What Shopify's sort options miss
| Built-in sort | The problem |
|---|---|
| Best selling | All-time sales. Last year's hit stays on top after it has stopped selling |
| Newest | Everything older than a week sinks, best sellers included |
| Price | Says nothing about what shoppers want |
| Manual | Perfect, until you have 40 collections to keep up to date |
None of them know your margin or your stock. So your top row can be full of low-margin products, or products about to sell out, while 140 days of stock sits on page three.
The numbers you need
- Sales speed: units sold per day over the last 30 days. Better than all-time best selling.
- Days of stock: current stock divided by sales speed. Low means it's about to run out; high means it needs a push.
- Margin: (price − cost) ÷ price. Add cost per item to your variants in Shopify to get it.
- Trend: this week's pace compared with the month. Over 1 means it's picking up.
You can work these out from a Shopify sales report and an inventory export in a spreadsheet.
Sorting by hand
- 01Export the numbersAnalytics → Reports → Sales by product for the last 30 days, and Products → Export for stock and cost.
- 02Score each productPick a goal. For margin: sort by margin, but drop anything that sold under 2 units. For clearing stock: sort by days of stock, highest first.
- 03Set the collection to manualIn the collection, change Sort to Manually and drag products into your order.
- 04RepeatWeekly at least. Sales speed and stock change every day.
Sorting automatically
StoreAi's autopilot merchandiser does those steps every day (every hour on Pro). Pick a goal per collection: most revenue, best margin, clear old stock or launch new lines. It previews each new order with a reason for every move, keeps pinned products in place, and keeps every past order for undo.
For anything the goals don't cover, write a rule in plain English, such as “push linen until the end of August”. See plain-English sorting rules.
Questions
- Can a smart collection have a manual order?
- Yes. The collection's conditions decide which products are in it, and the sort order is separate. Set Sort to Manually and the order sticks.
- What if I don't track inventory?
- Days of stock can't be worked out, so leave that signal out and sort by sales speed and margin.