Help with Squarespace: Adding Complex Product Variants
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*This has been recently updated for the newest Squarespace product editor.
Veering from the norm to give all you little Squarespace users some help! When COVID-19 locked everything down, I began looking at a few things I could do from the comfort of my own home, with or without a lockdown. One of those things was helping to create Squarespace websites.
I do this freelance, so not in association with Squarespace, and as much as I L-O-V-E LOVE Squarespace I’ve learned about some frustrating limitations once I’ve gone deeper into designing. There’s one in particular I’m talking about today and this is for anyone wanting to add a range of variants to a single product, or as Squarespace refers to them, “complex variant options.”
Now if you have a few standard ones, it’s honestly so easy-peasy. Maybe small, medium and large and two or three color options, no problem. But what if your product has way more options???
Squarespace makes adding your typical variants pretty easy. They’ve already pre-loaded some basic options you might want to select, or modify. And if you need to customize the options, you can do that as well. For example, maybe you’re selling artwork, and have 3 frames the purchaser can choose from. Your “Options” would be “Frame Style,” and your “Variants” might be “Gallery,” “Modern,” and “Floating.”
I ran into this problem when working for a client who makes homemade bath and body butters. One butter was available in 16 different scents, 12 different ingredient options and 4 different oils for a grand total of 768 options. At the moment, Squarespace limits you to 6 options and up to 250 variant combinations per product.
So what’s a seller to do? As in the case above, you have 2 options.
Option one would be to create a product for each option in the largest category. In the above scenario, that would be the scent options. So instead of a plain body butter with three different customizations, she would have had vanilla body butter as one product, lavender body butter as another, and so forth, until she got through her 16 scents. This would leave just the ingredients and oil options, or 48 variants in the variant box. WAY more manageable.
However, for her small business model, she felt that took away from the fact that this was a CUSTOM product. Having those options all together were important to her whole idea.
Enter option number two, a little more complicated, but one that works perfectly!
Did you know, you have the option of creating a form, that is mandatory to fill out, the minute something is added to a cart? Well, you do and it’s super easy and manageable.
To start, once you’ve added all of the necessary info such as the name, price, images, etc., scroll to the bottom where you will see a “Checkout Section,” and subsequently, “Custom Forms.” In the box that pops up, select “Create New Form.”
You can make fields required as necessary and you can include all of the product options necessary.
To finish, just click “SAVE” at the bottom, and on the next box, and save or publish your product as you normally would.
You may want to include some direction in your product description, such as, “upon adding product to cart, you will be prompted to fill out customization options.”
So, are there drawbacks? Yes, I would still recommend the typical use of variants when possible. The major drawback is that your customer is not limited regarding the options they can select. For instance, in my example, even in the optional instructions field, if I tell them very directly to only select one color, they can select multiples. When the order comes in, you might have a form with two colors checked, meaning you have to go back to the customer and get the correct info.
If you need a Squarespace designer for your new site, I know someone, wink-wink. Please send me an email! Additionally, you can check out a variety of other services I offer for your Squarespace website.
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