Key takeaways
- Tag products with “best-seller” and check if your theme displays it as a badge automatically.
- If not, Theme Editor settings may have a badge configuration for specific tags.
- For a styled “Best Seller” badge that matches your brand, use Fudge to build a custom one.
- Best Seller badges increase click-through on collection pages by creating social proof at a glance.
A “Best Seller” label on a product card does one thing very effectively: it tells hesitant browsers that other people have already made this decision. It reduces the cognitive load of choosing.
Why you can trust us
We’ve worked on storefront conversion optimisation with hundreds of Shopify brands. We also built Fudge — an AI storefront editor with a 5.0 rating on the Shopify App Store.
Does Shopify have a native Best Seller badge?
Shopify does not automatically mark products as best sellers or display a native “Best Seller” badge. There is no built-in feature that tracks which products sell most and applies a label.
What Shopify does have:
- Automatic “Sale” badge - triggered by the compare-at price field
- “Sold Out” badge - shown when inventory hits zero
For a Best Seller badge, you work through product tags and your theme’s badge system.
Related: Reorder Products in a Shopify Collection.
Related: Change Product Badges in Shopify.
Related: Add New Badges in Shopify.
Related: Add Product Badges in Shopify.
Method 1 - Use the product tag system (recommended starting point)
Step 1. Open the product you want to mark as a best seller.
Step 2. In the right sidebar, find the Tags field.
Step 3. Add the tag best-seller (lowercase, hyphenated - some themes are case-sensitive).
Step 4. Save.
Step 5. View the product on a collection page. Check whether your theme renders the tag as a visible badge.
Many modern Shopify themes (Dawn, Craft, Crave, Sense) have built-in badge handling for product tags. If a “best-seller” label appears on the product card, you’re done.
Method 2 - Enable badge settings in the Theme Editor
If the tag alone doesn’t trigger a badge, check your theme’s customisation settings.
Step 1. Go to Online Store > Themes > Customize.
Step 2. Navigate to a collection page.
Step 3. Click on a product card or the collection section settings.
Step 4. Look for a Badges or Product labels section. Some themes let you specify which tags trigger which badge labels and what text they display.
Step 5. Configure the tag-to-badge mapping and save.
If your theme has this, it gives you full control over which products show the badge - just by managing tags.
How to add best sellers in Shopify collections
A separate but related goal: creating a “Best Sellers” collection to showcase your top products.
Step 1. Go to Products > Collections > Create collection.
Step 2. Name it “Best Sellers”.
Step 3. Under Collection type, choose Automated and set the condition to “Product tag is equal to best-seller”.
Step 4. Save.
Any product tagged “best-seller” now appears in this collection automatically. Link it in your navigation or homepage for high visibility.
Method 3 - Build a custom Best Seller badge with Fudge
If your theme doesn’t support tag-based badges, or the default styling doesn’t match your brand, Fudge can build a custom badge system directly in your theme.
Example prompt: “Add a ‘Best Seller’ badge to the top-left of product images on collection pages for any product tagged ‘best-seller’. Style it with a dark navy background, white text, small and bold.”
Fudge generates the Liquid code, creates a draft for your review, and nothing goes live until you approve it.
The advantage over an app: the badge is native code in your theme, not a third-party script loading on every page.
Deciding which products to badge
Best Seller badges lose their credibility if overused. A few principles:
- Limit to 10-15% of your catalogue. If everything is a best seller, nothing is.
- Base it on actual data. Pull your top sellers from Shopify Analytics > Products.
- Update it seasonally. Best sellers in summer may not be best sellers in winter.
- Don’t apply it to new products. “New” and “Best Seller” are contradictory signals.
FAQ
Not natively. Shopify Analytics shows you which products are top sellers, but you have to apply the best-seller tag manually (or via Shopify Flow if you have it). Some apps will sync top-seller status automatically based on rolling 30-day sales.
Three common reasons: (1) your theme doesn't have built-in tag-to-badge mapping, (2) the tag spelling/case doesn't match what the theme expects (try best-seller, bestseller, and Best Seller), or (3) the theme has badge handling but it's disabled in the Theme Editor settings.
A Sale badge is triggered automatically when you set a compare-at price higher than the active price — Shopify handles it. A Best Seller badge has no native trigger. Simplest setup: tag your top sellers and describe the rule to Fudge ("show a Best Seller badge on products tagged best-seller, in the same position as the Sale badge"). Alternative: a badge app from the App Store. Most themes show both badges simultaneously when both conditions apply.
Both work; they signal slightly different things. "Best Seller" is a vague but trusted label. "Sold 500+ this month" is more specific and harder to fake-feel. Specific numbers convert better when they're real and recent. Don't fabricate them - shoppers spot synthetic social proof.
Yes. The badge can be conditionally rendered in your theme code based on the current collection ({% if collection.handle == 'featured' %}) or the product's collections list. Use this to highlight best sellers within a category page without flooding every collection with badges.
