Folding sections

A product with four option sets and six fields is a long page. Everything on it is necessary, and all of it at once is still a wall. Shoppers scroll past the thing you wanted them to notice, and on a phone they may never reach the bottom.

Folding sections give that page a shape. Each group becomes a heading the shopper opens when they get to it, so the page reads as a handful of steps rather than one continuous form.

This is a Pro feature, and it is a display choice only. Nothing about what you ask, what it costs or what reaches the order changes.

Turning it on

Groups come first. Folding applies to groups, so a product with everything in one flat list has nothing to fold.

1. Open the product and find the Product Options panel.
2. Gather related questions into groups.
3. At the top of the panel, open How this page looks.
4. Under Arrangement, choose Folding sections.
5. Update the product.

Without Pro, or with the arrangement left alone, the same groups render as plain stacked sections with their headings shown. Every configuration still renders and still charges correctly; it is simply laid out in full.

How it arrives

Once folding is on, a second control appears: When the page opens. It has three settings.

• Everything open shows every section unfolded. The default.
• First one open opens the first and closes the rest.
• Everything closed starts with every section shut.

A shopper can fold and unfold from there, so this only decides the first view. The line under the setting counts how many of the product’s questions must be answered, because those sections stay open whatever you pick.

You will find it beside the numbering, review and photo switches on how the page looks.

What the shopper sees

Each group is a heading they can open and close. The heading carries a short echo of the state inside it, so a closed section is not a mystery: it shows what has been chosen, or Choose when the section is still waiting, or None where nothing applies.

That echo is what makes folding safe. A shopper scanning a page of closed headings can tell at a glance which ones they have dealt with and which still want them, without opening each one to find out.

A required section never hides

If a group holds something the shopper has to answer, it is never folded away. Hiding a required question behind a closed heading is how an order gets abandoned at the Add to cart button with no visible reason, so the plugin refuses to do it. You do not have to remember which groups those are.

When to use it, and when to step instead

Folding earns its place on a product with genuinely distinct stages: the garment, then the print, then the delivery details. Each is a decision the shopper makes once and moves past.

If the page is still long once folded, try step by step. It shows one section at a time rather than letting the shopper open several, and it checks each one before moving on.

It earns less on a product with three questions, where folding adds a click to something that already fitted on the screen. And it fights with a page whose choices depend on each other, where a shopper wants two sections open at once to compare. Judge it per product; the setting is per product for exactly that reason.

With conditional options

Folding and conditional options work together, and the order is: a rule decides whether a question applies at all, then the layout decides how what remains is presented.

A group whose contents are all hidden by rules collapses to nothing rather than leaving an empty heading to open.

If Pro lapses

The layout choice stays stored. The product falls back to the plain stacked sections, which is a longer page but a complete and correct one: every group, every question, every price, exactly as configured. Restore the plan and the folding returns without you setting it again.