters for some products, but not all of them.
Where to find metafields in Shopify
Go to Settings → Metafields and metaobjects. From there you can create metafield definitions for products, variants, collections, customers, orders, pages, blogs and even your shop itself.
If you’re just starting out, start with product metafields. Pick one piece of information that’s important for your customers but doesn’t belong in every product description. Build it once, connect it to your template, and let Shopify do the rest.
Your action for this week
Open Shopify and go to Settings → Metafields and metaobjects → Products. Create one metafield and give it a simple, recognisable name (e.g. Size Guide or Ingredients) so you know what it means whenever you add or update products.
Not sure whether you need a metafield or a whole new product template? I cover that in metafield or product template: how to choose.
Want a hand?
Not sure whether something in your store could work as a metafield? Send me a note with what you’re trying to show and I’ll tell you how I’d approach it. Setting up metafields and product templates is a common job in an optimisation sprint.
Written by Kiah
Founder of Kida Digital, a Sydney-based Shopify studio. Over 10 years building Shopify stores for small Australian businesses.
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