Understand Parent and Child Variant Relationships in Describely

In this article

• How Describely thinks about variants
• For Shopify stores
• When you need unique content
• Organizing products in Describely
• For CSV imports

How Describely thinks about variants

Describely is built to mirror how your store is already structured—especially if you’re using Shopify. We don’t create or manage variants inside Describely. Instead, we pull in the products exactly as they exist in your product management system.

Here’s the key idea to keep in mind:

• Describely generates content at the parent product level.
• If that parent product has variants in Shopify (like size or color), any titles or descriptions you publish from Describely automatically apply to those variants. You'll see these notated on the SKU field of any product.

This means you don’t have to create duplicate content for every variation—unless each variation lives on its own unique product page.

For Shopify stores

When you connect your Shopify store, Describely imports all of your product listings as they exist today.

• If you use one product with variants (for example, a shirt with multiple sizes and colors), you’ll see a single parent product in Describely.
• If you’ve set up each size or color as its own product listing in Shopify, you’ll see multiple SKUs in Describely—one for each listing.

Neither setup is “wrong.” They just behave differently when it comes to content generation.

When you need unique content

This is where things get practical.

For most retailer, you only need unique content when you have a unique product page.

• If multiple variants roll up into a single Shopify product page, one set of content is enough.
• If each variant has its own standalone product page, each one should have its own unique title and description.

Why this matters:

• Publishing the same content across multiple unique pages can hurt search performance.
• Search engines may de-index pages that look duplicated.
• Unique content signals quality, credibility, and relevance.

Organizing products in Describely

Right now, Describely doesn’t support grouping products by parent/child relationships or Shopify collections in a hierarchical way (besides bringing in your already-established variants for the main parent).

What you can do is use saved filters and group types to stay organized:

• Filter by collection, manufacturer, or title keywords.
• Create saved views for specific product subsets (for example, all products with “Abigail” in the title).
• Quickly switch between catalogs or filtered views without changing your underlying data.

This gives you flexibility without forcing you to restructure your Shopify store just to use Describely.

For CSV imports

If you’re importing products via CSV, the same rule applies:

Only generate content for SKUs that have their own unique product listing.

For most brands, that means:

• Import parent SKUs that represent real product pages.
• Skip child SKUs that don’t have their own public-facing listing.

If you’re a distributor, your situation may look different. You might need:

• More detailed variant-level data to share with retailers.
• Content or attributes that help downstream partners create their own listings.

If you’re not sure which SKUs should get content—or how much detail your variants need—our team can help you think it through.

Understanding how parent and child variants work in Describely helps you avoid extra work, prevent duplicate content issues, and focus your efforts where they’ll have the biggest impact. Once your structure is clear, content generation becomes faster, cleaner, and far more scalable.