Product variations

Enter the name of options using the Option name setting:

• Variation option names are displayed on your website as the label for the option the visitor must select from
• Variation option names should describe the type of option being created (e.g. Size or Colour)
• Use the add another option type option to add another option
• You can configure a maximum of 3 options per product
• You can use the compass icon to move an option into a new position

Enter the names of each of an option's values using the Available option values setting:

• Option values are displayed on your website as the option the visitor will select
• Option values should describe the option being selected (e.g. Small or Blue)
• Use the add another option to add another option (or enter a comma or hit your keyboard's return key)
• Option values cannot contain a comma
• You can configure a maximum of 13 option values for each option
• You can use the compass icon to move an option value into a new position

When you have finished configuring the values for an option, and finished configuring the available options you can move on to configure your variations.

To configure the variations for the product, select the click here to generate combinations and configure their attributes option and wait for the variations to be loaded into the table.

Variations can have one of two statuses:

• Not published which means the variation won't be displayed on your website
• Variations which aren't published are discarded when you exit the variations page
• Variation attributes (e.g. pricing, SKU codes, stock quantities) cannot be entered for unpublished variations
• Published which means the variation will be displayed on your website
• Variations which are published are saved when you exit the variations page
• You can set attributes for published variations

• To publish a variation, select the not published option and the variation's status will change to published
• Select bulk actions > publish all variations option to publish all variations

Variations can be unpublished (either individually or in bulk) using similar operations.

• Unpublished variations are temporary and will be discarded when you leave the variations page
• Any attributes entered for unpublished variations (e.g. SKU, price) will be discarded if you unpublish the variation

Attributes can be added to published variations in one of three ways:

• By selecting the edit option for the variation
• By selecting multiple variations (up to 100) and selecting the edit selected variations option
• By selecting bulk actions > bulk edit all variations

When using the edit option for an individual variation:

• A popup window will be displayed for you to enter the attributes for the specific variation
• Enter a value for the attributes you want to specify for the variation
• Select save changes once you have finished

When editing more than one variation, a bulk editor will be displayed for you to enter the attributes for each variation:

• Use the columns option at the top of the page to select the attributes you want to be able to specify
• Your selection will be remembered for your next use
• Each variation is displayed in its own row in the editor and each attribute in a separate column
• The bulk editor displays a maximum of 100 variations per page, use the next page and previous page options to navigate through the different pages
• Each time you move to a different page, the configured values for each variation will be automatically saved immediately published to your website

If you want to configure separate SKU codes and stock quantities for your variations, you can use the automatic SKU code generation feature to automatically generate SKU codes. SKU codes are generated for all variations (both published and unpublished).

1. Select bulk actions > automatic SKU code generation
2. Enter at least one character into the SKU starting characters setting
3. Select generate SKU codes

Automatic SKU codes are generated from the starting character setting and the option values for each variation combination, separated with /.

For example, for a variation with values of Small and Blue and the starting characters as 123/ the SKU code generated will be 123/Small/Blue.

Once generated, automatic SKU codes can only be removed by editing the variation.

You can assign an image to each variation by selecting from the parent product's images.

When a website visitor selects a variation on the product page, the main product image will automatically update to show the image you've assigned to that variation.

If a visitor lands on the product page via a variation-specific URL, the page will also load with the variation’s image shown by default.

ShopWired automatically generates a unique URL for each product variation. When a visitor lands on your website via one of these URLs, the corresponding variation options are pre-selected, and any variation-specific attributes such as stock status, image, or price will be shown instead of those for the main product.

Variation URLs are created by appending the variation options and their values to the product URL, using this format:

/product-url?variation=option:value,option:value

For example:

https://www.yourdomain.com/t-shirt?variation=size:medium,colour:black

These variation URLs are also included automatically in the product data sent to Google Merchant Center when using ShopWired’s Google Shopping app - read more here.

On your website, variation options are shown as dropdown menus by default.

All ShopWired themes also include the option to display variation choices as buttons instead. You can enable this using the theme editor:

• In Version 5 themes, use the live preview to open a product page. In the page settings, select the variant buttons option
• In Version 4 themes, go to the product page settings and select the variant buttons option