Overview
Being an e-commerce store owner, you must be aware that you need to have many different products to satisfy wide and varying tastes and preferences of customers. But in most cases, Shopify variant limits can ring a big alarm bell, more so for those businesses dealing with highly complex product offerings. Presented below is a detailed review of variant limitations in Shopify 2024, its implications, and practical suggestions on how it could be bypassed.
Current Variant Limit in Shopify 2024 How Far Are the Constraints?
Shopify’s current variant limit is 100 variants per product, up to a maximum of three options. This means you can offer 100 different variations of a product, and each one will be a unique combination of choices. While this might initially seem like a lot, it really does get restrictive quickly for stores with big product portfolios or otherwise complex product offerings.
Suppose, for instance, that you are a retailer selling T-shirts of different colors, sizes, and designs. With the current limitation on the number of variations created for a single product, different variations of a T-shirt that you can come up with now are:
- 10 colors: red, blue, green, etc.
- 5 sizes: small, medium, large, etc.
- 2 designs: plain, with graphics
That would give you 100 variations, calculated as follows: 10 colors times 5 sizes times 2 designs. However, if you wanted to expand your options, adding fabrics and/or sleeve lengths would have pushed you beyond the limit for variants.
Why Is There a Variant Limit in Shopify? Uncovering the Reasoning Behind the Constraint.
Shopify did this purposefully to make sure the platform scaled out and performed. The product data becomes exponentially complex with a huge number of variants, hence making the page load speed slower and potentially leading to other errors. With a cap on the variant limit, Shopify wants stores to efficiently manage their products and maintain a seamless customer experience.
Imagine having a store with thousands of variants of only one product. It will result in huge data, and Shopify’s servers would work too hard to process and render the product page efficiently. Limiting the number of variants ensures that Shopify pages load quickly so customers can find and purchase what they want.
Implications of Hitting the Variant Limit Knowing What to Do
In respect to hitting the variant limit, there could be huge implications for any business:
- Limited Product Offering: It has restricted the number of products to be offered and hence potentially misses sales and customer satisfaction.
- Poor Customer Experience: Customers are facing problems in finding the exact product and feel a lack in the proper satisfaction level, which could lead them to abandon their carts.
- Poor inventory management: Having too many products will make inventory management even more of a pain, making something like a stock out or overstock on some critical item much more likely to occur.
- Less competitive: Hundreds of thousands of products will make it unrealistic for you to compete against larger retailers or businesses holding much larger product catalogs.
- Rise in requests to the support desk: Customer requests about the availability of products and customization requests may increase.
How to Get Around the Variant Limit Seeking Solutions
Although it often seems like this variant limit is always going to be a tight squeeze, there are a couple of ways through it:
- Product splitting with internal links: Break this down into separate listings, then have each product with its own set of variants. There are several advantages to doing so, such as improved user experience, finer inventory management, and better SEO.
- Use Product Options Apps: with product options apps, you’ve been able to add custom options to products without listing the same product repeatedly. These applications offer unlimited options, conditional logic, improved customer experience and many other advantages.
- Modify Theme to Combine Products: you can modify your theme so that it combines products into one listing that shall have variations of the product. Yes, this way does require advanced technical knowledge but provides you with full customization.
This could include making different listings for sofas that differ by fabric, size, or configuration, and then interlinking them for easier internal navigation by the customer to see various fabric options. This would maintain a good user experience.
Best Practices on Variant Management on Shopify Tips and Tricks
No matter the solution you apply, best practices for managing variants on Shopify are something worth considering:
- Apply a uniform naming convention: Be sure that your product names and variant names are similarly named throughout your store.
- Optimize product descriptions: Use descriptive and keyword-rich product descriptions to support SEO.
- Use high-quality product images: Establish products at different angles and investigate 360-degree views or videos.
- Use strong inventory management: Put in place a worth-it inventories management system that keeps track of the levels and prevents you from overselling.
Consider reviewing regularly for optimization: Be reviewing and optimizing products regularly to meet customer demand.
Conclusion
The limit of variants in Shopify can, of course, be quite suffocating. However, fortunately, there are a good number of ways around it. First, fully understand what this variant limit implies for your store and use the provided solutions, such as splitting internal-linked products by using product option apps or doing theme edits to merge products. This way, you will be sure to allow your customers a seamless experience and stay ahead in the competitive world of ecommerce.
Actionable Takeaways
- Product Offerings: Review product offerings from time to time so that they are relevant to customers’ wants and needs and optimized for the variant limit.
- Product Options Apps: Consider using a product options app for adding custom options within your products and getting around the variant limit.
- Splitting Products w/ Internal Links: You can split your products into separate listings with the inclusion of internal links, making the user experience much easier, as well as inventory management.
- Edit themes to combine products: The editing process of a theme combining the products into a unique product listing with multiple variants.
- Optimize product descriptions and images: Descriptive product descriptions that are rich in keywords, along with better quality product photos, place better on your SEO as well as customer experience.
Future of Shopify Variant Limit
As Shopify moves into the future with enhancing itself, so will this variant limit. Meanwhile, it is necessary to continue being informed about updates or changes to the variant limit and be ready to adapt strategies accordingly.
Final Thoughts
What most people believe to be a Shopify variant limit in 2024 is going to do—distract. With the right strategies and solutions in place, you can even outsmart it to deliver a class customer experience. Grasp the implications of the variant limit and look for innovative solutions that keep you ahead of competition and accomplish business growth.
