Advantages of Metaobject templates over regular templates for building Shopify pages

What are Metaobject templates?

Shopify Metaobjects

Metaobjects are a versatile custom data solution that Shopify launched with Shopify Edition (Feb 2023). With Metaobjects, you can create and store additional structured content not natively available in Shopify's default data structures.

You can use metaobjects in various ways to create your own data objects, think of things like recipes, FAQs, author profiles, size charts, ingredient lists, material information, book metadata, technical product specifications, product manuals (pdf files), etc. Using metaobjects, you can achieve this seamlessly.

Shopify Metaobject templates

Shopify allows you to create a template for displaying any metaobjects you set up in your Shopify store.

After you create a metaobject definition and add entries for the metaobject definition, you can turn them into a web page. For example, if you provide online learning courses, you can create a web page for each instructor with a biography, social media links, images, related courses, etc. - all this custom content is added and stored by the metaobject.

Benefits of Metaobject templates over regular theme templates

Display customized information pages your way

By default, Shopify only provides one description field (for product pages) and one content field (for page and blog posts) to add all information. This is pretty limited for you to present structured information on your template. You can’t split your content into multiple fields and represent each part of the content in one structured layout template with multiple sections.

Under this circumstance, one solution is to create a different template for each product and add content to those templates. (You can do so following this guide: how to create template for a single page). This approach works best if you just need a few unique pages or you have a small catalog.

 
These products used the same regular template. The primary product information (media, price, color swatch) is unique per product. However, other content sections are the same.

What if your store has a large number of products/pages? There’s no way to display custom-structured information pages using only one template. In this case, only the “Main product information” section (on products/pages) and the content section (on page/blog post) will be dynamic per each product/page; other sections that you add to the template will display the same content on all products/pages.

This is where metaobjects come in handy. They allow you to create unique content sections for each product or page, even though they are based on the same template.

Dynamic source template

Once you create a specific metaobject definition and add entries for that metaobject, you can choose how to display metaobjects on your store using dynamic sources in your theme editor.

Dynamic sources link the data stored as a metaobject to section input settings, which allows you to add metafields to pages straight from the theme editor. This way, you can create one template with multiple sections that will be used for multiple products/pages. Each section will display unique custom content per individual product/page.

 
These two Recipe pages use the same metaobject template. Each page displays structured and unique content per recipe (Ingredients, Method, Preparation time, etc., are stored in the ECB Rich Text metaobject; images, videos, and icons are stored in the ECB Media metaobject). You can also use the ECB Author metaobject to display the Chef profile.

Reusable content

When you use metaobjects to store your customized data for your Shopify resources (products, pages, or blog posts), the data will be stored in metaobject entries. You can use these metaobject entries for unlimited resources. Any edits you make to these metaobject entries will be reflected on all resources where they are linked.

For example, you create a metaobject template to display an introduction about books and an author bio section in a blog post. In this case, you can add the book information and author profile into two separate metaobjects. This way, you can easily reuse the same author profile on many other blog posts or product pages related to this author, like the example below:

 

You can check out these demos to see for yourself:

• Author bio: view the demo. 
• Brand profile: view the demo.

Why you should use Easy Content Builder metaobject templates

Easy Content Builder simplifies the metaobject template creation process on your Shopify store. Here are a few reasons why you should use Easy Content Builder to create metaobject templates:

(*) Metaobject templates are only available in the PRO plan.

If you're new to Easy Content Builder, here are different ways the app helps you:

• The ECB app lets you quickly create templates for Shopify pages using various versatile pre-made templates. You can customize the existing theme or build a Shopify store from scratch.
• It allows you to create a long-form template for a single page, which is perfect for creating long-form product pages, landing pages, About Us, Lookbook pages, etc.
• It also lets you create templates that can be assigned to multiple pages in bulk, which is perfect for a group of products, etc.

 
Easy Content Builder - Flexible solution to create Shopify metaobject and regular templates. With the metaobject support, you now have a complete and flexible solution to create Shopify metaobject templates for adding and storing fully custom data in a fraction of the time.

Create Metaobjects in one Click

By default, creating metaobject definitions can be a complex and time-consuming process. That's why the Easy Content Builder supports six types of metaobjects that you can flexibly use to display custom content on your storefront.

• ECB Media metaobject: lets you store rich media content types such as videos, images, icons.
• ECB Rich Text metaobject: lets you store rich text content types such as headings, subheadings, descriptions, etc. Read the setup guide.
• ECB Author metaobject: lets you store the manufacturer, writer, artist, author profile, etc (such as name, position, avatar, and relevant information). Read the setup guide.
• ECB Tabs metaobject: lets you store tab content in metaobjects and display this dynamic content on a tab section on your theme using your Shopify theme editor. Read the setup guide.
• ECB Accordions metaobject: allows you to store accordion content in metaobjects and display this dynamic content on an accordion section on your theme using your Shopify theme editor. Read the setup guide.
• ECB Icons With Text metaobject: allows you to store Icons With Text content (including Heading, Icons, Description, and Links) in metaobject and display this dynamic content on an Icons With Text section on your theme using your Shopify theme editor. Read the setup guide.

 
Depending on the specific types of ECB Metaobjects you choose, you will get these sets of fields (generated automatically). You can then add and store your customized data in these fields.

And best of all, you can create definitions for those metaobjects with a 1-click option. The metaobject definition refers to the metaobject's name, type, and fields (which define the type of content you want to display in the metaobject, e.g., a field for text, a field for an image, a field for color, etc.).

Easy Content Builder - Create metaobject definition in 1 Click.

You can use one or all of the metaobjects mentioned above in one page to present the custom content your way - such as cooking recipes, ingredient lists, product pages with complex specifications, bookstore pages, creative work, arts and craft, etc. For example, this metaobject-generated product page gives you an example of combining ECB Media, ECB Rich Text, and ECB Author to highlight product specifications and manufacturer profile.

View all metaobject template demos

Create Metaobject templates faster

 

Easy Content Builder app provides pre-made metaobject templates to create a new template faster. All sections on these pre-made templates are mapped with the fields defined by ECB Metaobjects. After installing a pre-made metaobject template, you can customize these sections to fit your needs, for instance, changing the static labels or re-mapping any fields (using dynamic sources) with different metaobject entries you want.

You can check out this guide for more details on how to create ECB Metaobjects and Metaobject templates.

Meanwhile, we highly recommend you walk through some demos below to have an overview of how metaobject templates can fit your project:

• Demo - Recipe V1
• Demo - Recipe V2
• Demo - Artist Profile.
• Demo - Product Specifications and Manufacturer Profile.
• Demo - Product Spefications.

Get ECB app on Shopify
(Metaobject templates are only available for the Pro plan)