Connecting your Shopify forms with metafields can significantly streamline your data management process. This simple integration allows you to collect customer information through forms and store it directly in your Shopify metafields for easy access and utilisation. Let’s explore how you can set this up for your online store.
Understanding metafields in Shopify
Metafields are additional pieces of information that can be attached to various parts of your Shopify store, such as products, customers, or orders. They’re incredibly useful for storing custom data that doesn’t fit into Shopify’s standard fields. When you connect your forms to these metafields, you’re essentially creating a direct pipeline for customer information to flow into your organised data structure.
Setting up your metafields
The first step is to create or identify the metafields you’ll need. You can do this by heading to your Shopify admin panel and clicking on Settings, then Custom data. From here, you’ll need to select which area of your store you want to add metafields to. This might be Products if you’re collecting product feedback, or Customers if you’re gathering customer preferences.
Let’s say you want to track a customer’s birthday to send special offers. You would select “Customers” from the Custom data menu, then click “Add definition”. You might name this metafield “Birthday”, set the type to “Date”, and provide a description like “Customer’s birthday for promotional offers”.
If you don’t already have suitable metafields, you can create new ones by clicking the Add definition button. You’ll need to give your metafield a name and choose the type of data it will store, such as text, number, or date.
Connecting your forms to metafields
Once your metafields are set up, you can link them to your forms. When you’re creating or editing a form in Shopify, you’ll see an option called “Also store as metafield” for each field. By ticking this box, you’re telling Shopify that any data submitted through this form field should be saved to the corresponding metafield.
For example, if you create a “Customer Preferences” form with a “Birthday” field, you would tick the “Also store as metafield” option and select your “Birthday” metafield from the dropdown. Now, when a customer submits their birthday through your form, it will automatically be stored in their customer profile as a metafield.
This connection means that when a customer fills out your form, their responses will automatically be stored in your metafields, without you having to manually transfer the data. It’s a simple tick box, but it saves an enormous amount of time and reduces the risk of data entry errors.
Making use of your synced data
The real value of syncing your forms with metafields comes when you start using this data. With customer information stored in metafields, you can create personalised experiences, segment your customers based on their preferences, or make data-driven decisions about your products and services.
You can access all this information through the Custom data settings in your Shopify admin. Look under the Customers or Companies section, depending on where you’ve stored your metafields. From here, you can view, sort, and analyse the data collected through your forms.
