How do you display products with lots of options?

[ecommerce84]

Hello All,

I am in the process of setting up a new ecommerce website. I have ran a couple previously, one of which was quite successful but trade tailed off and I think i set it up poorly to begin with and it was hard to update and maintain.

I am looking for a bit of advice for how you all manage products that have more than one option available. On my new website I will be selling products that vary in length and as such get dearer as they increase in length.

As I will be selling a lot of products there could be a lot of webpages to browse through so I am trying to keep it as simple as possible.

I was thinking of having a certain product on one page (e.g. Gold Plated Scart Lead) and using dropdown boxes or Radio boxes that allow the user to choose the length. However, most of my competitors have a seperate page for each length. As there could be 10 lengths in a scart lead and maybe 10 different types of lead, this could lead to 100 pages just for scart leads.

If I was doing something that wouldn't affect the price (colour) for example, I would use a dropdown box.

My only main worry with having a page for each lead is that google with not like all the duplicate content. But I do feel it COULD be more obvious to navigate with a page for each product (although im not sure I personally like trudging through hundreds of products to find what I want).

Thanks in advance,
Craig.

 

[gemd89]

On my ecommerce solution there is a product page, then options for size and you can have the option to have a price increase for the different sizes, so when a different size is chosen it displays a different price

Gemma

 

[Mac Man]

Hi Craig

Me personally... I would have the single product and have options as drop downs or check boxes.

I would spend my time making sure my SEO was red-hot rather than adding dozens of, essentially, duplicate products to the site. And you're right, having 20 pages with the same product and just the price being different won't exactly put you at the top of Google.

Plus if you ever have to come and edit the copy at some point you may have to edit all 10/20 copies .

What package/system are you using BTW?

 

[ecommerce84]

Hi,

Gem - your site works well and you even have a couple of dropdowns on some products so it shows that it works well.

Mac - I was thinking of using Jshop as it was recommended to me on here many years ago. Although I haven't actually used it yet and it has no doubt changed since then, it seems to tick all the boxes and have all the options I need.

Also I agree about the duplicate pages. The copy will be the same with the price and length being the only exception.

To me this is the obvious route, but the fact that so many other companies have a page for each product got me wondering whether I was actually missing something.

 

[shadowlu]

Hello All,

I am in the process of setting up a new ecommerce website. I have ran a couple previously, one of which was quite successful but trade tailed off and I think i set it up poorly to begin with and it was hard to update and maintain.

I am looking for a bit of advice for how you all manage products that have more than one option available. On my new website I will be selling products that vary in length and as such get dearer as they increase in length.

As I will be selling a lot of products there could be a lot of webpages to browse through so I am trying to keep it as simple as possible.

I was thinking of having a certain product on one page (e.g. Gold Plated Scart Lead) and using dropdown boxes or Radio boxes that allow the user to choose the length. However, most of my competitors have a seperate page for each length. As there could be 10 lengths in a scart lead and maybe 10 different types of lead, this could lead to 100 pages just for scart leads.

If I was doing something that wouldn't affect the price (colour) for example, I would use a dropdown box.

My only main worry with having a page for each lead is that google with not like all the duplicate content. But I do feel it COULD be more obvious to navigate with a page for each product (although im not sure I personally like trudging through hundreds of products to find what I want).

Thanks in advance,
Craig.

Dear Sir,
The only thing you want is to set up a website to display your products?
Setting up a website is a complex thing.
I suggest you to set up the website through B2B portals. These portals has advanced and proven technique. If your taget market is China, you can choose some portals as Alibaba.com, if your products are sold all over the world you can consider about hisupplier.com. (PS: i am a employee of Hisupplier.com. You can have free site of your owner company and you can upload your goods information simply on the site.If any ) but it is just a suggestion.

have a nice day..

 

[shopintegrator]

Hi Craig,

As a shopper I would prefer the choice where you have a single page for the product with all the options relating to that product on the one page.

This gives you a number of possibilities on how to display this. There are two key ways our customers choose to do this using our Shop Integrator solution:

(i) The options are listed in drop down boxes and each option may be assigned a price modifier if you wanted to adjust the price. Say in your example, the Gold Plated scart connector costing more and the 2m length costing more than the base price.

However, sometimes this can be option overload, 1 product with 10 lengths x 10 connector types each modifying the price. So a combination of the two gives the customer a clearer view of your products. Here, our customers have used a product table that gives a distinct row for each product for one of the options (length in your example) with its own price and then each distinct length has a set of options for the connector type.
(ii) You have 10 products in the table, a 1m lead, a 2 m lead, etc. then each lead has a set of options for the connector.

If you haven't followed what I was on about above, here's an example from our demo page of both approaches. The demo page shows a the main product with one options list that has a price modifier and the tabluated Special Clearance offer part of the page shows the approach I described in (ii), however this could be specific to the product lengths in your example rather than the Special Clearance offer list in our demo page:
http://hifistoredemo.shopintegrator.com/yamaha_speakers.html

 

[Chris Fickling Design]

Take a look at Magento - I've built 4 sites with it so far and on my 5th. Configurable products and multiple-options features are just great. Also custom options per product that will allow ultimate flexibility. Satisfied clients all-round!

 

[MartCactus]

As others have said I would certainly go the route of having one page, with drop downs or other selectors to select options - its much easier for the purchaser to use. Most carts these days should enable price to change based on selection.

Within our software we have 2 ways of doing this... one is to have the options with a price modifier for each. Sometimes however that is too limited.

So its also possible to setup the product with its options and then get the software to setup every possibility as a separate item with its own unique SKU and price. That way the user can still select options by drop down, but each selection will lead to them purchasing a different SKU with its own unique price.

 

[yourmajesty]

Have you tried actinic just take 5 mins of your time I use it all the time to design websites and a great person lessharma hosts my sites for 20 pounds. All what you require is with actinic when you search features and benefits.

 

[jamesparker100]

However, most of my competitors have a seperate page for each length. As there could be 10 lengths in a scart lead and maybe 10 different types of lead, this could lead to 100 pages just for scart leads.

Well What i have understood from you is ! Your solution is use of effective technology via relevant controls. ! You can research on it and can consult with any website developer. I have working experience of development on Microsoft technologies ! In order to avoid multiple pages of a single product obviously avoid it ! You can use a kind of Repeater control which allows you a single template with multiple quantity on a single page !
Further more you need to do research on using controls in technologies !

Regards

 

[edmondscommerce]

if you need to track stock properly then you do need to create individual SKU products.

However that should not mean that you have to display all those individual SKUs to the customer as distinct products.

Magento is really good for this, as suggested earlier in the thread and is pretty quick to create one master product and then quickly duplicate it with the various options (eg different colours)