Automate Your Shopify Store

Learn about the best ways to automate your e-commerce business and manage your inventory across multiple Shopify stores.

Product organization Shopify Product Type vs. Collections: What's the Difference?Shopify uses various methods to help shop owners organize and structure their stores in a way that is easy for the customer to find what they are looking for. The terminology used to describe these methods is sometimes difficult to differentiate. The confusion between "Product type" and "Collections" is a good example because although the terms are different, they could be used interchangeably in some cases. What Are Product Types in Shopify? Every product you have in your store can only have one standardized product type and one custom product type. They are used to label and categorize your products. It is important to understand that product types are useful but not required. A standardized product type is predefined, while a custom product type is a category that is not already defined—you still have to define it. Product types are more useful to you as the store owner than your customer—but your customer will benefit from product types because it creates a more intuitive layout. How to Add Shopify Product Types Let's say you are a clothing merchant, and you want to further categorize your products by creating a "belts" product type. You need to add the word "belt" into your product description, which will then categorize automatically according to the product type. Another example could be made of a clothing store: product types would be "skirts," "pants," "shirts," "shoes," and "dresses." Now that you have a better understanding of a product type, here's a step-by-step guide to adding them to your store: Log in to your Shopify admin panel and click on Products.Click on Add a product and add your title, a short description of the product type and add a good-quality image.You'll see sections for Visibility and Organization on the right-hand side panel. Click on Organization, and you'll see Product type. This is where you add your product type—just type in the details and then submit.If you want to use an existing product type, all you need to do is click on the name of the type in the drop-down menu. » Discover more tips on how to effectively organize your products in Shopify What Are Collections in Shopify? A Shopify collection is the grouping of products on a page or in a category. Let's say you are a hat merchant, and you may have a collection of smart hats, a collection of sports peaks, and a collection of beach hats. Shopify allows you to group your products purely to make it easier for your customers to find what they are looking for. It is a type of information architecture that is structured logically for ease of use. Some more examples of collections include "color," "size," "seasons," "discounted items," or even "gender." How to Add Shopify Collections Now that you understand what collections are used for, here is a step-by-step guide to adding a new collection within your e-commerce Shopify store: To create or see all your collections, you need to click on Products. Your collections will show up on your site navigation.To create a new collection, simply click on Create collection. Yes, it is that easy! Now you just need to add your products to your collections. » Learn the distinction between collections and categories and how to organize collections on Shopify Using Inventories to Further Refine Your Store Shopify inventory management and inventory tracking are also handy for keeping orders within your e-commerce store. There is also multi-store inventory management for those vendors who want to sync inventory between two or more Shopify stores. This helps you to manage stock, returns, and out-of-stock items to give your customer a streamlined and professional customer experience. Synchronize Products and Collections Between Stores Automatically synchronize stock levels, product availability, and product collections across all of your Shopify stores with Multi-Store Sync Power. Adjust stock in all of your locations to the same level.Collaboratively update product data from multiple locations.Full support for simultaneous updates from multiple locations. The Difference Between Shopify Product Types and Collections The difference between product types and collections is subtle and sometimes difficult to explain to new e-commerce store owners. Put simply, you would use collections to help your customer find what they are looking for as quickly as possible. Product type is not required but will help you, as a store owner, categorize your products in the back end—product type is more useful to you than it is to your customer. One Product at a Time For you to use collections and product types correctly, it is best to map your store out on paper before setting it up in Shopify. Make sure you have thought it through properly so that your layout makes logical sense. It might take a bit of time, but in the long run, it will be worth the effort. Here are some tips that'll assist you with determining how many products you can start out with. Learn more about how Multi-Store Power Sync can help you create and update collections in multiple Shopify stores at once:

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Product organization How to Add Products to Shopify Collections A Shopify collection is essentially the grouping of products on a page or in a category. Let's say you are a shoe merchant, and you may have a collection of smart shoes, a collection of running shoes, and a collection of casual shoes. Shopify allows you to group your products purely to make it easier for your customers to find what they are looking for. This is also known as information architecture. How Many Products Can Be Added to a Shopify Collection? You may be limited to 50 products per collection, but there is no limit to the number of products you can add to your overall Shopify store. You'll need the Advanced Collection app to be able to lift the limits. In fact, with this app, you'll be able to set your collection conditions. If you are planning on building a large inventory or already have one, you can use automated inventory tracking features or apps. » Learn more about creating a better Shopify inventory management Speed up the Process of Editing Product Images Egnition's All-In-One Image Master can do everything from removing the background to resizing the canvas and centering the product images for you. Choose between PNG and JPG as the output format and adjust the quality settings according to your needs.All processed images share the same visual style due to a shared set of predefined rules.Create ALT text for product images automatically based on a predefined template. How to Add Products to Collections on Shopify You've had your e-commerce store for a couple of years and have used your metrics to accurately gauge which products are selling and which products are being returned a little too often for your liking. Your next step is to remove a couple of products from your store and add some new, trendier versions. How do you go about adding products to your Shopify collection? Let's take it step-by-step for manual and automated collections. Adding Products to a Manual Collection Browse and then add the products you want to include in your collection and click on Save.Type the products in the search bar—this will add them to your list.Go to the Sort option and click on Manually to sort your products.Now you can drag the products according to the order you would like them to be displayed.Add your manual collection to your navigation bar. Adding Products to an Automatic Collection Once you are in the automated collections, click on Products and then Collections.Click on Create collections and add a title and description of the products you want to add to your collection. Always select Automated Collections.Now you can choose the conditions that will help you to group your products. » Discover how to add products to a page on Shopify How to Create Subsections in Shopify Adding sub-collections within collections is not a simple task. Before we go through the steps, let's get a grasp of what a subsection is. As an example, you may be selling collections of shoes. So, within the collection of running shoes, you may need to add additional subsections such as "children's sizes," "adults," and "teens." You could also set up subsections of brand names, for example, "Nike," "Adidas," and "Asics." Put simply, it is just a way to order your products to help your customers streamline their experience in your store. To add subsections in Shopify using the navigation menu, simply follow these steps: Log in to your Shopify store using your credentials.Click on the Navigation section.Click on Add menu. If you've already created the menu option, you can edit it and skip this step. If you don't have the main menu yet, you'll need to create it. To do this, you need to select Add menu.Now it's time to add your menu items. Click on Add menu item and choose the required collection to create a parent collection.Once you've created the parent collection, you need to add your subsections. To change the collections you've just added into sub-collections, drag them with your mouse into the parent collections. Remember to order them correctly.Click on Save Menu to save the collections and subsections you've created. Last but Not Least Now that you are set up with your collections and subsections, you can add your products. It will take time for you to get used to structuring and restructuring your Shopify e-commerce store. However, the more you play around with your store, the quicker you will learn how to use as much of the functionality as possible. And the more functionality you tap into, the more you will get out of your store. » Interested in learning more about Shopify collections? Discover the difference between categories and collections

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Inventory Supply and Demand: 5 Techniques to Manage Overstock and Understock in Your Shopify Store Supply and demand is a fundamental concept of e-commerce. It’s like the yin and yang of online shopping. You can’t have one without the other. But what happens when you have too much of one and not enough of the other? That’s where overstock and understock come in. Overstocking can lead to increased storage costs and the risk of products becoming obsolete, while understocking can lead to stockouts and lost sales. Below, we explore different ways and expert tips to help you manage your stock. 5 Techniques to Manage Overstock and Understock in Your Shopify Store Analyze Sales DataUse Sales Promotions and DiscountsUse an App for Inventory ManagementOffer Bundles and Product KitsImplement Dropshipping 1. Analyze Sales Data Sales data reveals much about your customers' preferences, patterns, and future demands—factors critical for making informed decisions about stocking up or scaling back product offerings. By gathering insights into how shoppers interact with your store, you can estimate the upcoming demand and plan inventory levels accordingly. Expert tips:Track your sales performance over time and examine it for variations in the seasons, spikes, and dips. This can help you decide when you need to stock up or clear away certain products.Sort your sales data into segments such as product, category, channel, location, and customer type. This can aid you in figuring out if products are more popular, profitable, or in-demand among different groups of customers. » Use your sales data to conduct easy Shopify inventory forecasting 2. Use Sales Promotions and Discounts Sales promotions and discounts are marketing tactics that help you provide temporary price reductions or incentives to your customers, including buy one get one free, free shipping, or a percentage off. This has a dual advantage: move inventory quickly and generate more revenue while also rewarding customer loyalty. Expert tips:Use urgency and scarcity to create a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out). For example, set a time limit or stock limit for your offer and display a countdown timer or a stock indicator on your product page.Segment your customers and target them with personalized offers based on their behavior, preferences, or loyalty. For example, send an email campaign to loyal customers with an exclusive discount code or offer a free gift to first-time buyers. » Find out whether customer loyalty discounts really work 3. Use an App for Inventory Management Inventory management can be quite daunting for Shopify store owners, so incorporating an inventory management app can streamline the whole process significantly. Bestsellers Resort by Egnition is an all-in-one app that provides an extensive set of rules to automatically sort and organize your products into collections. Each collection has customizable sorting rules based on product type, sales, revenue, publish date, tags, and other features. You can also manually add featured products to the top of collections. The app can help you to: Optimize your online merchandising strategiesOrganize your products in unique ways that best suit your storeIncrease ROI and drive growth 4. Offer Bundles and Product Kits Offering bundles and product kits not only helps you move more goods, but also raises the perceived worth of your products and encourages customers to purchase multiple items. Think of it like getting a two-for-one deal at your favorite store—except instead of getting two of the same things, you get two things that go together like peanut butter and jelly. Expert tips:Make sure the products in your bundle or kit are complementary. For example, if you’re selling a camera, you could bundle it with a tripod or a camera bag.Offer a discount or special price for purchasing the bundle or kit to encourage customers to buy more products. » Discover how to combine discounts on Shopify to incentivize customers to buy more 5. Implement Dropshipping Dropshipping is a strategy where you collaborate with a supplier who sends the products customers have bought on your store straight to them. This eliminates the need for you to store inventory or distribute things yourself. Plus, it can help you increase your product variety and offer more options to your customers. Expert tips:Look for suppliers who have a good reputation and positive reviews. Check out websites like AliExpress, CJ Dropshipping, or Spocket to find suppliers.Make sure the supplier has a good return policy and customer service. This will help you avoid any issues with customers down the line.Integrate your dropshipping supplier with Shopify by using an app like Spocket or CJ Dropshipping. These apps allow you to easily import products from your supplier and fulfill orders automatically. Give and Take: Master Your Inventory Management Effective inventory management is crucial for the success of any Shopify store. By implementing the techniques discussed in this post, you can manage your inventory levels more effectively and avoid issues like overstocking and understocking. Not only can these techniques help you increase your sales and improve customer satisfaction, but they can also help you reduce waste and save money. Additionally, inventory management apps like Bestsellers reSort are designed to help you track your inventory levels, identify your best-selling products, and make informed decisions about your inventory management strategy. Discover more ways Bestsellers reSort can help you optimize online merchandising and inventory management

A ring-bound notebook on a table, with the words 'First In First Out' visible in capitalized letters on the page..

Out-of-stock FIFO Management System: The Key to Effective Shopify Inventories Although there are methods and tips for selling when out of stock on Shopify, such as back-in-stock notification forms and monitoring your inventory-to-sales ratio, managing your stock can be the difference between a profitable, customer-serving business and a failed store with all its capital tied into inventory and no sales. Why Is Inventory Management Important? Knowing the cost of your inventory will not only help prevent you from over-investing in stock but also help reduce warehouse costs, help monitor theft and loss, and help produce more accurate stock cost values. The logistics of stock management can become complicated, especially for larger stores. That's why implementing an inventory tracking system is crucial for a smoothly running online store. What Is the FIFO Inventory Management Method? The FIFO (first in, first out) inventory management system aims to value a business's inventory in a way that reduces the loss of products because it has expired or become obsolete. This inventory costing assumption method calculates the inventory cost of the first items that arrived in stock and uses the newest inventory as the remaining stock. In short, the first stock and its associated costs are used before your new stock. Why Use FIFO for Shopify Instead of Other Methods? FIFO is the most widely-used inventory management method and the most accurate when assuming expected costs with the flow of goods. Additional benefits of FIFO include the following: Using FIFO in your Shopify automated inventory management system will provide you with the most accurate way to align stock prices and sales.FIFO will help reduce the impact of inflation if we assume that the cost of old inventory is less than newer inventory. Therefore, your net profit will be higher.FIFO will help reduce expired stock and items that have become obsolete. However, it's important to note that there are other inventory management methods available to consider, such as: LIFO Inventory Management (Last in, first out) This method is the opposite of FIFO, where the last inventory purchase is the first to be sold.Average Cost Inventory It is calculated by dividing the total cost of your goods by the total number of goods available for sale. This produces a single average cost price.Specific Inventory Tracking It is used when all finished product costs are known. With all aspects known, any of the above methods are appropriate. Calculating FIFO To calculate your COGS (cost of goods sold) using the FIFO method, simply calculate the cost of the oldest inventory sold, and multiply it by the number of items sold. In a formula, this would look as follows: COGS (FIFO) = (Cost of Oldest Inventory) x (Total Inventory Sold) Note: If newer inventory (with a higher/lower cost) is used to complete sales, you will need to take this into account. Example of FIFO Calculations To gain a better understanding, let's consider the following T-shirt-selling Shopify store, which has inventory purchase data that looks like this: DateFebruaryAprilAugustQuantity200150200Cost/T-Shirt$10$12$16COGS (FIFO)$2,000$1,800$3,200 Assume you sell 250 T-shirts (Total Inventory Sold) and want to work out your cost price using the FIFO method. As FIFO uses old stock first, the first 200 shirts will be sold from the oldest inventory, February, for $10 per T-shirt (Cost of Oldest Inventory). The remaining 50 T-shirts represent the newest inventory and will be taken from the purchase made in April at a cost of $12 per T-shirt (Cost of Newest Inventory). The COGS will, therefore, be calculated as follows: Total Inventory Sold = 250Cost of Oldest Inventory = (200 x $10) + (50 x $12)* = $2,600COGS (February-April) = $2,600 x 250 = $650,000* Cost of Newest Inventory This will leave your ending inventory as follows: COGS (April) = 100 x $12 = $1,200COGS (August) = 200 x $16 = $3,200 FIFO Inventory Management: A Must-Have for Shopify Sellers Correctly managing your store's inventory will make adding products to Shopify collections easier because you'll be able to forecast inventory. You'll have an idea of your stock levels, the cost of stock, and how quickly your stock is being sold. The FIFO method is a global go-to for inventory management systems, as it will help reduce obsolete products while compensating for the rising prices of goods.

Neon out of stock sign with neon shopping cart

Out-of-stock Out-of-Stock Products: Selling on Shopify Tips It's not uncommon for Shopify merchants to sell out-of-stock products. In this article, we'll share a few tips on how to sell, hide, and manage out-of-stock items to keep your sales funnel flowing. Benefits of Selling Out-of-Stock Products Selling out-of-stock products can be an effective strategy for your online store. It can help you to: Increase sales by making preorders available for your products.Retain sales because you have new stock coming soon and want to keep selling until it arrives.Improve order and inventory management because you order new stock based on your customer orders. How Do You Sell Items if You're Out of Stock? When you sell out of an item, customers can't buy it until you update your inventory levels to add new stock. This means that Shopify doesn't allow you to oversell by default. But there are ways to tweak your Shopify settings to oversell new and existing products. 1. Overselling New Products When creating your product, tick the Track Inventory box under inventory. This is usually ticked by default. You'll notice another option to Continue selling when out of stock beneath that checkbox. When this box is ticked, the product will be available for overselling. 2. Overselling Existing Products Existing products can be edited in bulk, allowing you to make a modification once and apply it to all existing products. Navigate to Products > All Products.Choose all of the products.Select Edit products.Once the spreadsheet opens, click Add fields and select Continue selling when out of stock.Tick the checkboxes next to any products you want to keep selling after they've sold out. How Do You Hide Out-of-Stock Items? You can hide your products that are temporarily out of stock by: Using automated collections.Hiding your out-of-stock products in your default catalog collection.Automatically hiding them by using apps, such as Egnition's Out-of-Stock Police or Bestsellers reSort. 1. How to Hide Out-of-Stock Products From Your Collections You must activate inventory monitoring in your Shopify admin before you can hide out-of-stock products and variants from your collections. Inventory tracking automatically monitors the inventory level of each product you carry. Steps: Enable inventory tracking for your products.Change the automated collection conditions for each of your collections and include the following:For Products must match, select all conditions.For Inventory stock, select is greater than and enter 0. This will make sure that your automated collections don't contain any out-of-stock goods and that those goods aren't visible to your consumers. After you receive inventory, any out-of-stock goods will reappear in your collections. Pro Tip: If you set Products must match to any condition, this method for hiding out-of-stock products won't work. » Learn how to hide out-of-stock variants on Shopify by following our step-by-step guide 2. How to Hide Out-of-Stock Products in Your Default Catalog Collection Your store comes standard with a collection that displays all of your in-stock products at the URL {your-store}.myshopify.com/collections/all. It's easy to hide out-of-stock products in this collection. Steps: Take over your Catalog page by overriding it with your own automated collection.Set the collection's automated conditions to hide out-of-stock products. 3. How to Hide Out-of-Stock Products Using Out-of-Stock Police Out-of-Stock Police provides intelligent ways of hiding out-of-stock products, saving you time and effort. Push out-of-stock items to the bottom The app organizes your collections by ensuring that out-of-stock products are never displayed as featured items.Tag out-of-stock products Create rules for smart collections, build reports, and plan restock dates better by tagging out-of-stock items automatically.Instant notifications for Shopify inventory Get notified via email when certain products reach low stock, are out of stock, or have just sold out. Don't Unpublish Products to Hide Them Although it may seem like a quick-fix solution, unpublishing out-of-stock products not only frustrates your customers with error pages but also negatively impacts your rankings and SEO. Instead, you can follow strategies such as pushing out-of-stock items to the bottom of your collection, applying "sold out" badges to your products, or using automated collection rules. Doing so will simplify the process of managing your out-of-stock inventory in Shopify. » Discover how to mark your products as "sold out" in Shopify

Product organization Shopify Categories vs. Collections: What's the Difference?There are two main ways to organize your Shopify products: by collections or by categories. Collections allow store owners to group their products based on a theme or common attribute, while categories allow store owners to group their products based on how they wish them to appear on a store's homepage. For more context, collections are a good way to make it easy for customers to find what they're looking for, while categories are a good way to create a curated and user-friendly shopping experience for your customers. What Is a Category in Shopify? Shopify categories are similar to collections. Although, instead of compiling products into a collection page, categories should be thought of as the product taxonomy of a store. In other words, categories are a way to organize how products are displayed on a shop's home page. For instance, from a store's homepage, a "Jeans" category may be set. Then, you can add two new subcategories for "Men's Jeans" and "Women's Jeans." This will appear within a store's menu and submenu, respectively, making it easy for customers to find exactly the products they'd like to browse straight from the store's landing page. This type of menu categorization is particularly important while managing multiple Shopify stores. Seriously, without the right organization, managing just one inventory is confusing enough. Two or more can become a nightmare. What Is a Collection in Shopify? So, we're first going to discuss what a collection is and then further look at the two types of collections you can create on Shopify. A collection is a group of products that are either related by a common attribute or grouped for the sake of navigability. By adding collections, store owners can organize their products in a way that keeps their inventory streamlined and easy to navigate while helping customers to find what they are looking for. If you're unfamiliar with how to organize collections on Shopify, here are the two types of collections you can create: Manual collections allow store owners to manually set custom conditions by which they'd like to group products.Automatic collections automatically create collections based on 60 different preset conditions, such as price, title, or vendor. The Difference Between Shopify Categories and Collections When it comes to organizing your products on Shopify, you have two main options: collections and categories. Collections are great for grouping related products together, while categories are perfect for sorting items by product type or topic. So, which one should you use? The answer depends on what you're trying to achieve. Categories are better for when you want to create a specific look or theme for your shop, while collections are more suited for general organization. For example, if you're a fashion retailer, you might create categories for dresses, skirts, and tops while creating collections to categorize items by color or style. » Struggling to manage your Shopify store's inventory? Learn how to effectively manage inventory on Shopify Additional Aspects to Consider Shopify inventory management is super important. If ignored or done incorrectly, it can negatively affect a store's revenue and profit potential. To avoid this, learn everything you can about Shopify inventory management and Shopify inventory tracking. Selling out-of-stock items is another issue that can plague the reputation and overall manageability of a Shopify store. To avoid these potential headaches, learn how to manage out-of-stock items or what to do when you sell out-of-stock items. Discover how Egnition's Out-of-Stock Police can automatically push your out-of-stock products down in collections:

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All-in-one image master Shopify Image Optimization: Best Practices to Maximize Your Store's Performance If you run a Shopify store, image optimization is an art you'll want to master to ensure better performance. Delivering high-quality, well-optimized images will improve the user experience for your potential customers as well as make your store more likely to rank better on search engines. If you want to benefit from high-quality images, you may be wondering—does Shopify optimize images? Luckily, the platform does come with some aspects that make image optimization easier. Below, we'll look into what Shopify does to boost your image quality and reduce load times for maximized store performance. » Consider these reasons to optimize Shopify images Shopify Image Compression One of Shopify's image optimization strategies to increase your website speed is image compression. This process involves reducing the size of an image by removing unnecessary data and optimizing it for web use without compromising its quality. Shopify automatically compresses the images you upload to your store, so you don't have to worry about doing it manually. This ensures that all your images load quickly on both desktop and mobile devices, providing a better user experience while making sure that search engines can easily index and rank your store to boost its performance. Selecting the Best Image Format Another important aspect of image optimization is selecting the right file format for your images. Different formats are better suited for different purposes, so it's important to choose the one that works best for your store. Shopify automatically optimizes images depending on their type and supports a wide range of popular formats such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. To make the most out of your image formats, Shopify detects what type of browser your potential customer is using and converts your images to the best format for their browser. No matter how many images you upload to Shopify, this ensures they all show up quickly and look great regardless of the kind of device your customers are using. Cropping & Resizing Your Images Resizing your images to the right dimensions to fit the screen and look their best is another important factor in optimizing your images. This ensures that they don't take up too much space while displaying correctly across different devices and screen sizes. Apart from automatically resizing images to fit smaller screens, Shopify will also gently crop your images where necessary according to different screen orientations. However, some pictures will require manual editing, but Shopify accommodates this as well with its built-in image resizing tool that makes it easy to adjust the image dimensions before you upload them. You can also use this feature to crop and resize existing images on your store if necessary. » Learn how to make all product images the same size on Shopify Easily Optimize Images for Shopify With Egnition All-In-One Image Master Make Image Optimization a Breeze Free Plan Yes Packages 3 paid plans Features All features included in all plans Credit-Based Operation Credits don't expire Properly optimizing your images is an important part of running a successful e-commerce store. While Shopify facilitates image optimization through the automated processes we described above, this alone often isn't enough to ensure customer satisfaction and boost your store's performance. Luckily, there are steps you can take to ensure well-optimized images and improve the load times across your store, like using Egnition's All-In-One Image Master. With this helpful tool, you can resize and optimize all your product images before uploading them to save time and effort while benefiting from enhanced visual design for improved customer satisfaction and store performance.

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