Introduction

Configurable products are a way to combine product variants into a single product info page on the website. The variants themselves are actually simple products and have their own SKUs and stock management.

Configurable Products let your customers select the variant they desire by choosing options. For example, you sell a t-shirt in two colors and three sizes. You will need to create six variants as six individual products (with their own SKUs) and then add these six products to a configurable product from which customers can choose a specific size and color, then add it to the cart. If desired you could also have customers search for “red medium t-shirt” and land on the specific page for this variant.

Note: a configurable product is the main view of the product; it is composed of a number of simple products with different colors or sizes. Your customers cannot order it; hence the SKU must be different.

In order to add a new configurable product to your store, kindly follow the below steps:

• From your admin panel go to “Catalog” > “Products” > “Manage Products”.
• Click on “Add Product” button.
• From “Product Type” drop down list select “Configurable Product”, and keep the “Attribute set” to “Default”.
• Then click on “Continue” button.

OB 3.7.1

• The attribute options will appear, in this case “Color” and “Aramex Supplier”, choose one or two by clicking on the check boxes. In this article we will create a configurable product based on the “Color” attribute.

OB 3.7.2

You will be redirected to the “New Product” creation page to fill in the following tabs:

General

• “Name”: The product name that will appear on the front-end of your store.
• “Description”: Text that includes the specifications of the product which will appear on the product page.
• “Short Description”: The description that appears at the top of the product page.
• “SKU”: is the (Stock Keeping Unit): this number is a unique identifier for this product, across all stores and websites. For Example, 1001-IC PS. Starting SKUs with (0) for example (0111a) will cause issues, so it’s highly recommended not to start the SKUs numbers with 0.
• “Set Product as New from Date” and “Set Product as New to Date”: are used to set the product as a new product with a label for a specific period of time, and the product will be displayed on the New products slider on the homepage of your store.
• “Status”: Set it to “Enabled”.
• “Visibility”: Choose how you want the product to be displayed, in the catalog pages and/or search results. It is recommended to set it to “Catalog,Search”.
• “Country of Manufacture”: You can use this attribute to specify the country of manufacturer.
• “In stock?”: Set to “In Stock”
• “Rating”: Select the rate that you want to display for the product.
• “Featured product”: Set it to Yes if you want the product to be displayed on the featured products slider on the homepage of your store.
• “Aramex Supplier”: Is a function used to connect your store’s suppliers to aramex-registered suppliers.

OB 3.7.3

Prices

Enter the price, and a special price for this product (if it’s on sale). Kindly check the below fields:

• “Price”: Where the product price can be entered.
• “Group Price”: Is where you can add a special price for a specific customer group.
• “Special Price”: is where you can enter a special/discounted price for the product.
• “Special price from/to Date”: is where a period is specified for the special/discounted price. Setting the dates will allow the product to be displayed on the On Sale products slider on the homepage of your store.
• “Tier Price”: Tier pricing allows you to offer a quantity discount from the catalog list and product details pages. The discount can be applied to a specific store view or customer group.
• “Tax Class”: Set it to “None”.

OB 3.7.4

Meta Information

Meta information can help you with SEO- search engine optimization-.Here you can add all of the following information for this product: Page Title, meta keywords and meta description. Meta keywords and description will show in the tags of the product’s html source. Page title, which is the title of the product page that appears on the browser tab:

• “Meta Title”: where the Meta title of the store is specified.
• “Meta Keywords”: Are a group of keywords used for optimizing SEO which describe the type of products your store is selling.
• “Meta Description”: where the description of the store is entered to help optimize the store’s SEO.

OB 3.7.5

Images

The Images tab is used to upload and manage individual images for the current product. You can upload multiple images for each product. In order to add a new image, kindly follow the below steps:

• Click on “Browse Files” button to pick an image from your computer, then click on “Upload Files” to upload the image you picked, on your store.
• Make sure to select the: “Base Image”, “Small Image” and “Thumbnail” radio buttons to the uploaded image. This allows the image to be uploaded in different sizes on the store based on its location
• *Images types:
• “Base image”: It is the main image on the product details page.
• “Small Image”: It is used for the product images in listings on
• category and search results pages.
• “Thumbnail”: Thumbnail images appear on the thumbnail gallery, shopping cart, and on some blocks such as Related Items.

OB 3.7.6

Inventory

• “Manage Stock”: Set it to “Yes”
• “Enable Qty Increments”: It will display the number of products left in stock.
• “Stock Availability”: Set it to “In Stock”.  If you set it to “Out of Stock”, your customers will not be able to add the item to the cart

OB 3.7.7

Website

Check the box next to “Main Website”.

OB 3.7.8

Categories

Select which category or subcategory, you want the product to be displayed in, by checking the box next to the category name (you can select more than one category and subcategory).

OB 3.7.9

Related Products

Those products will show up on the same product information page that the customer is looking at, but on the right side. Customers can purchase those products in addition to the item they are viewing. For example, when a customer is viewing a laptop that he/she wants to purchase, he/she can check additional products that he/she may be interested in, such as a computer’s mouse or extra CD-room.

Up-sells

Products which have the same nature, but have few differences between them. Customers can choose from them instead of the product that they are viewing. The differences can be in the quality or the popularity etc. They are all shown on the same page.

Cross-sells

Products that get displayed after a product has been added to the shopping cart. In this design package, three products are randomly picked from the products that are marked as cross-sells of all the products in the shopping cart.

Custom Options

An easy way to offer a selection of product variations that do not rely

on attributes. The limitations are that you cannot track inventory based on any variation.

In order to add a new custom option, kindly follow the below steps:

• Click on “Add New Option” button.
• “Title”: Enter a title that will be used as a label for this option.
• “Input Type”: Select the Input Type for this field, such as text or dropdown list.
• “Is Required”: set it to “Yes”.

OB 3.7.10

Associated Products

Since we have Shoes with different colors; we will need to link all the colors within one product with different SKUs.

• Click on “Reset Filter” button.
• Select the simple products that you want to associate with the configurable product, by checking the boxes next to each.
• If you haven’t created the simple products using the color attribute, kindly click on the “Create Empty” button, which will allow you to create a simple Product in a pop-up window that will automatically be associated to this configurable Product
• “Attribute Name”: This is the text that will be displayed on the front-end for this product. In the example, “Color” is the desired text to be displayed on the front-end.
• You will find all products that have the color attribute on your store (because we chose the color attribute when we first created this configurable product).

OB 3.7.11

Once you finish filling all the mentioned tabs above click on “Save” button.

Outcome

At the end of this article you should be able to create a configurable product.

Things to remember

• A Configurable Product is essentially a collection of Simple products which are presented as options in drop-down lists.
• The drop-down list values are based on Attributes that must be set up in advance with required settings. The attribute Scope must be set to Global, and Use to Create Configurable Product must be True. The drop-down Attributes must be included in an Attribute Set, which is then used as a template for the Configurable Product.
• The Simple products associated with a Configurable Product cannot include Custom Variants or Options, and must be based on the same Attribute Set that is used to create the Configurable product.
• The associated products can be generated automatically from inside the Configurable product record.