Creating products with options

Products with buyer-selectable options

First, bear in mind the buyer's name and email address (and shipping address if you enable Shipping) will be collected automatically during checkout, so you shouldn't need to request those details with your Cart buttons. You can create products with dropdown menus for buyer-selectable options like size, color etc., and you can also provide text-input fields for buyers to enter details required for the product (e.g., T-shirt slogan, software license code, etc.).

We have two ways of going about this—Variations Describing Item Options for basic needs, and Variants affecting item SKU/price/weight/stock for more complex needs—which can even be combined and used together for even greater flexibility.

Variations Describing Item Options

This is the simplest method of setting up Options for the buyer to specify, but it cannot be used to alter the product's price, shipping weight, or inventory stock (if you need that, please see Variants below). Here's how to set up Variations when adding/editing a product:

1. Tick the box to Show advanced settings at the top;
2. Scroll down and tick the box for Variations describing item options;
3. This will reveal fields where you can provide an Option Name for up to 3 categories (e.g., Color, Size, Style, etc., each up to 60 characters long);
4. Below that, do one of the following for each Option category that you named:
   • Provide a list of Option Values (e.g., colors, sizes, etc.) that the buyer can select from a dropdown menu (one value per line);
     ...OR...
   • Leave the list blank if you want the buyer to type something into a text field for that option.
   If you need a combination of menu-based and text-field options, define the menu-based option(s) first and the text-field option(s) last. If you will have multiple text fields, define these in order from most likely to least likely to be filled (i.e., fields likely to be left blank should come last). Option Values can each be up to 64 characters long max.
5. Click Submit to apply changes;
6. Copy the Add to Cart button code provided;
7. Paste the button code into your page's HTML source, wherever you want it to appear among your own text, images and layout.

The button code we provide will automatically include the proper menus/text fields according to what you set up for your Variations option names/values. The button code changes whenever you change those settings, in which case you would want to recopy-paste fresh button codes into your page that would include those changes.

Pro-tip: You can also just change the Variations menu/field code in your page's HTML source manually; the option name/value settings for Variations are only used to auto-generate the proper menu/field tags in the button code we provide, but the code in your page doesn't actually need to match what's in the product's settings (note this flexibility does NOT apply to Variants, as described below).

Variants affecting item SKU/price/weight/stock

This is a bit more complex to set up than Variations described above, but it allows you to define a different unit price, shipping weight, inventory stock and SKU (stock-keeping unit, aka product sub-ID) for every possible combination of Option Values. (If you just want to let buyers name their own price, use our editable price feature.) Here's how you set up Variants when adding/editing a product:

1. Tick the box to Show advanced settings at the top of the screen;
2. Scroll down and tick the box for Variants affecting item SKU/price/weight/stock;
3. This will reveal fields where you can specify an Option Name for up to 3 categories (e.g., Color, Size, Style, etc., each up to 60 characters long);
4. Below that, provide lines defining every possible combination of buyer-selectable Values for those Options, with each line giving settings in the order shown:
   SKU,Price,Weight,Stock,Option1Value,Option2Value,Option3Value
   • SKU is just an item sub-ID for each specific combination of Option Values; the SKU can be any string of letters, numbers, dashes-or_underscores (do not use any spaces or other symbols here) and must be unique for each line.
   • Prices must be specified as just the amount alone, without any $ sign or other currency symbols (you'd select the pricing Currency in the Product Details section near the top of the screen).
   • Option Values can each be up to 60 characters long.
   • If you're not using a given setting, you can just leave its position empty on every line, but keep the comma that separates each position from the next.
   For example, suppose you have a product that comes in 2 sizes, 2 colors, and 2 styles, each with a different price and inventory stock, but you're not using weight-based shipping calculation, then your Variants configuration lines for that might look like this example:

   SRP,10.00,,23,Small,Red,Plain
   SRF,11.00,,12,Small,Red,Fancy
   SBP,10.00,,21,Small,Blue,Plain
   SBF,11.00,,11,Small,Blue,Fancy
   LRP,15.00,,9,Large,Red,Plain
   LRF,17.00,,5,Large,Red,Fancy
   LBP,15.00,,7,Large,Blue,Plain
   LBF,17.00,,6,Large,Blue,Fancy

5. Click Submit to apply changes;
6. Copy the Add to Cart button code provided;
7. Paste the button code into your page's HTML source, wherever you want it to appear among your own text, images and layout.

All of the values you provided in the Option1Value position for every line will appear in the first dropdown menu provided in your button code, all Option2Values given will appear in the second menu we provide, and all Option3Values in the third menu.

If you change these Option Values in your Variants configuration lines, you must recopy fresh button codes to paste into your page for that product, as the option values listed in your page's Add to Cart dropdown menus must match up to the values for those options in your Variants configuration.

If a buyer selects any combination of Option Values that don't match up to a corresponding line in your Variants configuration, when they click Add to Cart they would see the error, "This product combination does not exist."

NOTE: If your product has some Options that affect the product's price/weight/stock and other Options that don't, you would probably want to use Variations to set up those that don't, and only use Variants for those that do, which will keep your product settings simpler and easier to maintain (see below for more details).

Combining Variations with Variants

By setting up both Variations and Variants, this gives you a potential of up to 6 different Option categories: up to 3 Options for Variations, plus up to 3 Options for Variants. This would also give you the ability to combine the advantages of Variants (which can only show menus), together with a text-entry option using Variations (e.g., to sell a T-shirt with varying prices according to size/style/etc. but also let buyers enter a custom slogan to print on their shirt).

If your product has some Options that affect the product's price/weight/stock and other Options that don't, then you would want to set up those that don't by using Variations, and only use Variants for those that do, which will keep your product settings simpler and easier to maintain (vs. using Variants for all Options whether or not they affect the price/etc.).