Characteristics

Dear Hikashop team,
I am trying your new shop script and it's the best tried. I am doing a new website for a computer shop and I want to buy the business version...

BTW characteristics I have a problem: for a computer shop I need to manage many variants for each product, have you a solution to assign the relative price for each variant in the "father" product editor? Combined automatically by the software?
It's will be the best for all "product builder" shops...


Congratulations for the very good work :laugh:

You need to click on the button "manage variants" on the main product edition screen. That will bring up the listing of variants of your product and for each variant, you will be able to set your prices.

Hi Nicolas, thanks for really prompt reply.

I already know how to set the prices of the variants but actually it's really complex increasing the possible combinations.
If you have only 2 characteristics with 2 variants you need to set only (2^2=4) 4 prices but if you have (like in my case) 10 characteristics with around 3 variants you need to set around 1.000 different prices :ohmy:

Instead if were possible to set the price of each variant in the "father" product you need to set only the price of the single variant (3*10=30 prices) and the software will do all the all the combinations required by the customer.

It's my only difficulty

There are several ways to simplify that process.
With the Business edition you have a copy button in order to be able to copy your products. So if all your products use the same variants with the same prices, you can just set them for one and copy your product and then just change the description/name/image... That can be the case if you're selling photos in different size for example.
Also, you have the possibility use custom item fields (via the menu Display->Custom fields in the Business edition) for the characteristics which don't change the price. So for example, if you have the characteristics size and color for all your products, but that the color doesn't change the price, you can just add a custom item fields for the color and have only one characteristic for the size.
Finally, you can also use the CSV import to easily enter the different prices. Just get the product code of your variants and import from the textarea with something like this:

product_code,price_value
variant_1,10
variant_2,10
variant_3,10
variant_4,20
variant_5,20
variant_6,20

That should enable you to enter long list of prices quite rapidly with some copy/paste

Thanks for reply and solutions proposals but I have found another problem: the shop shows directly all the values of each charatcteristic.....I need to create a list of characteristics for each product otherwise I have to unpublish all the combination unwanted

Is not possible to have a plugin (under payment) that assign the price to the desired value in the product? We'll solve the problem of the prices and the values simultaneously...

If you use the CSV import solution above, you can just add an additional column called product_published and set it to 1 to publish the variants you use.
Then, in the config under the tab display you have an option to set published option of the variants to no by default.

Hello,
I've been posting about a similar issue ( www.hikashop.com/en/support/forum/4-how-...ecific-products.html ).

As vittfs says, HikaShop is really excellent in many ways. But variants and characteristics is way too complicated. If I'm setting up a shop with simple products and prices, it's fine. But when you have clients that need to display products all with and various options, each with a different price, it becomes a nightmare to maintain.

Please allow us to create variants at the product page. It just isn't intuitive to create all your variants separately from actual products.

If this particular element could be fixed, HikaShop would be a clear winner.

Thanks,
Matthew

MatthewSchenker wrote:

Hello,
I've been posting about a similar issue ( www.hikashop.com/en/support/forum/4-how-...ecific-products.html ).

As vittfs says, HikaShop is really excellent in many ways. But variants and characteristics is way too complicated. If I'm setting up a shop with simple products and prices, it's fine. But when you have clients that need to display products all with and various options, each with a different price, it becomes a nightmare to maintain.

Please allow us to create variants at the product page. It just isn't intuitive to create all your variants separately from actual products.

If this particular element could be fixed, HikaShop would be a clear winner.

Thanks,
Matthew

I fully agree.......and I believe in this change in next versions...

Well, thinking about it, we could look at adding a button on the listing of characteristics of the product which would open a popup with the same interface (minus the product code which need to be unique for each variant) as the variant edition page with an additional listing of dropdown of characteristics and upon saving the popup, it would copy the information in the popup over each variant based on the dropdowns values.
For example, of you were setting the color dropdown to all and the size dropdown to XL, it would change all the variants with the size being XL regardless of the color. That should greatly, simplify the process.

What do you think about such idea ?

nicolas,
I appreciate your input here. And I want to emphasize again that I am impressed with HikaShop overall.

But I think there might be some misunderstanding of what I'm talking about.

All I'm looking for is a more straightforward way to apply variants to specific products. I'd like to be able to create categories, then place products in those categories. Then inside each product, be able to create variants specific to that product.

Thanks,
Matthew

So, if I understand you correctly, you would like the possibility to directly create the characteristics/values while being on the product page and not having to go in the characteristics menu ? Something like the subzones where you can create the subzones directly in the zone, without having to first create the zone and only then be able to add it to the main zone ?

nicolas,
I believe that's what I mean! I know that e-commerce can get really complicated, so I want to make sure we understand each other.

If we are understanding each other, then -- yes, essentially, I'd like to go to a specific product page and just create the characteristics and prices for those characteristics right from that page.

Again, I really appreciate how involved you are in these discussions. And I hope you understand that I am pushing so much because I am excited about the idea of HikaShop having such capabilities. Your product is so great already, I want to see it go that next step.

Thanks,
Matthew

Yes, I understand

E-commerce is a complex thing and everyone wants their own absolutely necessary feature in it before everyone else but we're working on it
We'll get there. As I said in another post, instead of having a solution which tries to do everything possible from the start we preferred to concentrate on the structure and the design of the code so that it can be improved easily later on on a solid basis.

I propose to stop that thread and continue only on the other one: www.hikashop.com/en/support/forum/4-how-...c-products.html#9904

nicolas,
I agree that we should consolidate the discussion into one place.
Thanks,
matthew