Enhancing Your Feeds for Meta (Facebook and Instagram) with Custom Featured & Additional Images

Use Shopify variant metafields to control which featured image and additional images Flexify sends to Meta for each variant.

This is useful if you want to use images that are not part of Shopify’s native product image selection, choose a different main image for a specific variant, or control additional variant images more precisely in your feed.

Important notes #

Important: If you map a variant metafield to additional_image_link, the values from that metafield will replace the native Shopify variant images in the feed. In that case, the image options configured under Settings > Images / Videos in the app, such as:

• "Use all product images as additional images (default)"
• "For every variant, use (the same) product images as additional images"
  
  will not be applied.

In other words, metafield mappings take the highest priority for additional images in your feeds, and the metafield images are not appended to previously added native Shopify images. If you want to combine Shopify images or videos with metafield-based media instead of replacing them, see Expand Your Meta Feeds by Merging Shopify Images and Videos with Metafields.

Note: If you are using the Shopify-created Product Catalog on Meta together with Flexify as a supplementary feed, make sure that Image and Additional Image Link are set to use Flexify as the top-priority source under Commerce Manager > Data Sources > Configure Sources. Otherwise, the media from your Flexify supplementary feed may not appear in the catalog as expected. See Add Flexify as a Supplementary Feed and Configuring Data Source Priorities for more details.

What you need before you start #

Before setting this up, you need:

• a Shopify metafield for the featured image
• a Shopify metafield for additional images
• access to the Catalog fields > Metafields section in Flexify

Step 1 - Create the metafield definitions in Shopify #

Create the metafield definitions in Shopify under Settings > Custom data > Variants.

Use:

• One file for the featured image metafield
• List of files for the additional images metafield
  

If you already have suitable variant metafields in Shopify, you can use those instead of creating new ones.

Step 2 - Assign image values to your variants #

Add the relevant image files to the metafields for each variant you want to customize.

You can assign:

• one image as the main image for the variant
• multiple images as additional images for the variant
  

Step 3 - Map the metafields in Flexify #

• In Flexify, go to Catalog fields > Metafields.
• Click "Manage".

• Click "Add new metafield".

• Add your custom variant metafields for the featured image and the additional images.

• Then map them to the corresponding Meta catalog fields:
  • Featured image metafield -> image_link
  • Additional images metafield -> additional_image_link

Need a walkthrough? We've got a guide for that: Automatically Setting Catalog Fields

How image handling works #

Once the metafields are mapped:

• the metafield mapped to image_link will define the featured image sent to Meta
• the metafield mapped to additional_image_link will define the additional images sent to Meta

If additional_image_link is mapped to a variant metafield, those values will replace the native Shopify variant images in the feed.

Need help? #

If you need help setting up the metafields or mapping them correctly, please contact our support team at [email protected].