Working with Products
Working with Product Options
Until now we have only briefly touched on Product Options earlier in this chapter. This is one of the most exciting and powerful features of RealCart. You can define unlimited product options and use the options you define for multiple products. With product options you can do many things such as offer products that:
- come in different colors
- have different sizes
- are available in both different colors and sizes
- can be ordered in various fragrances
- are made in vinyl, cloth, leather or other material
- come with or without various accessories
- can be downloaded or ordered on removable media
- can be shipped standard, express or overnight
There are literally hundreds of uses for product options. Let your imagination be your guide. This section will explain in detail how to use product options properly.
Setting up a product option
Before you define any product options make a list of all the options that you will be using in your store. If the order in which these options appear in your product page is important to you then you should define the options in the order you want them to appear in your product pages. In other words. If you want size to appear before color in your product pages then you need to define size first. Then define your color choices.
There are two other things you need to decide before you begin.
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What will be the name of the product option? Typically this should be a ONE WORD label. For example: If you sell t-shirts and you want to offer them in different sizes you would probably label the product choice as “Size”. If you were going to offer a book in several different languages you would probably call your option “Language”. This product option would appear like this:
Try to avoid repitition by labeling your product choice: “Shirt Size” or “Shirt Color” when it is obvious to the web customer already that they are looking at shirts.
If you sell computers and you have made a “create your own” computer system product page you would probably have several one word choices called: “Monitor”, “keyboard”, “mouse”, “hard drive” and “OS”.
It may not always be possible to have a one word option label but you can always define an option label that has only two words. It is also important for your choices to be as few words as possible. A proper set of product options for a computer store would look like this:
Right way
Try to avoid
In computer stores for example it is easy to get carried away and put too much info in the product choices. Try to avoid including all of the descriptionary information into the actual product choice itself. Here is an example of a set of product choices that is just out of control content wise:
Wrong way
The problem with having this much stuff crammed into the product choice menu becomes obvious when you try to use PayPal or one of the secure order providers to process your order. Many of them have a limit on how many characters long your order details can be. Authorize.Net for example has a 255 character limit. If your order string is above their 255 character limit it will not completely appear on the customer receipt.
Instead of including all of the brand name and model information in the choice itself, list these things in groups within the actual product description. There is no limit to what you can include in the product description and you could even include links in the description to other product pages.
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What will the choices be within your option?
Back to our t-shirt example your choices in the “Size” option might include: “Small”, “Medium”, “Large”, “X-Large”, “XX-Large” and “XXX-Large”.
This product choice would look like this in your on-line store:
Try to avoid
Try to avoid defining a product option that has only one choice. For example; If all of your t-shirts are white then there is absolutely no need to define a choice. A choice of one is not a choice, it’s a description. If your t-shirts only come in “White” then your product choice would appear this way in your on-line store:
Wrong way
A product choice like this just slows down your customer. He will be forced to select this color and it makes much more sense to just include the fact that the t-shirt is white in the description of your t-shirt. Only define a product option when there are at least two choices.
Right way
Illegal Characters
Due to the fact that RealCart utilizes product choices in JavaScript pull-down menus, you are not allowed to use certain characters which will “confuse” the code. The characters include: \ ; " < > and #. If you have choices that are in inches do not attempt to define the individual choices with the inch marks included. Note below the Wrong Way shows the inch marks in the pull-down menu. The right way just has the actual inch values themselves without the inches. Specify inches in the Choice Label, not the choice values themselves.
Wrong way
Due to the way RealCart displays options this will not work. Instead define inch choices like this:
Right way
Ready to create your first product choice in RealCart?
For examples we have included the following:
Assigning a product option
Once you have defined some product options to choose from you can assign them to your products on the Options tab. Simply check the checkbox next to one or more product options to use them with your product.
After selecting the options to display for your product click OK (or Next > if in the process of adding a product.) Keep in mind that you can define an unlimited number of product options for sizes, colors, fragrances or any other choice. Each product option can be used for one or many products.
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