Philosophical explanations of combined listings examples on shopify aren’t very helpful. Open a catalogue and look at real products with real options. A jacket comes in 3 colours, a sofa can be made in 5 fabrics, lipstick comes in 12 shades. Each of those products is treated individually because each of them is a separate purchase decision. Then look at the website and check how all those individual products are presented as single options for the customer to choose from.
These are seven real world scenarios of how products can be grouped together when using the Rubik Combined Listings Swatch extension. Not a made up brand scenario, more so real merchant scenarios explained so others can understand how to group products separately together and configure settings.
Some of these might sound like your store. Good. Copy the setup.
In this post
- Apparel: multi-color t-shirts with color-specific SEO
- Furniture: sofas with fabric and wood variants
- Electronics: phone models and storage tiers
- Beauty: lipstick shade families
- Footwear: limited drops that sell out per color
- Homewares: candles by scent and vessel
- B2B: wholesale kits with packaging variants
- FAQ
Example 1. Apparel: multi-color t-shirts with color-specific SEO
Clothing retailer has 8 colours + variations (e.g. black vs generic) for a hero ‘hero’ product, therefore 8 x photos + 8 x lookbook shots. All colours get their own search terms (e.g. ‘black linen tee’ is searched more than ‘hero’ tee) and merchant wishes to have separate products but with ability to easily switch between them.
Shoppers see 8 swatches at the top of the product page. Clicking on the green swatch takes you to the green product with green imagery. The URL and title change, while the canonical reflects the correct variant. This approach enables effective variant organization and ensures proper URL and title differentiation.
How I implemented it on my Rubik site: one group with 8 products all linked together. Option name “Color”. The swatch type is set to color value. The per-product metafield links the 8 URLs. I had this working in maybe 6 minutes! AI Magic Fill does an awesome job of auto-linking and auto-grouping for you.
Why not variants? Because each color needs its own SEO title, SEO description, and content block. Variants share a URL. Separate products do not. Read more on the subject in combined listings vs variants.
Example 2. Furniture: sofas with fabric and wood variants
Variants on Furniture products is where Shopify’s 100 variant limit really hurts. A single sofa can have 5 fabrics, 4 wood finishes and 3 sizes for a total of 60 variants before you add in firmness levels. Once you go over 100 variants, performance really takes a hit. That new limit of 2048 variants may not make as big of a difference as you hope.
Most retailers don’t realise that a single sofa can be turned into 5 separate products – one for each fabric offered. And of course each of these products will have its own set of product images (if the customer is viewing the sofa in tan leather, it will look very different to the sofa in grey velvet for example) and prices (leather costs more than fabric for example). Each product will require its own stock record, as well as lead time.
We’ve incorporated 9 Rubik links for the 5 fabric types into the sofa category page. We’ve added fabric swatches to each fabric variant on the product pages. Wood finish variants still exist as a traditional offering within each product, since the photos aren’t dramatically different. Essentially we’re listing the “photo-changing” product as a hybrid variant with native variants. Why 2048 isn’t enough.
Example 3. Electronics: phone models and storage tiers
An electronics reseller that sells electronics and also a phone line has products on two axes: how you would generate models of the product, and what storage tier you would put the model on. A Pro model and a Pro Max model aren’t really the same product. Different cameras, different weights, different prices.
Comparing all features on the compare page. This website compares two products (Pro, Pro Max). For storage, there are 4 native storage options for each product (128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB). The two products are organized under one “Model” swatch at the top of the compare page and the customer can easily switch between Pro and Pro Max without loosing the context of the storage options.
This also works for collection pages – and each tile will show model swatches as well as size swatches. Click into the model you’d like from the first swatch. No more clicking through to a separate landing page for model options – this is the swatch that shows all the model and size options for the user.
Example 4. Beauty: lipstick shade families
One of the challenges of the “beauty” category of products is that even though you may have 100 variants, many native features of Shopify are designed to break once you have more than that. For example, to list 30 different colours of lipstick in a beauty product line, you might have 30 different product images. If you try to put all 30 images in one variant selector, the page will become unusable.
Instead of packaging all your shades into a 30-product range, each shade could be offered as a separate product with its own URL (e.g. “matte ruby lipstick,” “nude pink lipstick”). Each product would have its own swatch photo, its own model shot, and its own SEO title tagged with the name of the shade.
Rubik groups all 30 under one “Shade” swatch. On desktop, this isn’t a big deal but on mobile this matters even more. You’re not scrolling through a dropdown on mobile, you’re tapping a color dot. See how these beauty variant swatches are handled on rubikvariantimages.com.
Example 5. Footwear: limited drops that sell out per color
We struggle to manage variations of products, such as different colors or sizes, when the product has a distinct lifetime based on the different colors available. In the case of releasing a new style of footwear, 4 color options are created and listed as separate products with different levels of stock on hand. Those products sell at different rates with the red one selling out in a week, the blue one in a month and the other colors slowly in between. If we had listed those as separate variants, then we would have reported on the product as “out of stock in red”, “out of stock in green”, “in stock in blue” which does not make sense to a customer.
Products are separated by colorways and are distinct from each other. When one colorway is sold out, its corresponding swatch will turn grey. However, the URL for the sold out color will still be tracked for retargeting ads. When the colorway is restocked, the swatch will turn back to color. Automatically handled by ShopStyle. See out of stock handling for details.
Example 6. Homewares: candles by scent and vessel
Candle stores with 8 different scents and 3 different sizes (travel size in a tin, standard in a jar, large in a jar) have a couple of options here. Create a variant for the size within each scent product or create a hybrid listing that groups all of the sizes together but lists all of the different scents together as combined swatches.
Rubik is better organized by putting the vessel size dropdown inside with the swatches for scent, rather than making a second tab. The second way is more messy. Scent is an emotional decision, something that people think about when they’re searching for a “lavender candle,” not a “large candle.” Each of the 8 scents should have its own URL, with its own photo set, and its own pin on Pinterest.
Example 7. B2B: wholesale kits with packaging variants
Another less obvious use case for could be B2B. A wholesale coffee brand might sell the same beans in three SKUs: 12oz retail bag, 5lb bulk bag, 20lb food service box. Different prices, different minimum order quantities, different packaging photos.
These can’t all live as variants. The 20lb box has different wholesale pricing rules than the 12oz pack. They are separate products that will have different checkout behavior. The Rubik product gallery allows for Format swatches so that the different packaging options can be selected by the buyer without having to view a separate collection for each. This functionality works in tandem with wholesale combined listings for B2B products.
What these examples share
Look at all 7 examples. Think about each of them through the lens of three questions: does this linked product have a separate reason for being on a separate URL; and the switchovers (color to color, scent to scent, fabric to fabric, format to format) are visual; and the experience of the shopper is one product with options. That’s the whole mental model. But specifically for a merchant wondering “should this be a variant or separate product”, the answer to that one question comes down to three tests.
See it running
See the live demo store, watch the tutorial video, or read the getting started guide.
FAQ
What are the most common Shopify combined listings examples?
Different apparel colors, different furniture fabrics, beauty shade families and different footwear color options. Any catalog where product lines have vastly different visuals and each one warrants its own URL for SEO.
Can I use combined listings for electronics models?
Yes. It works well for phone and laptop lines where the Pro and Pro Max (or 13 inch and 15 inch) are different enough to warrant separate products but should share swatches at the top of the page.
Do I lose SEO when I use combined listings?
No. Each linked product has its own URL, title tag, description tag, and canonical tag. So you can get rankings for all of the linked products instead of just the variant product.
Does Rubik Combined Listings work with PageFly and GemPages?
Yes. Beae, EComposer, Foxify, GemPages, Instant, PageFly, Replo swatch theme colors generators supported. Simply drag & drop swatch theme generators into any regular page builder content layout.
How do I handle out of stock colors in an example group?
Rubik automatically greys out or crosses through sold-out swatches based on the actual inventory of the linked product and does not allow manual toggling of swatches.
Can I mix combined listings with traditional variants in one product?
You should. Use combined listings for the axis that changes photos (color, fabric, scent) and native variants for the axis that doesn’t (size, storage, firmness).
How much does it cost to try these examples?
Rubik provides a free plan that includes 5 product categories and 100 AI credits. This should be enough to get started with one or two examples and get a feel for how it works.
