Using PowerStore 3 Product Options
PowerStore 3 comes with additional product options that were not available with previous versions. These options are provided to add flexibility to your online store, and provide alternative options that can be used if the more advanced options are not necessary.
This tutorial explains the three different types of options, and when to use them.
The three different types of product options provided in PowerStore 3 are; Advanced Options, Simple Opti0ns, and Conditional Options. Each options is provided for specific use, which is discussed here.
Advanced Options are the most common and probably the type of options you will use for most of the products in your store. When using Advanced Options, each variation of a product is stored in your database as a separate product. This allows you to track inventory on specific variations of a product, and have unique pricing, SKU, and other product details. However, large product catalogs with many Advanced Options will become sluggish when loading the product pages due to the high number of database entries.
Pros: Each Advanced Option can have its own inventory, price, SKU, and other product details.
Con: Too many Advanced Options will cause your pages to load too slowly.
When should I use Advanced Options?
Advanced Options should be used for typical product options that you need to track inventory on, or want to have different pricing based on which options are selected. If your products come in different sizes, colors, etc. you will likely want to track inventory on those, and should therefore use Advanced Options.
As an alternative to Advanced Options, Simple Options allows you to provide different options for your products without affecting the loading speed of your product pages. Simple Options do not create new entries into the database, and therefore cannot have unique inventory, price, SKU or any other product detail. Simple Options retain all the product option information of the product they are associated with.
Pros: Pages will not take a long time to load many Simple Options.
Con: Cannot track inventory or have unique product details for any Simple Options.
When should I use Advanced Options?
Simple Options should be used at any time if you do not require tracking of inventory or changing of product details for that product's options. Also, if you have a large product catalog with a significant number of product options, you should attempt to use Simple Options whenever necessary.
Conditional Options are applied to a specific selection of an Advanced Option. This allows you to provide additional options based on a variation of the product your customer selects. Like Simple Options, Conditional Options cannot have their own inventory, or unique product details. A unique feature regarding Conditional Options is that you can have the option display as a text field, allowing your customer to type a custom message.
Pros: Allows for options to display only when a specific Advanced Option combination is selected. Can be displayed as a text field for custom messaging.
Con: Cannot track inventory or have unique product details.
Now that you understand the different product options, you can start adding them to your products.
For instructions on how to add products and product options to your PowerStore, see the following tutorial.
How to Add Products to PowerStore
If you did not find this helpful or you are stuck on a particular step, click here to let us know what we can do to improve this tutorial.
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