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Using Metafields as Product Descriptions in Your Quiz

Each product card on the quiz results page can show a short description that comes from a product or variant metafield in your Shopify admin. The metafield can hold one of three things:

Rich text: a formatted description with headings, bold, lists and links.
Plain text (single line or multi-line): shown as it is.
A file: an image is shown as a picture, an audio file (such as an MP3 sound sample) as a small audio player with a play button, and a video as a video player. Any other file, such as a PDF, is shown as a link to open it.

A metafield that holds a list of files, or a JSON metafield, shows nothing on the card.

Simply follow these steps to configure the metafield in your quiz.

Selecting a Metafield in Lantern

1. Inside the Lantern Quiz Builder, go to the Results Page.

2. Enable the Show short description from product metafields option.

3. In the textbox provided, enter the name of the metafield you want to display as the product description. The metafield must be in the custom namespace, so its full key in Shopify starts with custom.. In Lantern, enter only the part after custom.. If you already have a metafield in that namespace (e.g., petfood_fr, product_summary), simply input its name.

GIF showing the “Show short description from product metafields” option toggled on and modified the default Metafield name of lantern_description to petfood_fr (under the Product Description section in the right-hand side panel of the Results Page editor)

4. Make sure to publish your quiz after making these changes so they go live. The metafield descriptions will now be displayed on the quiz results page.

If the metafield is already set up in Shopify, the quiz will automatically pull and display that metafield's content for the relevant products.

Image showing a quiz Results Page with recommended product cards, each card displaying a short description underneath the product name.

Creating a New Metafield for Product Descriptions

If you don’t have a suitable metafield or want to create new one, follow these steps:

1. From your Shopify Admin, go to Settings → Metafields and metaobjects → Products.

GIF showing the Shopify admin interface where you navigate to Settings → Metafields and metaobjects → Products to access the product metafields settings.

2. Click the Add Definition button and in the Name input box, enter lantern_description (or any custom name that matches your specific quiz or language).

Your Namespace and Key will automatically set to custom.lantern_description.
You can create as many metafields as needed, such as lantern_description_en for English and lantern_description_fr for French, to cater to different quizzes or language versions.

GIF showing how to add a new product metafield in Shopify by clicking “Add definition” on the Products metafields page and entering a custom Name (e.g., “lantern_description”).

3. You can enter whatever you want in the description box. This just serves as an internal reminder of what the meta field represents.

Image showing the Shopify Add product metafield definition form with the Name set to “lantern_description” and a note filled in the Description field (an internal description of the metafield’s purpose).

4. Select the metafield type and click Save to create your custom metafield. Choose Rich text for a formatted written description, Single line text or Multi-line text for plain text, or File to show an image, a sound sample or a video on the card.

GIF showing the metafield’s type being set to Rich text in Shopify for the “lantern_description” metafield (selecting Rich text as the content type before saving).

Add brief descriptions for your products

From your Products tab inside your Shopify Admin, click on a product and at the very bottom of its listing you will find a list of the available metafields you have created for it. In our example, we can see the rich text metafield lantern_description. Select this metafield to add your description. If it is a Rich text metafield, this opens a rich text box in which you can enter and fully format your product description.

GIF showing the Metafields section at the bottom of a Shopify product page, where the lantern_description field is opened as a rich text editor to add a short description to the product.

Once you’ve finished entering your description, click Save.

Image showing the lantern_description rich text metafield on a Shopify product page filled with content, with the Save button highlighted to indicate saving the new short description.

Using a file as the description

If you created the metafield with the File type, the same spot at the bottom of the product listing shows a file picker instead of a text box. Pick a file from your Shopify Files or upload a new one, then click Save. One file per product is shown.

An image (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP) appears as a picture under the product title, scaled to the width of the card.
An audio file (MP3, WAV, M4A) appears as a small audio player. The customer presses play to hear it; nothing plays on its own.
A video appears as a video player with controls.
Any other file, such as a PDF, appears as a link named after the file, which opens in a new tab.

The description sits in the product-short-description area of the card, so you can adjust its size or spacing with custom CSS.

Adding metafield descriptions to variants

In order to do this, you need to create a metafield at variant level by going to Settings → Metafields and metaobjects → Variants

Image showing Shopify’s Settings with Metafields and metaobjects selected and the Variants metafields section highlighted (Settings → Metafields and metaobjects → Variants) to indicate where to create a variant-level metafield.

The variant metafield name will be exactly the same as the one for products lantern_description, and it can be any of the same types: rich text, plain text or a file.

Image showing the Shopify Add variant metafield definition form for “lantern_description,” including a description that it’s for product variants in the quiz and the type set to Rich text.

To add a description, head over to the product listing, select the variant and scroll down to the bottom where you will find the lantern_description metafield:

GIF showing a Shopify product page with a specific variant selected and its lantern_description metafield being edited (scrolling to the variant’s Metafields section to add the short description for that variant).

Enable metafield descriptions inside Lantern

Inside the Quiz Builder, head over to the Results Page and select the Product Description drop-down menu.

From this menu enable the Show short description from product metafields option and enter the name of the metafield we’ve just created (e.g., lantern_description)

Image showing Lantern’s Quiz Builder interface on the Results Page (right-hand panel) where under Product Description settings the “Show short description from product metafields” option is enabled and “lantern_description” is entered as the metafield name.

Make sure to publish your quiz so that your changes go live and your metafield descriptions will now be displayed on the results page.

Image showing the quiz Results Page after enabling metafield descriptions, with each recommended product card now displaying a short description beneath the product title.

Key Points to Remember

The metafield can be rich text, plain text or a file (image, audio or video). A list of files or a JSON metafield shows nothing.
You can use existing metafields or create new ones, but the metafield must be in the custom namespace (its full key in Shopify starts with custom.). In Lantern, enter only the part after custom..
The quiz will pull the description based on the name of the metafield you provide in the Lantern Quiz Builder.

As always, don’t hesitate to contact our support team if you have any question or need any assistance.

Add a short description using product metafields