---
title: "How to create collections and menus in Shopify"
description: "Create a Shopify collection in Products → Collections, set the handle before saving, cap smart collections at 60 conditions. A shelf, URL, menu link."
date: 2026-10-05
lastUpdated: 2026-10-05
author: "Megan Hartwell"
url: https://storelaunchguides.com/shopify-collections-and-menus/
site: "Store Launch Guides (storelaunchguides.com)"
language: en
---

# How to create collections and menus in Shopify

![Light wood shelving holds brown boxes and folded grey fabric with hanging tags in a bright room.](https://storelaunchguides.com/images/shopify-collections-and-menus-cover-1200.webp)

> **Short answer:** You create a collection from Products → Collections → Create collection. There you set a title, a description, and a handle, which is the piece of the URL customers share and Google indexes. Treat the collection as a public shelf, not an internal folder, and name it after how people shop. Smart collections stock themselves from up to 60 conditions; manual collections hold only the products you add. Shopify caps a store at 5,000 collections that contain conditions, so the ceiling is generous and discipline is the real limit, according to Shopify Inc., 2026. Menus are just pointers at those same URLs. Rename a collection after launch and you break every link already in the wild unless you add a redirect.

> **What we measured:** We read the 8 ranking pages for this search in full and compared what each one covers. Six of the eight explain the two collection types, and five walk the Products → Collections click path, so the mechanics are well documented. None of them weigh the upkeep bill: how much stocking work each type creates at 50 products versus 500. The obvious caveat is that we read one snapshot, and Shopify's admin shifts without notice.

Disclosure: this article contains affiliate links to Shopify. If you sign up through one, this site earns a commission at no extra cost to you.

Shopify plans, pricing and features change; always verify the current details on shopify.com before deciding.

Most guides treat collections as filing. That reading costs you money later, because a collection is a public address: customers bookmark it, ads point at it, and search engines index it. If you're still choosing a plan, the lineup and current prices live on [Shopify's pricing page](https://shopify.pxf.io/WOzLvA?subId1=storelaunchguides.com&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.shopify.com%2Fpricing). 

## Table of contents

- [A collection is a URL, not a folder](#collection-is-a-url-not-a-folder)
- [Manual or smart: let the maintenance bill decide](#manual-or-smart-maintenance-bill)
- [Set the handle before you click create](#set-the-handle-before-you-click-create)
- [The menu is a second door to the same shelf](#menu-second-door-same-shelf)
- [Filters, images, and the page customers land on](#filters-images-landing-page)
- [Small questions: caps, expiry, and converting a smart collection](#small-questions-caps-expiry-conversion)
- [Frequently asked questions](#faq)
- [Sources](#sources)

## A collection is a URL, not a folder
Think of each collection as a shelf with its own street address. Customers don't browse your admin; they click links, and every link needs a destination that makes sense on its own. That reframing changes what you name things.

Here's how to create a collection in Shopify, per Shopify's own documentation, checked September 12, 2026:

1. Open **Products → Collections**, then click **Create collection**.
2. Enter a title and a description customers will actually read.
3. Choose manual or smart, and set the type before adding anything.
4. Edit the search engine listing and fix the URL handle now, not later.
5. Pick a sort order and the sales channels it appears on.
6. Save, then add the collection to a menu so anyone can reach it.

The description field does double duty: it introduces the shelf to shoppers and gives search engines a sentence to show. Write one for every collection you expect traffic on.

## Manual or smart: let the maintenance bill decide
For a catalog that grows, the deciding number is how often someone must touch the collection, not which features it has. A manual collection contains only the specific products you add, and it never changes until you change it. A smart collection adds products automatically from conditions you define, with a match-all or match-any rule across up to 60 conditions, according to [Shopify's smart collections documentation](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/collections/smart-collections/create).

| Decision | Manual collection | Smart collection |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What decides membership | You add each product by hand | Conditions on title, tag, price, or vendor |
| New product arrives | Someone must add it | Usually appears on its own |
| Upkeep at 50 vs 500 products (ours) | Fine at 50, punishing at 500 | Roughly flat as the catalog grows |
| Convert it later? | No; build a smart replacement | No; build a manual replacement |
| Which store it fits (ours) | Fixed edits: a sale, a gift guide | Anything that restocks weekly |

In the merchant threads we read, the recurring complaint about smart collections is tag drift: the moment two people add products, spellings fork, and conditions silently miss items. The same threads repeatedly recommend a bulk-editing app such as Matrixify plus one master spreadsheet as the only sane way to police tags at scale. App subscriptions are their own line item, which we break down in [Shopify apps: what they actually cost you](https://storelaunchguides.com/shopify-app-costs/).

> **Our take:** If your catalog grows at all, smart collections win, because conditions do the stocking while you sleep. Keep manual collections for deliberate, finite sets: a holiday edit, a press feature. And if tags are your conditions, write the tag vocabulary down before the second person joins the admin.

## Set the handle before you click create
The handle is the slug at the end of the URL, and Shopify fills it from your title. Edit it in the collection's search engine listing while you're still building. Fix it once now; repair it forever otherwise.

Why the fuss? Rename a collection after launch and the handle can change with it, which turns every shared link, pin, and indexed page into a 404. Shopify lets you set up URL redirects for retired handles, but each redirect is a repair you make because you skipped a five-second edit.

So name shelves the way customers search. Our suggested naming checklist:

- Use the words buyers type, not your internal SKU family.
- Keep handles short, lowercase, and hyphenated: `/collections/winter-boots`.
- One shelf, one intent; don't blend "sale" with a product type.
- If a name only makes sense to you, it's a tag, not a shelf.

## The menu is a second door to the same shelf
A menu item doesn't store products. It points at the collection's URL, which means your navigation and your collections are one system, not two taxonomies to keep in sync. Build the shelf, then hang the sign.

Add the link under **Online Store → Navigation**: open a menu, click **Add menu item**, and select Collections as the link source. Nest items by dragging one under another, which is how you get hierarchy. Shopify has no native sub-collections. As one merchant put it in the threads we read, any hierarchy "is going to happen by how you arrange them in your main menu," and that's about it.

The stakes are real. The Baymard Institute found 18% of e-commerce sites don't show product categories in their main navigation. 

Additionally, 54% get over-categorization wrong by promoting product types to top-level categories, per its [2026 navigation research](https://baymard.com/research/ecommerce-product-lists). Your menu deserves the same editing you give the catalog.

## Filters, images, and the page customers land on
What happens after the click decides whether the shelf sells anything. Set the sort order in the collection's Products section — featured, best selling, alphabetical, price, or newest — so the first row shows what most visitors came for. Customer-facing filters for size, color, and price come from your theme's filter settings in **Online Store → Customization**, not from the collection itself.

The research argues this page deserves attention. The Baymard Institute's product-lists study tested 19 leading e-commerce sites and found mediocre list usability drove abandonment rates of 67–90%, against 17–33% for slightly optimized ones. Nielsen Norman Group's research across 49 sites produced 69 evidence-based guidelines for exactly these listing pages.

Give each collection an image for menu cards and theme sections; Shopify doesn't publish a required pixel size, so pick one ratio and stay consistent. To feature shelves on a homepage, add a collection list section in the theme editor.

## Small questions: caps, expiry, and converting a smart collection
The limits are wider than most stores will ever test. A store holds up to 5,000 collections with conditions, 5,000 smart collections, and 100 collections containing manually added products or variants, per [Shopify's collection documentation](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/collections/create-collection). Fifty collections may contain another collection, per the same page.

Conversion is the trap. You can't flip a manual collection into a smart one or back; build the new type, then swap the menu link. To retire a shelf, delete it, and fix any menu entries the same day. Scheduling exists in one direction: set a future publish date for the online store, but there's no native expiry, so unpublish manually when a seasonal shelf ends. Note that Shopify's Starter plan can't create collections; Basic and above can.

## Frequently asked questions
### Is there a limit on collections that exclude other collections?

Yes, and it's the tightest cap in the list: 5 collections may exclude another collection. Exclusion conditions are a filtering trick, so spend them sparingly and rely on positive conditions instead.

### What size should a Shopify collection image be?

Shopify doesn't publish a required dimension or file size for collection images. Choose one square or 4:5 ratio, keep files under a few hundred kilobytes, and let the theme crop consistently.

### Can a collection expire automatically at a set time?

No. You can schedule a future publish date, but automatic expiry isn't a native feature. Mark the end date on your calendar and unpublish the collection yourself, or use a scheduling app.

### Do collection pages get indexed without submitting a sitemap?

Shopify generates a sitemap for your store automatically, and published collections appear in it. Submit it once in a search console, then let new collections enter on their own.

## Sources
1. Shopify Inc., "Creating collections and adding products". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/collections/create-collection — checked September 12, 2026.
2. Shopify Inc., "Creating and modifying smart collections". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/collections/smart-collections/create — checked September 12, 2026.
3. Shopify Inc., "Editing collection details and layout". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/collections/collection-layout — checked September 12, 2026.
4. Shopify Inc., "Collections". https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/collections — checked September 12, 2026.
5. Baymard Institute, "Product Lists & Filtering UX Research". https://baymard.com/research/ecommerce-product-lists — checked September 12, 2026.
6. Baymard Institute, "91 'Top-Level Navigation' Design Examples". https://baymard.com/ecommerce-design-examples/28-top-level-navigation?mobileWeb=true — checked September 12, 2026.
7. Nielsen Norman Group, "UX Guidelines for Ecommerce Homepages, Category Pages, and Product Listing Pages". https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ecommerce-homepages-listing-pages/ — checked September 12, 2026.