Product Options page allows you to add product options to a basic product description. Using options is advisable if several versions (options) of a single product have nearly identical appearance. You don't have to create new product catalog items in such cases, as it's sufficient to specify the necessary options in the Product Options section.
Avactis provides powerful tools for creating and managing product options. We recommend studying available documentation carefully before you use Product Options.
Consider several examples of product options.
Example 1. You sell t-shirts of assorted sizes (S, M, L, XL), which all look the same. It doesn't make sense to create a new product for every single size. All you have to do is enter a description of the general item in Product Details, add the Size option in Product Options, and define parameters S, M, L, and XL for the Size option.
Example 2. You sell T-shirts of three colors: Blue, Red and Green, with several sizes available: S, M, L and XL. Prices differ depending on specific color and size, as shown in the table below. For example, if the basic price for a T-shirt is $50, then a red L-sized shirt will cost $70 since the Red option and the L size increase the total price by $7 and $13, respectively. Thus, the final price is $70 = ($50 + $7 + $13).
Option
Value
Price
Color
Blue
Red
Green
+ $5
+ $7
+ $9
Size
S
M
L
XL
+ $8
+ $12
+ $13
+ $15
In this particular case we have two options, Color and Size, with several values for Color (Blue, Red, Green) and Size (S, M, L, XL). Applying one or more of these values affects the basic product price to produce the final price for a combination of options.
After product options have been created, customers are able to choose specific options when viewing a product in the storefront. Speaking of example 2, that can be implemented as shown in the figure below.
Add Product Options
By default, no options are assigned to a product. Use the Add Option button to add product options. A new window opens where you can add a product option. Depending on specific needs of your online store, Avactis Shopping cart allows adding various options. The number of options is unlimited. See detailed description of available options on the Add/Edit Product Option page in Page Help. Additional useful information about using Avactis product options is available on the Tips and Tricks page of Product Options.
Delete/Edit Product Options
After you've added a product option, its description is displayed on the Product Options page as shown in the following figure. Click Delete to remove or Edit to modify a product option. Clicking Edit opens a new window where you can change option parameters.
Sort Product Options
The Sort button lets you change the order of options in the storefront. Note that customers see options sorted in the storefront exactly the same way as they appear on the Product Options page in Admin Area.
Manage Product Option Combinations
The Product Options page lets you create product options. For example, as shown before, T-shirts can have two options, Color (Blue, Red, or Green) and Size (S, M, L, or XL). Several combinations can be made from these options, specifically:
Color: Blue
Size: S
Color: Red
Size: S
Color: Green
Size: S
Color: Blue
Size: M
and so on. It's perfectly possible for certain option combinations to represent nonexistent objects. For instance, Blue XL T-shirts may be not available. Providing for that kind of cases, you can disable nonexistent option combinations in the Product Option Combinations section.
The Product Option Combinations section helps create various rules for product option combinations. Click the Manage Combinations button to start managing combinations. A new window, Product Option Combinations, displays where you can edit combinations using multiple rules.
See detailed instructions on combination management on the Product Option Combinations page and in the Product Options Tips and Tricks section of Page Help.
Important! Combination rules created in the Product Option Combinations section specify the list of various product options which users are able to select. These rules affect the list of products available for selection in the Product Options Inventory Tracking section. For example, if you have set an option combination that rules out T-shirts with color Blue and size XL, this combination becomes unavailable in the Product Options Inventory Tracking section. In addition, users are denied the possibility of choosing this combination.
Manage Product Options Inventory Tracking
In the example above, T-shirt options Color and Size make up T-shirt combinations that are actually available in stock in certain quantity and are assigned certain numbers (SKU). The product options inventory tracking section lets you manage the stock of product having defined options.
Click Manage Inventory to start managing product options inventory. A new page, Product Options Inventory Tracking, displays where you can edit the inventory.
Detailed overview of the product options inventory tracking management feature can be found on the Product Options Inventory Tracking page in Page Help.
Important! If you have disabled certain option combinations in Product Option Combinations, they will not show up in the Product Options Inventory Tracking section.
Product Options Settings
The Product Options page contains several settings which are described below.
Do you want to allow adding products to cart without selected options?
This setting determines what happens in the storefront when a customer tries to add a product which has options to the cart. If the customer adds a product from a page which has no options available for selection, then, provided this setting's value is 'Yes', the product will be added with the default set of options. If the setting's value is 'No', the customer will be redirected to a page with product information in order to select a set of options. If that page does not have any options available for selection, the product will be impossible to add to cart. Example: On the products list page, products are displayed with no option selection available. When you click Add to Cart, this setting is checked, and it if it is set to 'Yes', the product will be added with the default set of options. Otherwise, you are redirected to the product information page.
Add product to cart ignoring the combinations specified in Product Options Inventory Tracking?
If Yes is selected, customer can add to cart products having option combinations not defined in the Product Options Inventory Tracking section. Option combinations are only restricted by rules specified in the Product Option Combinations section.
If No is selected, customers can only fill their carts with products having the option combinations defined in the Product Options Inventory Tracking section.
Nonselected options message
It is possible that, during the operation of the storefront, a product with defined options is passed to cart without any options selected. If the setting "Do you want to allow adding products to cart without selected options?" is switched to NO, a message specified in the following field is displayed.
Text of message displayed when a product option combination is not defined in Product Option Combinations
This message is displayed if a user attempts to order a combination of options which is not allowed according to the rules specified in the Product Option Combinations section.
Default Message: Product option combination does not exist.
Text of the message displayed when a product option combination is either not defined in Product Option Inventory Tracking or not available in stock
The Product Options Inventory Tracking section contains product option combinations available in stock. If a customer attempts to order a combination that doesn't exist or is out of stock, the message specified in this field is displayed.
Default Message: Product option combination doesn't exist or is out of stock.
Product Option Tips and Tricks
Question 1. I sell shirts. Every shirt is assigned a basic price of $50. The final cost of a shirt is determined by its color and size according to the following table.
Option
Value
Price
Color
Blue Red Green
+ $5 + $7 + $9
Size
S M L XL
+ $8 + $12 + $13 + $15
I'd like customers to choose color in a drop-down menu and choose size with radio buttons as shown in the figure. Also I'd like to be able to keep records of shirts available in stock. How do I do that?
Answer 1. Click Add Option to add Color. Set Option Type to Single Select, since a single shirt can have only one color (Blue, Red or Green). If you wish to provide a drop-down menu to choose color, set Option Display Type to Drop-Down. Since this option affects inventory tracking, choose Inventory Tracking=YES.
Set Option may be left unselected to No, since the Color of a shirt should always be required. Click Add in the Add New Value section to display fields for entering Color parameters. Enter Blue in the Name field and +5 in the Price field, since Blue color increases final cost by $5. Set the remaining field to 0, since shirt color doesn't modify other item values specified in Product Details. Enter Red and Green parameters in the same way. The resulting page is shown in the following figure.
Specify Size option similarly.
Since products are accounted for in stock, go to the Product Options Inventory Tracking section and enter SKU and quantity of items in stock for every combination. The resulting Product Options Inventory Tracking page is shown in the following figure.
Question 2. As in Question 1, I have the same shirts and I want to keep records of them in stock. However, my vendor does not ship Green XL shirts. How do I make it so that customers are not given the option to choose this combination of color and size during checkout? Answer 1: To disable a certain combination, go to Product Option Combinations section and specify that Color (Green) does not exist with Size (XL).
After this rule is created it appears in the Product Option Combinations section as shown below.
Add and Edit Product Option
On the Add/Edit Product Option page you can add new and edit current options. Any option may have an unlimited number of values.
Option Name
The name of the option. For example, for shirts this can be Color or Size.
Option Text in Storefront
The message appearing in the storefront, For example, for the Size option you can have the storefront text say "Please choose shirt size."
Option Type
Option type lets you define the way in which customers will be able to choose options in the storefront.
Single Select
This type lets customers choose only one option value. For example, if you have the Size option with values S, M, L, and XL, then Single Select will allow to select only one shirt size from those four.
Multiple Select
This option type lets customers choose multiple values for an option. For example, you have a Front Text shirt option with parameters "Hello!" and "How are you?". If Option Type is selected as Multiple Select, then a customer will be able to select either one of these labels to be placed on the shirt or both of them together.
Custom Input
This option type lets customers enter their own text value for the option. For example, if Custom Input is chosen for the Front Text option, customers can enter their personal custom words to be put on the front of the shirt.
Option Display Type
Depending on the Option Type selected, the option can be displayed in different ways in the storefront. For instance, if Option Type is set to Single Select, the option may be represented as a drop-down list or its values may appear as a group of radio buttons. The following lists the possible options display types for the storefront.
Drop-Down
The list of option values displays in a drop-down list.
Radio Group
The list of option values displays as a group of radio buttons.
Multiple Select
The list of option values displays as a multiple selection listbox.
Checkbox Group
The list of option values displays as a group of checkboxes.
Checkbox + Simple Input
The option value displays as shown on the figure below. The checkbox text is specified by the Checkbox text input field.
Checkbox + Text Area
The option value displays as shown on the figure below. The checkbox text is specified by the Checkbox text input field.
Simple Input
The option value displays as shown on the figure below.
Text Area
The option value displays as shown on the figure below.
Checkbox Text
The text for Option Display Type set to 'Checkbox + Simple Input" or 'Checkbox + Text Area'.
This text is displayed next to the checkbox as shown on the figure below.
Option may be unselected
If the value is YES, this option is allowed to remain unselected in the storefront. At the same time, this option in the storefront displays the text specified in the field "Text displayed when an option may be unselected."
If the value is NO, this option must be selected at all times.
Example: You sell T-shirts and you have three T-shirt options: Color, Size and Front Text. Front Text is the text that your customers want to put on the front of the T-shirt. Suppose that you offer two such messages: Hello! and How are YOU? However, a person may want to buy your T-shirt with no message at all. In this case you should select Option may be unselected = YES thus permitting customers to select no messages to be put on their T-shirt. For this example, you can simply put "- -" in the field Text displayed when an option may be unselected.
Inventory Tracking
Inventory Tracking lets you define whether a certain option affects the inventory accounting. For example, you sell T-shirts of different color and sizes, and also offer to manually put messages on the front of those T-shirts. Thus, you have three product options: Color, Size and Front Text. Since the Color and Size options produce a unique combination of T-shirt which is stored in your stock, these options must have Inventory Tracking = YES. On the other hand, the Front Text option does not affect the inventory, so it should have Inventory Tracking = NO.
Add/Edit Option Values
The Add/Edit Option Values sections let you enter and edit options values. Suppose you've created a Size option. In the Edit Option Values section you enter the values for this option and specify how each value affects the product's price, weight, per item shipping cost and/or per item handling cost.
When entering the value of change in price/weight/per item shipping cost/per item handling cost, please remember that this value increases or decreases the basic price/weight/per item shipping cost/per item handling cost of the product.
For instance the Sale Price (per item) for a T-shirt equals $50. The S value for the Size option contains the price modifier of 8. This means that an S-size T-shirt of costs $58 ($50+$8). If the modifier is meant to decrease the price by $8, you should enter the value of -8.
The following figure illustrates adding a Size option.
To select the default option value which will appear in the storefront by default, select the Is default? checkbox.
Click the Update button to update and save the current option values.
Click the Add button to add new option values.
Click the Delete button to delete option values.
Click the Return button to return to the Options page.
Product Options Combinations
Product Options page lets you create option values. For example, T-shirts can have a Color option (Blue, Red, or Green) and a Size option (S, M, L, or XL). These option values make for the following combinations:
Color: Blue
Size: S
Color: Red
Size: S
Color: Green
Size: S
Color: Blue
Size: M
and so on. It's perfectly possible for certain option combinations to represent nonexistent objects. For instance, Green XL T-shirts may be not available. Providing for that kind of cases, you can disable nonexistent option combinations in the Product Option Combinations section.
If you have no restrictions on option combinations (i.e. all option combinations are allowed), you can leave this section empty. Important! Combination rules created in the Product Option Combinations section specify the list of various product options which users are able to select. These rules affect the list of products available for selection in the Product Options Inventory Tracking section. For example, if you have set an option combination that rules out T-shirts with color Blue and size XL, this combination becomes unavailable in the Product Options Inventory Tracking section. In addition, users are denied the possibility of choosing this combination.
The Product Options Combinations page has two parts: Current Combination Rules and New Combination Rule.
The Current Combination Rule section displays all combination rules which are valid for the current product's options.
In the New Rule section, you can allow or disallow option combinations by using the following rules: The [..,..,..] option combination DOES NOT exist. Other combinations do exist.
[..,..,..] options are unavailable in combination with [..,..,..] options. Other combinations exist and are available.
You may select multiple rules.
After you select the appropriate rules, you get the set of option combinations which will be available for customers in the storefront. If an option combination is not available, the customer will be prompted with an appropriate message, which is defined in the Product Options page of the Settings section.
To verify that option combinations have been defined correctly, use the Check button. Clicking the button opens the list of available and unavailable option combinations for the product:
The list of option combinations AVAILABLE to be ordered by customers. The list of option combinations UNAVAILABLE to be ordered by customers.
Use these lists to check that the rules you created are working correctly.
Product Options Inventory Tracking
The Product Options Inventory Tracking page lets you enter the Stock Keeping Numbers (SKU) and the number of products in stock for existing product option combinations.
You can generate existing product option combinations for inventory tracking either manually or automatically.
To manually enter SKUs and the stock number of items for a certain combination, you should define an option combination in the New Entry section, enter the SKU and the stock number of items for the selected combination, and then click Add. The selected combination is then added to the product options inventory tracking list.
To automatically create all possible option combinations for inventory tracking click the (Re-)Build button. All possible combinations will be automatically created for inventory tracking.
It must be noted that the system does not allow you to perform inventory tracking for those option combinations which involve an option with Inventory Tracking = NO. If a particular product option needs to affect inventory tracking, you should set its Inventory Tracking parameter to YES in the Manage Product Options section.
To delete an option combination, click the Delete button.
To update the changes you've made click the Update button.
To return to the Product Options page, click Return.
