Glossary
Product option
Also called: Option
A product option is one axis a customer chooses along, such as size or colour. Shopify allows three, and their combinations make the variants.
Size, colour, material. Pick the values for each and Shopify multiplies them into variants.
Three, and no more
Shopify gives every product three option slots. That is a hard limit, not a plan tier.
Stores get caught when a fourth axis turns up: size, colour, length and then fit. The usual answer is to fold two axes into one value, so “32 slim” becomes a single size option rather than two.
It is not elegant. It is better than the alternative, which is splitting one product across four listings that all compete with each other in search.
Name them for the stockroom
Option names show up in the admin, on packing slips and in every export. Use the words your team says out loud.
“Colour” beats “Colourway”. “Size” beats “Sizing”. A SKU built from tidy option values stays readable; one built from “Sizing: Size Medium” does not.
Where it goes wrong
The same idea gets two spellings across products. “Grey” on one listing and “Gray” on another, or “M” against “Medium”. Nothing breaks, and then filtering by colour returns half the catalogue and a customer never sees the rest.
Agree the values once and write them down. Renaming an option later rewrites every handle and variant beneath it.
Related terms
Variant
A variant is one buyable version of a Shopify product, such as the blue medium. Stock, price and barcode all live on the variant.
Handle
Also called: URL handle
A handle is the readable part of a Shopify URL, generated from the title and used to identify a product, collection or page.
SKU
Also called: Stock Keeping Unit
A SKU is your own code for one exact thing you sell, down to the size and colour. You invent it, and only your shop uses it.