If you sell aftermarket auto parts on Shopify, one thing your customers look for is year, make and model search functionality. Year, make and model (YMM) search functionality is more than just a simple search on your Shopify store, it’s a holistic way to think about your site’s navigation. YMM is ultimately about product discovery, how do you lead your customer down the path to finding the exact product they are looking for in the fewest clicks.
The typical YMM search has 3 drop down selectors and a search button, like this one on Bullet Proof Diesel:
However there are other options, you can group your searches in buckets here like Tom’s Off Road. We built them tiles for Ford Bronco’s from 1966-1977 and 2021+ as well as older F Series 1953-1996 and 4x4 accessories:
You can bake year make model into your top navigation like DMAX Store did. From the very top of your site customers have the choice to shop by vehicle, product type or brand. DMAX settled on a combo solution where a selector was added to the homepage for quick access, while the site’s main navigation allows you to jump deep into a product detail page to find what you want:
Ram Mount wanted a solution that was more of a product builder/configurator, rather than a traditional year, make and model implementation. In this example, Ram Mount had robust product data they were able to expose via an API feed that we could then style the front end configurator settings on the new Shopify Plus site.
Since there are multiple ways to implement Year/Make/Model (YMM) filtering on Shopify, the key is matching your solution to your specific customer needs. Every automotive buying experience is unique, so your YMM system should reflect how your customers actually shop. Contact us to analyze your customer journey and build a solution that works.
We handle YMM integrations of any scale, from small SKU catalogs with CSV imports to complex, high-volume projects requiring API connections and custom ETL processes. Whether you're managing thousands or hundreds of thousands of parts, we have the technical expertise to deliver a solution that fits your data complexity and business needs.
