Shopify Glossary Terms

Metafields are custom data fields in Shopify that let you store additional information beyond what Shopify's standard data model provides. They can be attached to products, variants, collections, customers, orders, and other Shopify objects.

Think of them as extra columns in a database. A product has title, description, price, and images by default. Metafields let you add anything else - care instructions, technical specifications, complementary product references, warranty information, or data that your integrations need.

Metafields come in typed formats (single-line text, multi-line text, integer, JSON, file reference, product reference, and more), which means they're structured and queryable via both the Storefront API and Admin API.

For Shopify Plus brands, metafields are essential for rich product pages, custom filtering, and structured data that feeds into headless frontends. They're also how you migrate product attributes from platforms like Magento (where the EAV model stores everything as attributes) into Shopify's flatter product structure.

Think: the extra columns Shopify's data model didn't ship with — but your products need.