July 22, 2024

How To Bulk Edit Product Descriptions in Shopify

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Optimizing your Shopify product pages is crucial. In this guide, we will show you how to update your product descriptions in bulk to save time and ensure the accuracy of your changes.

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Phill Moorman
VP of Marketing

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The importance of optimizing your Shopify product pages cannot be overstated.

After all, this is where visitors will actually decide whether to purchase your product or not. Just imagine the amount of time, effort, and money it took to get a potential customer to that point (attracting traffic to your product pages likely required paid ads, content marketing, SEO, etc.). Now, it all comes down to this — if you can’t convince the visitor to click on the buy button, that investment will have been wasted. 

Every advantage makes a difference. For instance, you should be using your product descriptions to provide visitors with any key details that they may want to know, add some persuasive copy that highlights the benefits of your product and sets you apart from competitors, and incorporate keywords to help give the page a boost in search rankings. 

Indeed, merchants who haven’t yet optimized their product descriptions should do so right away. But if you need to make edits to many different product descriptions, manually opening and adjusting the customization settings for each individual product would be quite tedious. 

Thankfully, you can save time and avoid frustration by bulk editing your product descriptions in Shopify instead. In this guide, we’ll show you how. 

Growing brands on Shopify manage their content with ShogunThe content management tools in Shogun allow merchants to manage large product catalogs with ease.Get started now

Using Shopify to Bulk Edit Product Descriptions

There are two ways to bulk edit product descriptions in Shopify — you can export (and then import) a CSV file of your product data, or you can use Shopify’s built-in bulk editor tool. 

In addition to walking you through these methods step-by-step, we’ll go over the pros and cons of each method below in order to help you decide which one to use. 

Method #1: The CSV Export Method

To bulk edit your product descriptions with the CSV export method:

Step 1. Log in to Shopify and select the “Products” option in the left sidebar of the main dashboard. 

Select the “Products” option in the left sidebar of the main dashboard. 

Step 2. Click on the “Export” button.

Click on the “Export” button.

Step 3. Here, you can decide whether you want to export only the items you’re currently viewing on the “Products” page or export your entire catalog. Also, you can either export the file as a CSV for spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and Apple Numbers or as a plain CSV file for a text editor. 

Once the export options have been adjusted as needed, select “Export products”. 

Select “Export products”. 

Step 4. The CSV file will be downloaded to your computer, which you can then open in whichever spreadsheet program you prefer. 

The “Body (HTML)” column is where you’ll find the descriptions for each product. 

The “Body (HTML)” column is where you’ll find the descriptions for each product. 

Make any edits that you need to make, then save the file and download it as a CSV. 

Save the file and download it as a CSV. 

Step 5. Go back to the “Products” page of your Shopify account and click on the “Import” button. 

Click on the “Import” button. 

Step 6. Upload the CSV file that contains your product description edits. In the import settings, be sure to select the “Overwrite products with matching handles” option — otherwise, the product descriptions for existing products won’t be updated. Then, select “Upload and preview”. 

Select “Upload and preview”. 

Step 7. You’ll get a summary of the products you’re importing as well as the import settings you chose at the previous stage. If everything looks correct, select “Import products” to finish adding your updated product descriptions. 

Select “Import products” to finish adding your updated product descriptions. 

The main benefit of this method is that it allows you to use whichever spreadsheet program you’re most comfortable with to make your bulk edits. 

But the extra steps of downloading product data and then uploading it back in also introduce some risk to the process. If you’re not careful (and don’t save a backup), you could end up permanently deleting data on accident when you upload the new CSV file. 

Are you running into any issues with this method? Here are a few tips that will help you address some of the most common problems:

  • Make sure you don’t change the order of any of the columns in the CSV file while editing.
  • Avoid using a text editor for updating your CSV file if possible — this option should only be used if formatting errors or some other issue is preventing you from opening the file in your spreadsheet program of choice.
  • If you used Microsoft Excel to edit your CSV, check the export settings to make sure the file uses commas between values when you download it.
  • Use straight quotes instead of curly quotes. Some spreadsheet programs use curly quotes by default, so you may need to find and replace these characters manually.
  • Use Google Chrome, rather than another browser, when uploading your CSV file back into Shopify.

Method #2: Shopify’s Built-in Bulk Editor

The built-in bulk editor allows you to edit multiple product descriptions on the same screen without ever leaving Shopify:

Step 1. Go to the “Products” page of your Shopify account and use the checkboxes to select the products you would like to edit (clicking on the uppermost checkbox will select all of the products listed on the page). 

Use the checkboxes to select the products you would like to edit.

Step 2. Once you’ve selected all the products you want to edit, click on the “Bulk edit” button. 

Click on the “Bulk edit” button. 

Step 3. The built-in bulk editor offers a spreadsheet-like display for updating multiple products. Double-clicking on a description will open a mini text editor, allowing you to make any necessary changes. Click on the “Save” button once you have finished editing your product descriptions. 

Click on the “Save” button once you have finished editing your product descriptions. 

That’s it! As you can see, this method is faster and more convenient than using a CSV file. It reduces the risk of accidentally deleting data as well. The only downside is that some Shopify merchants prefer to use third-party spreadsheet software for this task — but if that’s not the case for you, then you may as well stick with the built-in bulk editor. 

Growing brands on Shopify manage their content with ShogunThe content management tools in Shogun allow merchants to manage large product catalogs with ease.Get started now

Using Shogun to Bulk Edit Static Content In Your Product Descriptions

The methods described above are ideal for when you want to edit the unique content in your product descriptions. For example, the specifications, features, and benefits covered in your descriptions will likely differ from one product to another. 

But there may also be content in your descriptions that remains the same for every product page, such as:

  • Shipping policies
  • Return policies
  • FAQs that cover questions for your entire brand rather than individual products

Shogun’s global snippets feature makes it especially easy to update this information quickly.

In Shogun’s visual editor, you’ll find all the tools you need to create custom pages for your Shopify store. You also have the option of turning a portion of a page — like a section for shipping policies, return policies, or FAQs — into a global snippet. 

Shogun allows you to turn a portion of a page into a global snippet.

After a global snippet has been created, you’ll be able to access it through the visual editor’s snippet library. This allows you to add the content to another page with just a couple clicks.

Global snippets can quickly be added to multiple pages.

And here’s where you can really save some time — whenever you make an edit to a global snippet, those changes will automatically be applied to every single page that contains the snippet. 

Whenever you make an edit to a global snippet, those changes will automatically be applied to every single page that contains the snippet. 

It should be noted, though, that using the CSV export method or Shopify’s built-in bulk editor after editing a global snippet in Shogun could cause the data to not be properly updated. 

Content updates made in Shogun will override content updates made in Shopify, and vice versa. In other words, whichever app you used last will determine which update is actually displayed on the page. Once a page has been imported to Shogun, you should only edit it in Shogun to prevent this issue. 

Making Universal Changes on Shopify Product Pages Outside of Descriptions

In addition to the global snippet tool, Shogun also offers another feature that allows you to save time by updating multiple pages simultaneously: product page templates. 

Product page templates also allow you to update multiple pages simultaneously.

With Shogun’s visual editor, you will be able to fully customize the styling of your product page template, and you can also use it to set up user interactions, such as what happens when the visitor clicks on the product image. 

With Shogun’s visual editor, you will be able to fully customize your product page template. 

After you have created your template, you can then use it to import products from your Shopify catalog into Shogun.

After you have created your template, you can then use it to import products from your Shopify catalog into Shogun.

The imported product page will instantly be redesigned according to the specifications of your product page template. Also, each template provides a space for you to add new elements, allowing you to customize any individual product page that uses the template if needed. 

Each template provides a space for you to add new elements, allowing you to customize any individual product page that uses the template if needed.

And similar to global snippets, wherever you make edits to the layout or styling of a product page template, those edits will automatically be applied to every page using the template. 

Shogun also offers AI tools for writing and translating product descriptions that can save you even more time. Indeed, Shogun is especially useful for merchants with large catalogs that need robust content management tools. 

Growing brands on Shopify manage their content with ShogunThe content management tools in Shogun allow merchants to manage large product catalogs with ease.Get started now

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