Creating variations for your product listings can be a daunting task but it doesn't have to be! Check out our video tutorial to help walk you through the process.
Features and Options are the broad category of attributes your products may have and the variations are the specific choices within a feature or option.
There are two ways to create variations in your product listings, Options & Features.
So how do you know if you should create variations using Features or Options?
Product Options
Options are used to provide variations of a product where each variation won't need their own sku or inventory count.
Examples of when to use product options would be for custom hats made to order with many color choices available for the customer to choose from. Since you keep all the color material in stock and don't keep finished products on hand then you don't need to assign any sku or keep track of inventory so creating an option with all your color variations would be a good choice.
Creating Options
First you have to create your Option and then once created you can update the details.
Once this option is created you can go to the settings wheel and edit the details of the option and its' variations.
Name: Your internal name for this option (will also be the option name the customers will see if you don't edit the Storefront Name).
Storefront Name: The name of the option your customers will see.
Type: You can set how your variations in this option set are displayed with a dropdown or with radio buttons.
Comment: You can add a comment for directions or an explanation for this Option on your product listing.
Product Features
Features are used to provide variations of a product where at least some of the variations will need their own price, sku or inventory count.
Some examples of when to use product features would be:
A product listing for hats you pre-make and keep inventory of, in different sizes and colors. Here you might want to have a sku labeled on each hat tag to be sure you pick the correct hat to match what was ordered and you might want to keep track of actual inventory so you won't sell out of stock. Maybe you even have different prices for each size hat. In this situation you would create a feature for Hat Size and a second feature for Hat Color. Then you can add specific sku's, inventory and pricing to the different color/size combinations.
You would then hit the Create Variations button.
Once these variations are created you can enter in the sku's for the size/color combinations and the pricing for the different sizes.
The difference in modifying the price on an Option vs a Feature
Both Options & features will allow you to assign different pricing to its' variations but the way they appear on the product listing page are different.
Options can have added price adjustments per variation and show up on the product page as an additional cost if that variation is chosen in the dropdown whereas pricing on variations of a product Feature changes the price of the product listing.
Features affecting price
When you have different prices assigned to variations of a feature, the variation shown in the dropdown will display the actual product price which will be changed if you choose this variation. If a customer chooses a different variation then the product price will be adjusted.
Options affecting price
Although you can't have separate sku's or inventory counts on the variations in your product options, you can have added costs to your Option variations. An example of this would be if you charge an extra fee for a few of your more expensive colors or if you set up an option for added engraving on a product. In the above example we created an Option called "Engraving" and we have variations of No Engraving or Add Engraving (+$5.00). In this case a customer would choose if they want the engraving and it would inform them that their price will be $14.99 since they are ordering the small size but there will be an additional $5.00 charge on the checkout page - which isn't being reflected on the product listing price which still shows $14.99.
Using the same Features or Options for multiple product listings
Features & variations that you create for a product listing will remain available for you to use for other listings so that you can share these features with different listings and won't have to create them for each one.
Let's say you make hats and scarves from the same wool material and color choices. In this case you can make an Option with the name "Wool Colors" (you can set the set the Storefront name to Color which is what the customers will see) and add the available wool colors as variants for the customers to choose from. In this case you would use this Option set for your wool hat listing as well as your wool scarf listing.
Another example would be if you offer three different sizes of several different silicone products in your store each with a different price. you would create a feature with the internal name "Silicone Sizes" and call it "Size" for the customer to see.
Once these variations are created you can apply this feature to every silicone product listing and add price adjustments to each listing.
Features Manager & Options Manager
You can change the order that features or options are presented on your product listing by dragging and dropping the features or options in their respective managers tabs on the left side of your dashboard.