Some stores sell products that are simple — a shopper likes it and adds it to their cart. But for many of Builderfly store owners, your customers will be asked to make choices before that “add to cart” button can be clicked.

Regardless of whether these choices are simple color selections or various options for size and shape relies upon what you sell. The one thing that won’t change is your utilization of product variations to make viewing and choosing the correct options a simple task.

Setting up your variations is the simple part. Making those variations easy to browse, and buy — that is where you may require a helping hand.

The following are some of the best practices out there for displaying variable products on your online store, all of which will eventually help you meet your #1 goal of selling more products.

Set up variations easy to preview with photos or swatches

A drop-down list of attributes is sometimes the first sign a customer has of what their decisions are. Not being descriptive enough can drive the consumer away, however so can a huge number of decisions.

Decision paralysis is a genuine thing, and it’s much more liable to kick in when customers see giant text lists of variables— who has time to click through all those alternatives?! Fortunately, the Photos extension and Variation Swatches allows you to battle this by changing out drop-downs for color swatches or thumbnails of every item.

This can be a huge benefit to stores that offer a similar item in a wide variety of colors. Rather than shoppers being required to click to see precisely what you mean by “navy,” or “royal blue” they can spot the difference at a glance. It saves time, and potential frustration.

Utilize high-quality product photos for each variable item

Speaking of photos, have you at any point been looking for something with color choices online and only gotten vague descriptions of the shade rather than a photo?

It’s true that creating product pages with many photos, yet there’s a good reason for doing it. You may imagine that every shopper understands what you mean when you state “sky blue” or “large” but the truth is that one person’s perception of these things is never going to be similar to another’s.

This means it’s ideal to include photos for each variant so that when a consumer makes their choice, they’ll see a true-to-life example of that options. Try not to assume that they can imagine the same cup with stripes or a similar dog bed in a circular shape rather than a square — show them! That way there are no misconceptions, and no miserable customer asking for a return or exchange.

One time that you can skip this individual photo process is if your variants are almost identical. This is most basic with clothing offered in various sizes — a small shirt isn’t going to look much different than a large, save how it fits the individual. However, there are still a few things you may need to do to make even sizing variations clearly.

Use clear, easy-to-understand labels for attributes

Creating the attributes to assign to variable products can be a straightforward process. If you sell a shirt in a couple of sizes, you’ll just need to make and assign size attributes — that is, small, medium, large, XL, XXL, and so on.

But the need can emerge to create more complex attributes. Perhaps you offer the shirt in three various shades of blue, or with two versions of a similar print, one of which has a metallic sheen. Or perhaps you offer three various cuts or fits.

The attributes you create ought to be clear and easy to understand at a glance, regardless of how complex the variations really are. Remember that shoppers might be choosing from a list of choices before seeing a photo, so the more clear you can describe what you’re selling, the better.

You can always utilize a product’s long description to spell it out, or basically add additional photos.

Make your product variations easy to preview & easier to sell

If your Builderfly e-commerce store has even one variable product, seriously a hard look at it with these tips in mind. Are you doing everything you can to make those variations attractive, and worth a click for your consumer?

We hope these ideas help you make your variations simple to set up, improve, and sell, regardless of how many products you’re offering.

Have any questions for us about improving your variations? Drop us a line via email and we’ll certainly lend you a hand.