How To Create Different Product Pages In Shopify | Alternate templates

Alternate template in Shopify. Let's goo!

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What are they?

Templates control what's rendered on each type of page in a theme. In other words each type of page (Homepage, product page, collection pages) have a pre-built structure to them and they dynamic values get put in depending on the actual collection or product you're looking at.

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An alternate template is a different version of that pre-built template. Let's take the product page for example. By default there's 1 layout to a product page inside of Shopify assigned to all your products. With alternate template you can create a whole new version of that page (still a product page) and assign it to specific products.

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Why use them?

Scenario 1: Making a cool About Us page. By default Shopify's 'pages' are just a heading and then rich text. But that won't cut it for you. Your brand is different. You want to have a meet the team slider, a full screen video is a must, you want customer to see your favourite products and collections..... Alternate pages allow you to do all of this.

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Scenario 2: You have different types of products. Let's say you sell 17inch and 20inch computer monitors. You may want the rest of the product page to have copy & content related to just the 17inch monitor but then that will confuse people looking at the 20inch. Simply create an alternate template for your 17inch monitors, assign it to those products and create the page tailored to customers buying 17inch monitors & 20inch too.

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How do I create them?

> Go to the Shopify theme customizer

> Using the selector tool (Top - middle) select one of the templates you want to edit

> Before clicking into the template, you'll see an option to 'Create template'. Click it

> Select 'based on' default. That's fine. Then give it a name. In my example above I'd use '17-inch'

> Hit create. It will create the alternate template for you. So now when you click into the product template with the selector (top - middle), you'll have 2 options

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Last thing to do it to assign that product, collection, page or whatever else to that alternate template

> Click into to the product or collection or whatever.

On the right hand side you will see 'Online store' with a dropdown to choose the template time.

> Change/select the template name you just created inside the customizer.

If the option doesn't show up - double check the theme you're using is published and live.

All done!

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