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Overview

Sort orders determine the sequence in which products appear on collection pages. You can fine-tune product visibility with a combination of priority rules, product attributes, weighted attribute groups, and soft boost. Use these expressions to align product sorting with your marketing strategy and customer preferences.

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Enable as storefront sort

When creating or editing a sort order, you can control whether it is synced to Shopify as a metaobject using the Enable as Storefront Sort toggle. The toggle is on by default, so you can reference the sort order in Shopify’s admin and Storefront API. Learn more about how sort orders are synced to Shopify in Metaobjects & Metafields.

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Sort order architecture

Sort orders build on product attributes, can be extended with product sequences, and are subject to merchandising rule overrides. For a visual overview of how sorting connects to attributes, sequences, and merchandising, see Sorting — Core Concepts. Sort orders can also use segmented metrics to automatically personalize product rankings based on visitor context such as geographic location or marketing channel. For catalogs that carry geo-typed attributes such as store locations, delivery zones, or event venues, the geo_distance sort type ranks products by physical distance from a supplied origin point. See Geospatial filtering and distance sort for the full configuration and request shape.

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Why sort orders matter

Sort orders shape how products are presented on collection pages so shoppers find the right items faster. Use priority rules, attributes, and weighted groups to reflect your brand strategy and customer preferences. For step-by-step instructions, see:

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Bulk actions

You can select multiple sort orders from the list and perform actions on them at once. To enter selection mode, click Select in the actions column header. Checkboxes appear next to each sort order row. Select the sort orders you want to act on, then open the Actions dropdown to select an action.
Hold Shift and click a checkbox to select every row between the previous selection and the row you clicked. This works on every list in the dashboard that supports bulk actions, including sort orders, merchandising rules, and recommendation blocks.

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Bulk duplicate

Select one or more sort orders and select Duplicate from the Actions dropdown. Each selected sort order is copied with an auto-generated name and code to avoid conflicts. Duplicated sort orders default to unpublished and are not enabled as storefront sorts, so they won’t affect your live storefront until you configure and activate them.

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Bulk delete

Select one or more sort orders and select Delete from the Actions dropdown. A confirmation prompt appears before the deletion proceeds.
You cannot delete a sort order that is currently referenced by a merchandising rule, used by a product sequence, or has received API requests in the past 24 hours. If any selected sort order meets one of these conditions, the entire operation is blocked and an error message identifies the conflict.
When you are done selecting, click Actions → Done selecting to exit selection mode.

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Reorder sort orders

The order in which sort orders appear on a collection page’s sort dropdown is controlled from the Sort Orders list. Open the overflow menu next to Browse Recipes and click Reorder to open the Reorder Sort Orders sheet. In the sheet:
  1. Drag any sort order row by its grip handle to reposition it.
  2. Use the keyboard arrow keys after focusing the grip to move a sort order up or down (useful for accessibility).
  3. Click Save to persist the new order, or Cancel to discard your changes.
The order you set here is the order shoppers see in the storefront sort dropdown for sort orders that have Enable as Storefront Sort turned on. Newly created sort orders are appended to the end of the list and can be repositioned at any time.
Reordering only affects display order. It does not change the store default or a collection’s own default.

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Store default

You can choose one collection-ready sort order as the store default. Collections without their own default use it when a shopper has not chosen another sort. A collection’s own default takes precedence over the store default. Explicit sort selections and existing merchandising rules continue to follow their normal behavior. Use Set as store default in a sort order’s row actions. The current store default shows a Default badge. Search relevance and variant-only sort orders cannot be used as the store default because they cannot sort a collection on their own. Before deleting the current store default or changing it to a variant sort, choose another store default.

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Keyboard shortcuts in the editor

The sort order editor supports keyboard shortcuts to speed up authoring. Press ? while the editor is focused to open the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog at any time.

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Best practices

  • Balance weights: Avoid extreme weight differences so that no single attribute dominates the ranking.
  • Monitor impact: Regularly review conversion rates and customer behavior to refine sorting strategies.
  • Use priority rules wisely: Use descending direction to promote products and ascending direction to demote them. Priority rules are applied first as hard overrides (except a promoting rule placed below a soft boost, which keeps its listed position). Promoted products appear at the top and demoted products appear at the bottom, with other expressions sorting within those groups.
  • Start from recipes: Start with pre-configured sort orders and customize them for your merchandising goals.
  • Test configurations: Preview sort orders with different priority rule configurations to verify they produce the desired ranking. Use sort effect annotations to see exactly which rules affected each product.
For further details, see the Browse API or contact support.

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See also