Optional products?

when an optional product is added in the backend, it does not really give user an option to NOT select any optional product. User has to select an option. what if they just wanted the main item not the optional item? is there any way of doing it.

thanks

You should add a specific value to your optional product's characteristic so that the user can choose it in the dropdown.

what if there are no characteristics and we want to give customer an OPTION to either buy the optional product or dont?

If there are no characteristics to an optional product, the customer will be able to choose whether to add it or not to the main product by default. There is nothing to do for that.
For example, if you delete the characteristic from the webcam optional product of that product on our demo website:
www.demo.hikashop.com/index.php?option=c...ayout=show&Itemid=91
You will have automatically a yes/no dropdown for it.