A monogram is the simplest personalized product there is: one text layer, one field, and a shopper who types two or three letters. It is also the product most often built wrong, because an unrestricted text field will eventually receive a sentence, and the sentence is what gets made.
Build it
Place and size the text
Set it at the size it should print, in the position it should sit. A monogram is judged as a shape, so the size and the spacing matter more than the wording.
Make it a field
Open Personalize, switch on Customers can change this, give it a Label such as “Initials”, and mark it Required to order.
Cap the length
Set Max length to the number of characters your layout was designed for. Three is the usual answer for initials.
Restrict the characters
Set Allowed characters to Letters only. That removes digits, emoji and punctuation in one move, which is much more reliable than asking for them not to be used.
Decide about the font and the fit
Leave Customer can choose font off if the typeface is part of your brand. Turn on Shrink to fit if you would rather a long value shrink than overflow, and leave it off if every sale should look identical.
What each rule protects
Making it a range
Once the field is right, the same design becomes several products by changing what is fixed. Offer it in three metals as variants, or in two fonts as a choice, but pick one axis. A monogram with a font picker, a colour picker and four sizes is four times the support and rarely four times the sales.
Common questions
How do I stop someone entering a whole name?
Max length. Set it to the number of characters the layout was built for.
A shopper entered an emoji and the proof looks wrong.
Set Allowed characters to Letters only. It removes the whole class of problem rather than the one character.
Should I let them pick the font?
Only if you have tested every font at the maximum length. A font picker on a tight layout is where monograms overflow.
The initials look cramped on some orders.
Turn on Shrink to fit, or lower the max length. Fitting keeps the layout intact at the cost of a smaller monogram.
Can I offer two initials on one side and three on the other?
Yes, as two fields on two surfaces, each with its own max length.
Next
Read an engraved product, where these same rules get stricter, or what a personalization field is for the settings in full.