How to Create Shopify Metafields and Metaobjects [2024]

When designing an eCommerce store, one thing that matters the most is — flexibility in customization — and that’s one area where Shopify has been relatively limited.

But the great thing about Shopify is that it’s constantly evolving and advancing its technology. So, Shopify came up with these two great features — Shopify metafields and metaobjects.

In this blog post, we’ll explain what are Shopify metafields and metaobjects, their examples, and the step-by-step guide on how to create metafields and metaobjects for various purposes.

Metafields vs Metaobjects — What’s the Difference?

Shopify metafields and metaobjects are similar-sounding names and features; however, there’s a subtle difference in their use cases.

Here’s the simplest way to explain the difference — 

Shopify metafield lets you add a block of information or content on your store pages (e.g., a text block of ingredients) — beyond the default fields available on a page.

Shopify metaobject lets you add a whole section of information or content that may include multiple blocks (e.g., an image + text for the author’s profile picture and bio respectively).

Now, let’s explore both of these features in detail:

What are Metafields in Shopify?

“Metafields” is a Shopify store customization feature that lets you add more fields to your store pages — on top of the default fields given in Shopify admin.

Meaning, you can add independent custom data fields to certain parts of a specific store page such as adding a text field on your product or collection page.

Why Do You Need Metafields in Shopify?

One of the biggest use cases you may find for metafields is customizing your product pages — because that’s where you want to be very creative and aim at maximizing conversions.

That said, you can create metafields for other use cases as well, e.g., variants, customers, collections, orders, blog posts, and so on.

But again, let’s take the most common example, i.e., using metafields for product pages. When you create a product page, by default, Shopify allows you to add information in certain fields such as:

• Title
• Description
• Media
• Pricing
• Variants

So, what if you want to add a completely new field that isn’t available in the above default fields? For example, let’s say you want to add a dedicated “FAQs” field. By default, there’s no such field in the product page editor.

That’s where the metafields can help you create this new field.

What are Metaobjects in Shopify?

“Metaobjects” is a Shopify feature that lets you create a section of structured information that you can add anywhere on your store pages for more customization.

Why Do You Need Metafields in Shopify?

Let’s say you’ve created a Shopify store with a marketplace business model and you want to sell products from multiple brands. On each product page, you want to display the brand’s profile, i.e., brand name, logo, description, etc.

Instead of inserting these details in all product descriptions, you can create a metaobject for the brand profiles including multiple fields for all these details.

We’ll see a practical demo of this in our step-by-step guide later in this article.

Learn more: 7 Best Website Builders for Beginners — Features, Pros & Cons

How to Create Metafields in Shopify?

First, let’s go through the step-by-step guide on how to create and use Shopify metafields.

We discussed an example of creating a dedicated FAQs field for product pages. So, we’ll continue with the same example and create a product metafield for a FAQs field.

Step #1: Open “Custom Data” Settings

Go to Shopify admin, and then click on Settings > Custom data.

You’ll find two sections:

1. Metafield definitions
2. Metaobject definitions

Step #2: Choose a Metafield Definition

Depending on your requirement choose a metafield definition.

Since we need to add a FAQs field to product pages, select Products under Metafield definitions.

Step #3: Add the Metafield Definition

Then, click on the Add definition button to create your first product metafield.

Fill in the required details — metafield name and description. We’ve inserted “FAQs” in the name field. Then, add the description that can help us identify what the metafield is about.

Click on the “Select type” button to choose the metafield type you’d like to use for the FAQs field.

Here, we chose the “Rich text” metafield because it allows you to add multiple lines and you can also use text features such as:

• Headings and paragraphs
• Bold & italic fonts
• URL links
• Bullet points
• Numbered lists

Click the Save button to finish setting up your product metafield.

As you can see below, the FAQs product metafield is now ready.

Step #4: Add the Metafield Value on the Product Page(s)

Now, on any product page that you open in Shopify admin, you’ll see this Metafields section with the FAQs field that we just created.

But it’s up to you on which products you’d like to display FAQs field. If you keep this field blank on certain products, those product pages won’t display FAQs. So, go to the specific product page(s) on which you’d like to add the FAQs field. 

Side note: You can even use the Bulk edit feature to add this metafield on multiple products.

Go to the Metafields section and insert the text.

As mentioned before, we’re using text features like headings, paragraphs, and URL links to create a user-friendly FAQs field. It helps with better readability and search engine optimization (SEO).

Once done, hit the Save button in the top bar. 

Now the product has a metafield saved in the backend. However, it still won’t appear on the published website. For that, we’ll move forward to the next step.

Step #5: Customize Your Theme

Now, it’s time to customize your theme to place the metafield on your product page template.

Go to Sales channels > Online Store > Themes, and then click on the Customize button on your currently published theme.

We’ll need to open the product page template in the Shopify theme editor.

Go to the specific product in which you added the FAQs metafield so that we can see the live changes.

Once you click on the product, the Shopify editor will open the “Default product” template. In this template, click the “Add section” button and select the “Rich text” section.

In the “Rich text” section, you can keep the blocks you need and hide/delete other blocks that are not needed. Here, we’ve hidden the first and third blocks — and used the center block that says, “Share information…”.

We’ll delete the default text in that block. (You can keep them if needed.)

And then, click on the above icon that says, “Connect dynamic source”. You’ll see the FAQs metafield in the dropdown. Click on FAQs and it’ll be inserted into your product page template.

Now, you can customize the section with a different color if you want to. We just changed the background color to black.

Once everything’s set, just click on the Save button to publish the changes.

Preview how the changes appear on your live website.

And that’s it!

We have created and published a product metafield that helped us add a FAQs field on the product page. Similarly, you can create many different types of metafields for products, variants, collections, blog posts, and so on.

Pro tip: If you’d like to stylize your FAQs field with a great design element, you can use GemPages — one of Shopify's most loved page builder apps. GemPages makes it easy to design not just FAQs but any section of your Shopify store — with advanced features, professionally designed templates, and a visual drag-and-drop editor.

How to Create Metaobjects in Shopify?

Now, let’s go through the step-by-step guide on how to create metaobjects in Shopify. We’ll continue with the example we discussed earlier, i.e., to create brand profiles with metaobjects.

Step #1: Create a Metaobject Definition

First, go to Shopify admin > Settings > Custom data. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see the section for metaobject that says — “Define your first metaobject”. Then, click on “Add definition”.

Insert the name and description for the metaobject.

Now, it’s time to create fields that we want to include within our metaobject section. We’ll create the following fields:

1. Brand Name
2. Brand Logo
3. Brand Category
4. Brand Description

For the Brand Name field, we’ll go with the “Single line text” field because we just need one line of text for brand names. (Depending on the information type, you can choose the relevant field.)

Now, we’ll add further information and set rules for this field. For mandatory fields, check the “Required field” tab. Once done, click the Add button.

So, our Brand Name field is created. Next, we’ll create another field for Brand Logo. Since the brand logo would be an image, we’ll select File in the field type.

Then, add the details and rules for the File field. Since we need to add a brand logo image, you can check off the video field so that it will only accept images.

Once done, click the Add button.

Now, the same way, we’ll create the next two fields for “Brand Category” and “Brand Description”.

So, we have all four fields ready. You can scroll down and configure the remaining settings as per your requirements. We’ve kept the default settings.

Click Save to complete the process of creating the metaobject.

As you can see, our Brand Profile metaobject is ready.

Step #2: Create a Section with a Metaobject

Now, we can start creating sections for different brands within our Brand Profile metaobject. Go to Shopify admin > Content > Metaobjects — and then click on the Brand Profile metaobject that we just created.

Click on the Add entry button to start adding brand profiles.

Add the brand profile details: the brand name, logo image, category, and description. Once done, click Save and your brand profile will be ready.

Step #3: Create a Product Metafield with the Metaobject

Since we want to add/show this metaobject on the product page(s), we’ll now create a product metafield.

So, we’ll follow a similar process as we did when creating a product metafield before. Go to Custom data > Metafield definitions > Products. Then, click on the Add definition button.

Now, we’ll create a product metafield named “Brand Profile on Product Page”. Insert name and description, and then, click on the Select type tab. From the dropdown list of fields, select the Metaobject field — and hit the Save button.

Now, we have the new product metafield ready — “Brand Profile on Product Page”.

Step #4: Insert the New Product Metafield in the Product Page(s)

Go to the product page where you’d like to add the brand profile. Scroll down and you’ll see the Metafields section. It’s showing the Gem Style brand profile that we created earlier. We’ll insert the Gem Style brand profile and save it on the product page.

Step #5 Customize Your Theme 

Now, we need to add the product metafield in the theme. Go to Sales channels > Online Store > Themes and click the Customize button.

And that’s it!

Now, you can preview the brand profile section on your product page.

Now, we’ll add a Multirow section and then add our product metafield — “Brand Profile on Product Page”.

Here’s another example of how you can add an Author bio to your page following the same process as we did for adding a brand profile.

Final Thoughts on Metafields & Metaobjects

Metafields and metaobjects help you make your store customization more flexible, especially for the product pages.

Figure out the exact requirements and create metafields and metaobjects accordingly. Both these features can not only enhance the user experience but also help with SEO.

For more insights on eCommerce marketing and strategies, check out our Blog and join the GemPages Facebook community.

FAQs on Shopify Metafields & Metaobjects