I’m working on my Shopify store and I’ve set up four main category sections on one of my pages. Let’s call them section1, section2, section3, and section4. Now I want to add smaller category groups inside section1 to organize my products better.
Is there a way to nest collection lists like this in Shopify? I’m trying to create a hierarchy where customers can see main categories and then drill down into more specific subcategories. Has anyone done something similar before?
I’m not sure if Shopify supports this kind of nested structure or if I need to use a different approach. Any guidance would be really helpful.
Shopify doesn’t have real nested collections, but I’ve found some solid workarounds. I create separate collections for each subcategory and use tags to group them. Say you’ve got ‘Electronics’ - just make collections like ‘Electronics - Phones’, ‘Electronics - Laptops’, etc. Then filter and display them in your theme code using the naming pattern or tags. You can also use metafields to set up parent-child relationships between collections, but you’ll need to know some liquid templating. Third option is building a custom nav structure through the theme’s menu system - manually organize collections into hierarchical menus. You get the visual hierarchy without fighting Shopify’s collection limits.
Been dealing with this exact problem for months. Here’s what worked for me: combine collection handles with conditional liquid code in your templates. Name your subcollections with prefixes like ‘section1-subcategory-a’ and ‘section1-subcategory-b’. Then in your product-grid or collection template, loop through collections and filter by handle patterns. Something like {% for collection in collections %} {% if collection.handle contains ‘section1-’ %}. You’ll keep the visual hierarchy without apps or messy metafield setups. Requires some template editing but you get full control over how subcategories show up under each main section. Works great if you’ve got multiple product lines that need clean organization.
honestly, just use the navigation menu to fake it. go to navigation in your admin, create menus with main categories as parents, then add subcollections underneath. customers get the dropdown hierarchy and it feels nested even though shopify collections stay flat. way less coding than other solutions here.