SHOPIFY HELP

Why "Example product title" shows on your Shopify store, and how to remove it

That text is placeholder content from your theme. A product grid shows it when it has no real products to display. The section may point at an empty or missing collection, or at products shoppers can't see. Fix what the section points at, or remove the section.

Last reviewed against Shopify's help center on 9 October 2026. Menu labels vary a little between themes.

What you are looking at

Themes ship product grids, like Featured collection, with grey image boxes and made-up titles so the section isn't blank in the editor. On a live store your products should replace those boxes. When they don't, shoppers see the placeholders.

Owners report it in two situations. In an April 2024 Shopify Community thread, the owner's collections sold out regularly, and the empty Featured collection section showed "Example product title $19.99" boxes that linked nowhere. In a December 2022 thread, the owner picked a collection and nothing appeared, because the products weren't available on the Online Store sales channel. Same symptom, different causes, so work through the steps in order.

Fix it in six steps

1. Find the section. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store, then Themes, and click Edit theme next to your live theme. The editor opens on the home page. For another page, use the drop-down at the top to switch templates. In the sidebar, click the product grid. It's often called Featured collection or Featured products.

2. Check the collection it points at. Click the section and find the collection setting. If it's blank, or names a collection you deleted, click Change and choose one that has products. A Shopify Community team member gave these steps for the Simple theme in 2021, and your theme's wording may differ.

3. Check the collection has products. In the admin, go to Products, then Collections, and open it. If it's empty, add products. Shopify's help center covers adding products to a manual collection. For an automated collection, read the conditions. A rule like "tag is summer" matches nothing if no product carries that tag.

4. Check the products. Open a product from Products. Its status must be Active, because Shopify's documentation says draft and archived products aren't available to customers on sales channels. In the Sales channels and apps box, Online Store should be ticked. A responder in the December 2022 thread pointed to this as the cause.

5. Remove the section if you don't need it. In the editor, click the section, then Remove section, then Save. If you're editing your live theme, click Publish as well. You can also hide a section and bring it back later.

6. Check the live store. Open it in a private window and on your phone, then look at other pages. Each template has its own sections, so the same grid can sit on a collection page or a landing page. Shopify says an edit to a template applies to every page using that template.

Before you change anything, duplicate your theme from Online Store, Themes. Shopify recommends this too, so you can discard changes and start again.

If the collection is empty on purpose

Some shops sell one-off items, so a collection can really sit empty for a week. In the April 2024 thread, a reply suggested pasting .collection:has(.placeholder-svg) { display: none; } into the section's Custom CSS box, which hides the section when it's empty. The owner confirmed it worked. It was written for the Ride theme, so test it on a duplicate theme first.

What this costs you

Nobody can give you an honest lost-sales figure without your analytics, so we won't make one up. What we can say is smaller. The boxes link nowhere, they show a price you never set, and they often sit on the page people reach first. A shopper deciding whether to type in a card number is looking for signs that a real business runs the shop, and grey boxes with fake prices point the other way. If you pay for ads that land on your home page, you're paying to show visitors that page.

The fix is usually a short job once you know the cause. It gets slower when two causes stack, such as an empty collection plus products missing from the Online Store channel, or when the grid comes from an app rather than the theme.

Questions

Is Example product title a Shopify bug?
No. It's placeholder content built into the theme. It shows when the section has no products to display.

Will removing the section break my store?
Removing a section only changes the template you're editing. Header and footer sections are shared by every page, so take more care there. Duplicate the theme first.

Why does it show on one page but not another?
Pages use different templates, and each template has its own sections. Edit the template where you see it.

I fixed it and it still shows. Why?
Check that you published the theme that's live, and look for a second grid further down the same page.

Do I need a developer?
Usually not for the steps above. A developer helps if the grid comes from an app or custom code.

Want someone to look at it?

Send us your store URL through the contact form. We'll do a free first look and send back a short written note listing any placeholder text we can see on the pages that load without logging in. If you'd like us to fix it: small fixes are $49 flat and you pay only if it is fixed. A one-issue fix is $299, with the $99 diagnosis credited in full. Bigger work gets a written quote first. We work on a copy of your theme, and we never need your password by email.