Email from a merchant in Lyon yesterday. Every month or so a merchant asks the same question. If you have a storefront with 1,200 products in 9 categories do you need both storefront filters and combined listings? The answer is yes. The merchant in question had native filters set up by her first agency. Her 2nd agency wanted to take them all down and replace everything with combined listings. The merchant was confused.
Neither. Both. It depends. Here’s how to actually think about it.
Storefront filters and combined listings look similar but serve different purposes in organizing a website and promoting products. They should not be viewed as competitors to one another.
In this post
- What each one does
- Feature comparison
- Native storefront filters explained
- Combined listings explained
- How they work together
- Decision rules
- FAQ
What each one does, in one sentence
Storefront filters allow customers to narrow a collection down by attribute such as color, size, price, material or vendor.
Combine Same Products: Allow separate products to be displayed as a single listing with swatches, so that customers can quickly compare related products without having to return to the card or page.
These tools do filtered collections whereas combined listings do connected products. Two very different things.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Native filters | Combined listings |
|---|---|---|
| Narrow collection by attribute | Yes | No |
| Link separate products as one | No | Yes |
| Swatches on product cards | No | Yes |
| Swatches on product pages (grouped) | No | Yes |
| Per-color URL + SEO | Keeps existing structure | Preserves separate URLs |
| Price range filter | Yes | No |
| Free on all Shopify plans | Yes | Requires app (Rubik is free tier) |
| Works with separate-product color structure | Limited | Yes |
Native storefront filters, explained
Shopify storefront filters – Store Search & Product Discovery made easy with the Search & Discovery app (free, by Shopify). Here’s how you can set up filters by attributes like color, size, price, vendor, product type, and material. For example, customers select boxes for Navy or Gray, then get a refreshed page with products that are both Navy AND Gray.
We include filters that look for information in three different places: your variant options, the product tags, and the product metafields. The more organized your information is, the better your Filters will function. With sloppy tag organization, you’ll only receive equally sloppy filters.
These are great for browsing and allow customers to much more quickly home in on what they are looking for, such as “blue shirt under $50”. That would drop 1,200 results down to 23 with a single click. They still have a couple of key issues though, namely that filters do not solve the product card image problem and they do not enable comparison of different variants on a product detail page.
Combined listings, explained
With combined listings, group separate products. Keep each color as its own product (own URL, own description, own images, own meta title) and link them via a group. Swatches appear on collection page card and/or product page.
Why repeat the effort? Three good reasons. Why not per-color SEO (let each color have its own URL)? Why not per-color imagery (why show a red shirt but have red cards and red pages in the black book)? And shopping. A customer who opens up the blue product can switch to red without ever having to go back to the product search screen.
Rubik Combined Listings does this with metafield references, no external API calls, flat pricing, no Shopify Plus requirement. Shopify’s own native combined listings feature requires Shopify Plus. Third-party apps don’t.
How they work together
Here’s the pattern that actually ships on the best Shopify stores we’ve seen:
- Native filters narrow the collection. Shopper ticks “Blue” and “Size M” and “$30-$60”.
- Combined listings add swatches to cards. Shopper sees that the Nordic Sweater is available in blue but also gray, olive, and cream.
- Click into the product. Combined listings swatches on the product page let the shopper flip between linked colors.
- Once inside a product, Rubik Variant Images filters the gallery to show only the selected variant’s photos.
We organized layers, 4 in total, with each layer functioning very well to serve one purpose. No redundancy here. On the filters page, the layers get narrower. On the swatches page, the layers function as previews of what the swatches look like. On the product page, the layers flip to show different views of the product. Outside of the site, the layers retrieve images on the web to display variations of a product. Site users are none the wiser, continuing to search for the red sweater.
Decision rules
When to use filters alone:
- Small catalog (under 100 products)
- Colors are stored as variants, not separate products
- Your theme swaps card images on filter (a few do)
When to use combined listings alone:
- Catalog is small enough that narrowing isn’t the problem
- Colors are separate products and you want them linked
- You care about product page UX more than collection browsing
When to use both (most stores):
- Catalog over 200 products
- Mix of variants and separate products
- You want SEO per color and good on-site browsing
See it work
See the live demo store, watch the tutorial video, or read the getting started guide.
FAQ
Are Shopify storefront filters free?
Yes. There is a free Search & Discovery app made by Shopify that can do this. It also has a few other features like automatic search suggestions. This app can be added on any plan and also has filters that can be configured to appear on collection pages.
Do storefront filters fix the wrong-color card image problem?
These filters should at least return the correct products on the page, but unfortunately the card images will default back to featured images for the product instead of the color images. This can be fixed with a theme edit or through the combined listings layer.
Can combined listings replace filters?
Why do you need filters and combined listings? No. They solve different problems. Filters allow you to narrow down a collection to a specific set of attributes, and combined listings allow you to create a listing for a set of related products grouped into one category on your site that consumers can search for by name. Most online stores would use both of these features.
Do combined listings slow down the storefront?
Rubik Combined Listings plugin uses metafields and doesn’t send any external requests for extracting data. Other similar extensions load more information, but they also consume more time and resources. See performance tests for this plugin before purchasing.
Which approach is better for SEO?
Allowing combined listings for products when color is searched, and keep them separate by color so they can both rank. Filters generate faceted urls which Google considers to be parameters of the parent collection and therefore will not index them separately.
Do I need Shopify Plus for combined listings?
Only for Shopify feature. Some 3rd party apps like Rubik Combined Listings provide this feature on all Shopify plans with a flat monthly fee.
