There are many ways to maximize traffic and conversion rates in your online store: strategic SEO efforts; thoughtfully placed buy buttons; well-timed popups; bright, bold, and beautiful imagery that matches your Shopify theme—all of these are great places to start.
Unfortunately, none of this will get you anywhere if your customers can’t get exactly what they want from your listings. That’s why you need to offer built-in product customization options directly on your product pages, and Shopify custom product fields make that possible.
Custom fields allow your customers to personalize your base products, refining them to match their vision. Think color swatches, checkboxes, and text fields that allow a specific and individually customized end-result for each order.
But how do you add Shopify custom fields? Is it hard? Does Shopify’s native functionality allow you to do it easily, or at all? And exactly how do you maximize custom product functionality in each of your listings?
Excellent questions all, and we’re here to answer them today. We will take a look at what a custom field is and what types exist, how to add them with native Shopify functionality, and how a third-party product customization app can take your product listings to the next level.
A custom field is an additional section that contains information about a product, but is not required in order to make a listing. While Shopify and other online sources may define custom fields only as text fields where you can input specific information (e.g. a message for engraving a product, delivery instructions, or fabric types), this is too limited a definition. In actuality, there are many other types of custom fields.
These include, but are not limited to:
… and so many more possibilities. Shopify custom product fields do not offer all of this functionality natively, however, which is why your conversion rate benchmarks may not be as high as you’d like them to be. That’s where a third-party app that adds additional tailoring can help.
Before we discuss that, though,let’s take a look at how to add custom fieldsin Shopify.
First, we should note that it is possible to add custom fields within your Shopify store without the use of a third-party platform. For instance, you can add text fields and form fields pretty easily.
To add custom fields directly within your Shopify admin panel, follow these steps:
Step 1: Click “Product” in your dashboard.
Step 2: Select “Products” then “Add a new product.”
Step 3: Pick “Add options” and customize.
Step 4: Give your option a name, and provide a series of selections to choose from.
Step 5: Click on “Other options” to add additional options (maintaining the 100-item Shopify variant limit).
Step 6: Assign SKUs or product IDs to manage your variant options.
While Shopify does natively provide a custom field option, it is limited to 100 total variants—meaning you can only add so many possible combinations, constraining your listing and potentially turning your shoppers away.
If you’re about to go Google “how to add variants on my Shopify,” hold off. It’s actually not that hard to get around the Shopify variant limit, and we’ll consider that now.
Adding custom fields used to require editing code directly—but if HTML, API integrations, and JSON data editing aren’t in your wheelhouse, third-party apps are here to save the day. Here’s how to add custom fields to your Shopify product pages using Product Options and Customizer:
Step 1: Download Product Options & Customizer from the Shopify App Store.
Step 2: Open a product page and click “Create a new option.”
Step 3: Provide an option name, select a custom field type, and include relevant details, like selections consumers can choose from.
Step 4: Click “Save” and preview your new product option.
You can see how easy third-party apps are to use and update your product pages. Now let’s get into all of the custom options they can enable for your storefront.
While built-in custom fields available through Shopify are limited to basic options like text and form fields, third-party apps offer so much more to upgrade your product listings. And when you use these options to create a product template, that template can be utilized to quickly and easily create new product listings in a snap. Let’s take a look at the most popular custom field options:
Color swatch custom fields let your customers choose the righthue for their product. Just upload the color images you offer and they’lldisplay in an attractive and user-friendly alignment, allowing customers to seeall available colors and select their favorite.
If your e-commerce store sells time-sensitive products (think catering, invitations, or in-person appointments, like for family photo sessions), then a date picker is an important thing to add to your listings. Simply add the date picker field, which will pull up calendar functionality for your shoppers to select their preferred date(s).
If you print custom products – think sweatshirts with company logos or letterpress invitations with a designer’s artwork – then you need a way for customers to upload their graphics. Custom file uploads is your solution, allowing users to upload their files for you to fulfill their custom orders.
Want simple product variant functionality? Use a drop-down menu to give customers a choice of categories or even sub-categories. Set default options where helpful so that customers can breeze through the process and make it to the cart page that much faster.
Allow consumers to select the fonts that best match their needs with a Google font picker option. Such a tool allows shoppers to select from hundreds of Google fonts, modify font styles and sizes, and more.
Including text boxes alongside your customization options allows shoppers to specify custom requests or special instructions. They’re useful in situations like noting a name to be embroidered; an anniversary date to be etched; or what to include in a gift message.
Radio buttons and checkboxes allow your shoppers to make their selections from a predetermined list. While checkboxes allow multiple selections, radio buttons will require just one. Both are effortless to set up, and significantly streamline your order intake.
Image swatches let you showcase specific fabric and design options, andprovide consumers a sense of security in knowing what their final product willlook like. Like color swatches, just upload your graphics to be displayed in aneasy-to-navigate format for shoppers to choose from.
If you use a range of materials, you need the ability to recapture costs in a way that reflects that range. Per option upcharge pricing lets you set different prices for different variations in your product section.
Using an app to add custom product fields in your Shopify store is the easiest solution to lifting Shopify’s limits and increasing your sales … and Product Options and Customizer is the best app for the job.
Not only is it easy to install in your Shopify store, it offers a variety of Shopify custom product fields to choose from. You can even insert product information and product metafields, both of which will boost your store's SEO and bring new shoppers to your page. Your optimized product pages, complete with conditional logic from one custom field to the next, will walk shoppers through the customization process and land them right at your checkout page.
Ready to try Product Options and Customizer for your own custom fields? Start a free trial today!
