Shopify has decided to end the historic divide between manual and smart collections with a new unified model that simplifies catalog management.
What Shopify collections are and why they are important for ecommerce
Shopify collections are the navigation structure of ecommerce, a key piece for user experience and, in many cases, the pages with the greatest potential for organic ranking.
Until now, there were two types of collections:
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Manual collections: where each product was added individually, and where you had absolute control over the catalog.
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Smart collections: which used rules to automatically include products, providing greater scalability, but with the inherent complexity of creating those rules.
On paper, this separation allowed you to choose between control and automation. In practice, however, many online stores ended up combining both models to adapt to their real needs.
As a result, hybrid structures difficult to maintain ended up being created, forcing products to be added manually even if they met the criteria of an automated collection, and increasing the complexity of catalog management.
The new Shopify collections model
To eliminate this complexity, Shopify has announced a new unified collections model, more flexible, easier to manage, and based on business categories: brand, product type, season…
Beyond the technical change, the decision reflects an evolution in the way catalog management is understood:
- Until now, ecommerce managers had to first decide what type of collection they needed, manual or smart, and then build the category. The new approach puts the business objective of the collection at the center.
- Managing hundreds or thousands of references through manual processes increases operational effort, the risk of categorization errors, misassigned products, or inconsistencies in navigation. This new approach seeks to minimize some of these problems and simplify catalog management as the number of references grows.
How the new collections model can affect your ecommerce SEO
Although the change is mainly driven by a need for operational simplification, it can also have positive effects on the SEO strategy.
Collections are usually some of the pages with the greatest ranking potential within an ecommerce store, as they allow you to respond to searches related to categories, brands, or specific user needs.
Simpler catalog management can facilitate:
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A more consistent categorization of products.
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A more coherent navigation structure.
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The creation and maintenance of categories with value for organic ranking.
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A greater scalability as the catalog grows.
The disappearance of the traditional separation between manual and smart collections represents an improvement that can significantly simplify catalog management and lay the foundation for much more efficient automation.
At Upango , we are committed to incorporating the latest updates so that our Shopify projects are prepared to rank organically, contact us at hola@upango.es and we'll talk about your project.