Product pages

Manifest ships two complete product page architectures. Most themes ship one and let you rearrange it. The distinction matters because a $12 refill and a $198 hero product are not the same sale.

Product stage — buying first

The gallery sits on one side, the buying column on the other, and both stay in view as the page scrolls. Everything needed to buy — variant selectors, quantity, price, add to cart — is visible without scrolling on most screens.

Use it when the customer already knows what the product is. Refills, repeat purchases, simple SKUs, anything where the decision is “yes” rather than “what is this”.

Product chapters — explanation first

The page reads top to bottom as a narrative. Sections of the story alternate down the page, with the buying column pinned alongside rather than pushed below the fold.

Use it when the product needs explaining before it can be sold. High price points, unfamiliar categories, anything where the customer’s real question is “why does this cost that”.

Choosing per product

You do not have to pick one for the whole catalog. Shopify supports alternate templates, and Manifest ships one for each architecture.

To assign a different product page to a specific product:

1. Go to Products in your Shopify admin and open the product.
2. Scroll to the Online store card in the right sidebar.
3. Under Theme template, choose the alternate template.
4. Save.

The product now renders with that layout. Everything else about the product — its data, its URL, its position in collections — is unchanged.

A practical split: hero products and anything above your average order value get the chapters layout. Everything else gets the stage.

The buying column

Both architectures share the same buying column, built from blocks you can reorder:

• Product title, vendor, and price, including compare-at and unit pricing
• Variant selectors — one control per option, not a single combined dropdown
• Quantity selector
• Add to cart, with accelerated checkout buttons beneath
• Selling plan selector for subscription products
• Gift card recipient fields for gift card products
• Pickup availability
• Share

Reorder these in the theme editor by dragging. The one constraint worth knowing: accelerated checkout buttons are rendered by Shopify with Shopify’s own styling, and their appearance is not customizable — that is a platform rule, not a theme limitation.

Variant behavior

Manifest selects the first available variant on load rather than the first variant. If your size small is sold out, the page opens on a size that can actually be bought.

When a variant is unavailable, add to cart is disabled rather than hidden, and the reason is announced to assistive technology. Variant changes update the price, availability, and the gallery in place, without a page reload — and the change is announced rather than happening silently.

With JavaScript disabled, variant selection still works. It submits a form and reloads the page, which is slower and entirely functional.

Media

The gallery supports images, video, 3D models, YouTube, and Vimeo. A few notes:

• Nothing loads until it is needed. Video and 3D model files are not fetched on page load, only when a visitor interacts with that media item. This is a significant part of why product pages stay fast.
• Video does not autoplay with sound. Space bar pauses.
• 3D models need Shopify’s model viewer, which loads on interaction.
• Switching tabs pauses playing media.

Product recommendations

The related products section uses Shopify’s recommendation engine, which learns from your store’s own order history. It needs sales data to be useful — on a new store it falls back to products from the same collection.

Complementary products are set manually through Shopify’s Search & Discovery app, and are worth the effort for products that genuinely pair.

Reviews

Manifest does not collect reviews. It provides an app block surface on the product page where a review app renders, plus a ratings summary that appears when rating data exists on the product.

Install a review app, add its block to the product page in the theme editor, and the rest follows. If you have no review app, the section stays empty rather than showing fabricated ratings.