User Manual/Administration Interface/Special products

Selections
If you have several variations of a single product that differ by the unique code and in the values of the associated attributes and you want to show them only once in the product lists, then you should use a product of type "Selection". It's an alternative to adding all attributes to one product which can only have one code/SKU and store the selected attributes in the order.

First, you have to create the product variants. Each variant is an own product of type "Article", that only consists of an unique code and a label. Furthermore, you have to associate the attributes to the variant product that identifies the article uniquely. For example, the characteristics of jeans are their color, width and length. You need to create attributes of that three types:




 * color
 * black
 * blue
 * length
 * 30
 * 32
 * 34
 * width
 * 28
 * 30
 * 32
 * 32

In the next step, create a jeans article for each possible combination you are selling, e.g.


 * jeans 1 (color: black, length: 32, width: 28)
 * jeans 2 (color: black, length: 32, width: 30)
 * jeans n (color: black, length: 34, width: 32)
 * jeans m (color: blue, length: 32, width: 28)
 * jeans z (color: blue, length: 34, width: 32)
 * jeans z (color: blue, length: 34, width: 32)
 * jeans z (color: blue, length: 34, width: 32)

To each jeans article, you have to associate the combination of attributes that uniquely identifies the jeans. The list type of the associated attributes have to be "Variant". You can change this type by double-clicking on the list entry.





Afterwards, you create a selection product. This product is the parent product for all jeans articles that only differ in the color, length and width. Add some descriptive texts (name, short and long description), a price or several for block pricing and some nice pictures. If your jeans articles don't have the same price because the bigger ones are more expensive, then you can add an own price to these articles that will overwrite the price of the selection product.





When creating the selection product, you also have to associate the products that should be part of the selection. This can be done in the "Product" tab of the product detail view and the associated products must have a list type of "Default" in this case.

Also, the selection product must have its own texts and pictures and its price should be those of the cheapest product. Associating the price is necessary to speed up searching and displaying selection products in list views.



Discount/coupon products
Arcavias can offer discounts of various types when the consumer enters a coupon code if the coupon extension is installed.

A coupon product can be either a real product or a special discount product that is created only for this purpose. In case the product is only used for giving a discount it shouldn't be associated to a category. This ensures, that the product is not added to the catalog index and therefore not listed in any search results.

<< Previous: View product details | Next: Manage categories >>