Volusion Help - Weights and Variations II

Continued from Volusion Help - Weights and Variations I

By following this easy setup below, you will have unique parent products, only relevant child products, a clean admin, only one place to change copy, Smart Match turned on and a scalable product inventory.

Note: This setup is especially valuable for sites that sell weighted goods, bulk goods and products that have variations to their product offering that are infinite or built into the product like mill type, mix type, shaken, grind, bag type and do not have inventory of their own.

Start with a product plan. Written out somewhere (napkin, paper, email) that defines exactly what you want to have happen. It should include all variations (sizes, weights, colors, etc.) and prices for the product. Write it down and draw it out if you have to. This piece of documentation will be key in either getting Volusion help or referring back to in times of confusion.

Step 1 - Creating Product Options

1. Go to /admin/TableViewer.asp?Table=OptionCategories in the admin. Create a new category (if not already there) called Weight. Configure it for “Drop-Down_Smartmatch” and click the box called “IsRequired”.
2. Now create some product options for the Weight category. Create 10oz, 12oz and 22oz. Make sure you put the ProductWeight and OptionsDesc in on each option. That is all for now. This will be key for shipping and pricing later.
3. Go back into the Option Categories. Create a category called Bottle Type. Configure it for “Drop-Down” and leave “IsRequired” unchecked.
4. Now create some product options for the Bottle Type category. Create clear and brown. Do not put in the ProductWeight. Leave it blank. This is not an inventory item. In all respects, it is infinite.
5. Go back into the Option Categories one more time. Create a category called Carbonation. Configure it for “Drop-Down” and leave “IsRequired” unchecked.
6. Now create some product options for the Carbonation category. Create bubbly, really bubbly and super bubbly. Do not put in the ProductWeight. Leave it blank. This is not an inventory item. This is another item that is free, infinite, etc. and built into the process of this product.

Step 2 - Creating the Parent/Child Products

1. Let’s create the Belgium beer product in the Volusion admin. Fill out the Product Code. Make it make sense. Maybe BEER-B01.
2. Create the Product Name. Maybe “Belgium Beer” would work
3. Enter the Product Price. This should be the first price in the tier. $5 in this case. This is the core value. Do not add a weight.
4. Click the Hide Product button so that users can’t see your “testing/building”.
5. Don’t worry about filling out all the descriptions and SEO copy yet. We don’t want all that copy being duplicated when we create the child products.
6. In the Product Options, click the link “Switch to Advanced View”. This will give you a field to populate. only put in the “Product Option IDs” that are associated with Weight. This is very important!
7. Check the “Enable Options Inventory Control” box and click “Save Changes” button. This will create a trimmed down version of the grid below. Awesome.
8. Now let’s create some child products. In the “Inventory Grid ProductCode” field, put in some more IDs that make sense. Maybe BEER-B01-10OZ, BEER-B01-12OZ, and BEER-B01-22OZ. Click the button, “Save Changes to Inventory Control Grid”. This will create your beautiful children.
9. Let’s give the children product some “Product Prices”. For this grid, I will fill in the true prices. $5, $6 and $12 respectively (from Part I). This will send the right amount to the payment gateway.
10. Let’s give the children products some “Grid PriceDiff” values. For the 10OZ field, I will leave blank. For the 12OZ I will put $1 and for the 22OZ field I will put $6. This is the amount the price goes up for each weight. This is for the customer. They will see how much extra each weight costs is in the drop-down. Save your work.
11. Now we must go back up to the “Product Options” and click “Switch to Advanced View”. Add in all the other product options that were associated with Bottle Type and Carbonation. Separate them with a comma.
12. Uncheck the “Enable Options Inventory Control” box and click the “Save Changes” button. This will add in the options without adding tons of products to the grid. Clean.
13. Finally we get to start filling in all the SEO and general content for this product. Associate the product with a category. Create a basic “Product Name Short” - maybe belgium-beer in this case. Create clean, original, semantically marked up copy where applicable. Click save.

Step 3 - Cleaning up

1. Prepare your environment in the product overview section of Volusion (/admin/TableViewer.asp?table=Products). Click the link “Customize this view”.
2. Please make sure you have these columns checked - Product Code, Product Name, Category(s), Product Weight, ProductPrice, Hide Options, Cloned From, IsChildOf ProductCode - and click Apply Preferences
3. Now click the little pencil icon for each column. This makes each field editable. Go find the area with BEER-B01 and it’s children BEER-B01-10OZ, BEER-B01-12OZ, and BEER-B01-22OZ.
4. Make sure the weights column are all 0. Uncheck the Hide for BEER-B01 only.
5. Make sure all the children products have the value BEER-B01 in the column “Options Cloned From”
6. Make sure the ProductPrice is $5 for the Parent Product and BEER-B01-10OZ. Click the “Save Changes” button to save all your work.

Done! QA all your work live. Make sure it makes sense to the admin and the customer. Place a test order to make sure the shipping, taxes, etc. all make sense.