This guide walks through every setting available in the Smart Collections Template & Settings editor of your Rebuy admin. The Template & Settings editor controls how every collection on your store looks and behaves: layout, hero content, filters, sort order, product display, pagination, review integrations, the Add to Cart button, merchandising rules, and excluded products.

The Collections Enabled toggle at the top of the Template & Settings page is the master switch for the Smart Collections feature. When this toggle is on, Smart Collections renders on your live collection pages using the configuration in this editor. When it is off, Smart Collections stops rendering immediately and your collection pages fall back to your Shopify theme's default behavior.

The Preview Mode feature in Smart Collections lets you view your collection pages on your live storefront before turning on the master Collections Enabled toggle. Use Preview Mode to verify your layout, filters, sort options, and other Smart Collections settings look correct before going live for shoppers.

How to use Preview Mode:

Smart Collections Preview Mode renders only in browser sessions that have the ?preview_smart_collections=true query parameter active. Shoppers visiting your store normally continue to see your default theme behavior until you turn on the master Collections Enabled toggle.

The Collection Template Editor in Smart Collections controls the structural layout and hero content of every collection page. The editor is divided into three configuration areas: Layout Settings, Hero Settings, and General Settings. The first two are covered below. General Settings has its own section further down because it contains six separate sub-pages.

The Layout Settings control how filters are presented on the collection page. Smart Collections supports two layout options:

The Hero Settings control whether the collection description and hero image from Shopify are displayed at the top of the Smart Collections page. Both controls source their content from Shopify, so the description or hero image must be configured in your Shopify collection for these toggles to have any visible effect.

The General Settings area of the Collection Template Editor contains six configuration pages that control the interactive behavior of every Smart Collections page on your store. The six General Settings pages are:

Each is documented in its own section below.

The Filters page in Smart Collections controls which filter types shoppers can use to narrow down products on every collection page. The Filters page has two main areas: a drag-and-drop list of active filters that sets their display order, and an EDIT button that opens a slideout panel for full filter configuration.

Active filters appear as draggable rows on the Filters page. Drag a filter up or down in the list to change its position. Filters are displayed top-down on the live collection page in the same order shown here.

Below the filter list, the Filter Settings section controls the appearance and behavior of all filters as a group:

Click the EDIT button at the top of the Filters page to open the Filter Options slideout panel. The slideout has four sections, each containing a different category of filter.

Standard Shopify Filters

These filters are sourced from your Shopify product catalog and are available out of the box:

Each standard filter can be enabled or disabled individually using the toggle in the slideout, and each can be relabeled using the custom label field below its toggle.

Product Options

Product Options are the variant-level options merchants configure in Shopify (Color, Size, Material, Style, etc.). The available options are pulled from your Shopify catalog, so the list shown in the slideout depends on what is configured in your store.

Product Metafields and Variant Metafields

You can enable up to 25 Product Metafields and 25 Variant Metafields as filter options. Each metafield is configured as a separate toggle in the slideout. Smart Collections supports the following metafield types as filters:

The Sort By page in Smart Collections controls which sort options shoppers can choose from on every collection page, the default sort order, and how the Sort By dropdown is styled. Like the Filters page, the Sort By page has a drag-and-drop list of active sort options and an EDIT button that opens a configuration slideout.

The Sort By slideout contains a toggle for each available sort option. Enable any combination of the following:

Drag the toggled-on sort options into your preferred order. The display order in the live Sort By dropdown matches the order shown in this list.

When the Best Sellers sort option is enabled, a Lookback Period dropdown appears below it. The Lookback Period determines how far back in time Smart Collections looks when calculating sales volume to rank products. Available values are 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days.

A Default Sort drop zone on the Sort By page accepts one sort option from the list. The option dropped here is the sort order applied automatically when a shopper lands on a Smart Collections page before they have selected anything from the Sort By dropdown. If no default is set, Smart Collections falls back to Relevance.

A radio control on the Sort By page sets how the Sort By dropdown is visually styled on the live collection page. Two visual styles are available; pick the one that best matches your store theme.

The Product Display page in Smart Collections controls how product cards are sized and arranged on every collection page. There are three controls: Image Ratio, Column Spacing, and Column Breakpoints.

The Image Ratio setting determines the aspect ratio of the product image displayed on each collection card. Three preset ratios are available, presented as selectable tiles:

When you select a different ratio, all product card image containers update to match. Source images that don't match the selected ratio are cropped automatically by Smart Collections.

The Column Spacing slider controls the gap between product cards on the collection page. The slider has six positions, ranging from 1 (tight) to 6 (loose). Position 4 is the default. Adjust the slider to match the visual density of your collection page to your store's overall design.

The Column Breakpoints setting controls how many product cards display per row at each device size. Each device has its own selector with its own range:

The Pagination page in Smart Collections controls how products are loaded and presented as the shopper moves through a collection. Two mutually exclusive pagination modes are available, and the merchant chooses one for the entire store.

In Paging mode, products are split into discrete pages with traditional next/previous navigation at the bottom of the collection. By default, each page displays 15 products, but this is fully configurable. Paging is the default mode when Smart Collections is first installed.

When Paging is selected, three sub-controls become available:

In Continuous Scroll mode, additional products load automatically as the shopper scrolls toward the bottom of the collection page. There is no traditional pagination control. Continuous Scroll loads products in batches of 15 at a time. This batch size is hardcoded and cannot be changed.

The Integrations page in Smart Collections enables product star ratings to display on every collection page. Star ratings appear directly on each product card, alongside the total number of reviews. The Integrations page lists every supported review app as a separate toggle. Only one review app can be active at a time.

Review app integrations supported by Smart Collections include Klaviyo Reviews, Judge.me, Junip, Loox, Okendo, Opinew, Reviews.io, Stamped, and Yotpo.

Steps to enable product star ratings on Smart Collections:

The Add to Cart Button page in Smart Collections lets you display an inline Add to Cart button on every product card on the collection page. Shoppers can add products to their cart without leaving the collection page or navigating to a product detail page, which can speed up the path to purchase.

The Add to Cart Button page has one master toggle plus four customizable text fields. The text fields control the button label as the shopper interacts with it:

Customize the text in each field to match your store's tone or language.

Merchandising Rules is a rule-based configuration feature in Smart Collections that gives you granular control over how products are ranked and displayed on every collection page. Using Merchandising Rules, you can automatically boost, demote, or hide products based on specific product attributes (tags, type, vendor, metafield values), surfacing the right products to the right shoppers without manual curation.

Merchandising Rules has its own EDIT slideout for creating and managing individual rules. Because rule logic is configured per rule, the full Merchandising Rules workflow is documented in a dedicated article.

The Excluded Products page in Smart Collections lets you remove specific products from appearing in any collection result, regardless of how the collection is built or which filters apply. Use this for seasonal items, out-of-rotation products, or products you never want surfaced through Smart Collections.

Click the EDIT button on the Excluded Products page to open the slideout. The slideout contains two sub-cards:

If your Smart Collections settings changes do not appear on your live store, the most common cause is stale product or store data. Refreshing your synced product and store data and clearing the Smart Collections cache typically resolves this. See Sync Product Data, Store Data, and Clear Cache for the full procedure. Also confirm that the master Collections Enabled toggle is on.

If a product or variant metafield does not appear as a filter option in Smart Collections, it is usually due to one of three constraints. Smart Collections only supports five metafield types as filters: single line text, single line text (list), decimal, integer, and true/false. Metafield values longer than 256 characters or 40 words are automatically suppressed. Metafield values containing HTML are also suppressed. If your metafield meets all three rules and still does not appear, you may need to refresh your synced product data. See Sync Product Data, Store Data, and Clear Cache for the procedure.

In Smart Collections Paging mode, you can display between 1 and 100 products per page, with a default of 15. In Continuous Scroll mode, products always load in batches of 15 and this batch size cannot be changed. If you want a different number of products per view, use Paging mode and adjust the Amount Per Page setting.

No. Smart Collections applies a single layout (Sidebar or Dropdown) across all device types. Mixing layouts (for example, Sidebar on desktop and Dropdown on mobile) is not supported. The number of columns shown per device is configured separately under Product Display > Column Breakpoints, but the underlying filter layout is uniform.

If product star ratings are missing from your Smart Collections page, confirm three things. First, you have a supported review app installed on Shopify (Klaviyo Reviews, Judge.me, Junip, Loox, Okendo, Opinew, Reviews.io, Stamped, or Yotpo). Second, the review app is connected on the main Rebuy Integrations page. Third, the matching toggle on the Smart Collections Integrations sub-page is turned on. Star ratings only display for products that have at least one review in the connected app.

To exclude a product from every Smart Collection on your store, you have two options. The first is to apply the exclude_rebuy tag to that product in Shopify. The second is to add the product directly on the Smart Collections Excluded Products page using either Product Tags or Specific Products. Both methods exclude the product from every Smart Collection it would otherwise appear in. To exclude a product from only one specific collection, use Smart Collection Campaigns.

Paging and Continuous Scroll are the two pagination modes available in Smart Collections, and they behave differently. Paging mode splits results into pages with explicit page navigation at the bottom; merchants can configure how many products appear per page (1 to 100, default 15) and optionally show a per-page dropdown for shoppers. Continuous Scroll mode loads products automatically as the shopper scrolls; the batch size is hardcoded at 15 products and cannot be changed. Choose Paging if you want shopper control or fine-grained product-per-page tuning. Choose Continuous Scroll if you want a frictionless mobile-style browse experience.

Smart Collections includes a Preview Mode that lets you view your collection pages on your live storefront before enabling the feature for shoppers. Click the PREVIEW link in the Collection Template Editor card to open your storefront with the ?preview_smart_collections=true query parameter appended. Smart Collections renders only in your browser session, while shoppers visiting your store normally continue to see your default theme behavior until you turn on the master Collections Enabled toggle.

Unlike Smart Search — where Relevance is powered by Rebuy's search algorithm to match products to a shopper's query — Smart Collections doesn't involve a search term. Instead, Relevance in Smart Collections starts with the list of products assigned to that collection in Shopify, then applies any Merchandising Rules you've configured in Rebuy (such as boosting, demoting, or hiding products by attribute) to determine how they're ranked and displayed.

The articles below cover everything else in Smart Collections, from initial setup to advanced features and customization.

Getting Started with Smart Collections

Smart Collections Features & Advanced Settings