Denis Dyli
•
January 31, 2022

Shopify Plus has done something incredible:  it’s brought enterprise-level eCommerce capabilities to companies on a reasonable budget.  What used to require entire teams to build and manage can now be had for just a few thousand dollars a month.

But it’s by no means perfect.  From large catalogs to discounting rules, there are a few common problems that can frustrate even the most stalwart Shopify fan.

In this post, we’ll explore a few of the common problems and, most importantly, how to address them.

Issues with Expansive Product Portfolios 

Problem: Variants Thresholds

Shopify natively supports the creation of up to three options per product (i.e. size, color, style) and up to 100 variants of options combinations; for example, a combination of size-color-style equals one variant. Each variant has its own unique SKU number, photo, price and additional attributes.

The challenge: what should a business do if it has more than three options and 100 variants?   

Workaround 1: Grouping Products 

In the aforementioned case, we split products based on options. Let’s assume your product has 10 different colors. Each color will be created as an individual product, and the size could be a simple variant.

On the product page, group all products of the same type with a unified tag, and each color will show up as a product swatch. Customers will navigate from one color to another in the same form as they would from one variant to another; the difference in this scenario being each color is a product with its own URL.

This method may require simple code to…