Product Filters

Product Filters add a sidebar to your store that lets shoppers narrow what they're looking at — by price, by what's in stock, by category, or by any of your own product attributes like size, color, or material. Results update instantly as they click, no page reloads.

Turning filters on

Go to Filters in your dashboard and open the Settings tab. Filters are off until you flip the master switch:

  • Enable Filters — the master switch. Turn it on to use product filters anywhere on this site.
  • Show on category pages — display the filter sidebar on your category pages (on by default).
  • Show on main store page — display filters on your main store page. Leave off for a minimalist landing.
  • Show on product search results — display filters alongside search results (on by default).
  • Show filter counts — display the number of matching products next to each filter value, like Blue (12).

The Filters Settings tab, showing the Enable Filters master switch and the location toggles

Choosing which filters appear

The Filters tab lists every filter available to your store. You don't have to build anything — IndieMade creates the list for you:

  • Price — a slider covering the price range of whatever the shopper is looking at.
  • Availability — an "In Stock" checkbox so shoppers can hide sold-out items.
  • Category — your product categories, with counts that include everything nested inside them.
  • Your attributes — one filter for every variation or option name in your store: Size, Color, Material, whatever you use.

The Filters tab listing Price, Availability, Category and one filter per attribute, each with an enabled toggle

Every filter starts turned off. Click the status icon to enable the ones that make sense for your shop — that saves immediately, there's no separate step. Dragging rows sets the order they appear in the sidebar, and Save Filters stores that order.

Expect some names you don't want to use. The list is built from every attribute name in your store, so it can include internal ones you'd never offer as a filter. Just leave those switched off. The list refreshes when you open this tab, so if you've added a new attribute and don't see it yet, revisit the tab. Filters can't be renamed or deleted — enabling and ordering is the whole control.
Values with the same name are merged. If twenty products each have their own "Blue" color option, shoppers see one Blue filter that matches all twenty — you don't need to share attributes between products for filtering to work. Values matching nothing are left out.
Don't reuse one value name across two different attributes. Because matching is by name, a "Small" under Size and a "Small" under Print Size are treated as the same thing, and filtering on either returns both. If two attributes need similar values, make them distinct — "Small" and "Small Print", say.

Different filters for different categories

The By Category tab lets you fine-tune which filters appear on a specific category page. Pick a category, then uncheck any filter you don't want shown there, or reorder them for that category. A "Ring Size" filter makes sense on your Rings category but just adds noise on Wall Art.

Two things to know: only filters you've enabled globally can be adjusted here, and an override applies to that one category exactly — not to its subcategories, and not to your main store page or search results.

What shoppers see

Shoppers get a sidebar next to your products with the filters you enabled. As they check boxes or drag the price slider, the product grid updates instantly, and a Clear All Filters link appears once something is active.

On category pages they also get a count of matching products and a sort menu offering Price: Low to High and Price: High to Low. The main store page and search results show the sidebar without the count and sort bar.

Filtering sorts by price. On a category page the sort menu starts on Price: Low to High, and as soon as a shopper applies a filter the results come back cheapest-first — your own product order isn't kept once they start filtering, and Clear All Filters returns them to price order rather than yours. Reloading the page restores your order. If the order you've arranged products in is doing important work on a category, that's worth weighing before you switch filters on there.
Categories that show subcategories don't get filters. If your theme is set to display subcategories on a parent category page, that page lists the subcategories rather than products, so no sidebar appears. Filters show up on the individual subcategory pages underneath it.

Filtered views are shareable — the choices live in the page address, so a shopper can send a link to "blue ones under $50" and it opens exactly that view.

Filters are new. If anything doesn't behave the way you expect, email support@indiemade.com and we'll get you sorted.