Roll out automated sorting in stages: pick one or two mid-traffic collections, apply a recipe, and watch collection conversion rate and click behavior for a couple of weeks before expanding. Pin any products that must hold position, keep your old manual order recoverable, and where the stakes are high, run an A/B test of the recipe against the current sort before committing the whole store.
Which collections should go first?
Skip both extremes. Your highest-traffic collection makes a poor first rollout because mistakes are expensive there, and a dead collection tells you nothing because there is no data. Pick one or two collections with steady traffic and a mix of strong and weak products. Before switching, note the current order, pin anything contractual or campaign-critical, and confirm your out-of-stock handling so sold-out items sink from day one.
What should you measure?
Watch collection conversion rate as the headline number, and product position effectiveness as the diagnostic: it shows whether the products the recipe promoted actually earn their new positions. Give it a couple of weeks, because day-two judgments mostly measure noise. For high-stakes collections, an A/B test of the recipe against your current sort removes the guesswork, since both orders run against live traffic.
When do you expand?
When the pilot collections hold or improve conversion and nothing surprising shows up in the click data, roll the same recipe out to the rest of the collections in that group, then repeat the cycle for the next group (new arrivals, sale, seasonal). Change one variable at a time: if you adjust recipe weights and add new collections in the same week, you will not know which change moved the numbers.
Dynasort makes the staged path easy. Install it from the Shopify App Store or see how it works.