What is a product filter?
A product filter is the storefront control that narrows a collection or search results to the products a shopper actually wants. Checkboxes for size or brand, swatches for color, a slider for price. Shoppers combine filters to get from "everything you sell" to "the three things I'd buy".
How do product filters work?
Say your Dresses collection holds 240 products. A shopper checks "M", taps the green swatch, and sets the price slider between $40 and $80. The grid refreshes to 12 dresses. Each filter type earns its place: checkboxes handle lists (size, brand), range sliders handle numbers (price), and swatches show what a word can't. She taps the green one instead of reading a dropdown of 30 color names.
On Shopify stores
Filters sit in a sidebar or a bar above the grid on collection and search pages, built from your product data: variant options, tags, vendor, and metafields. Themes ship with basic filtering that does the job for a small catalog. Deep catalogs and visual products want more: swatches instead of color names, metafield filters for fit or material, counts on every option. A shopper who can't filter a 200-product collection mostly won't scroll it either.
Related terms
Product filters with Sledge
Sledge's filters cover size, price, tags, vendor, and metafields, with color and image swatches for products that sell by look. Offers ride along: bundles and upsell suggestions appear inside the filtered grid, so the shopper who narrowed 240 dresses to 12 sees something worth adding next to them.
14-day free trial · No code · Works with any theme · Uninstalls clean