Different flavors and combinations - best as one product or several?

[30knees]

Hi,

I offer supplements in my shop and some of them come in variations such as: - Healthy oil, as capsules, plain flavor - Healthy oil, as gel, orange flavor - Healthy oil, as gel, lemon flavor etc.

In my old shop each one of these had its own product page. So there was a page each for: - Healthy oil, as capsules, plain flavor - Healthy oil, as gel, orange flavor - Healthy oil, as gel, lemon flavor etc.

Now, I put them all as one product "Healthy oil" and the customer can select the combination they want, eg - As gel - Orange flavor

I haven't been able to tell whether conversions or sales have gone down overall for these products, but I did notice that an affiliate who links to me is getting A LOT less conversions.

I'd like to figure out why this is.

Is it that the selection as attributes/combinations is too confusing (one customer has said so)?

Or is it something else that has to do with the shop?

What do you all think? Should each product above have its own page (the product description would generally be the same except for the ingredients) or is it fine as it is?

[datakick]

does your affiliate partner link to specific combination, or to product page itself? I mean, is there a # fragment selecting combination (ie #/20-color-black/18-size-small) in the url?

[30knees]

He links to the product page itself. The module does not support linking to specific combinations.

[datakick]

@30knees that's probably the reason why the conversion dropped. If your affiliate partner send you a traffic that expects capsules but see gel instead, they are going to bounce.

You could try to contact module author and ask them to support combinations, but it's a long shot. Maybe for you it would be better to have these as separate products.

[MockoB]

It's better to have different product for every combination. Customers are lazy and would not bother listing through all the product combinations. And maybe they don't even expect to see such many combinations.

[30knees]

@datakick Yes, that could be it. I already asked the module author and they said they're too busy to take on new customers.

@MockoB Haha, perhaps. I was actually trying to help customers by doing it this way.

Like this they visit one page and they can see right away:

"Aha, I can get this as a gel or as capsules, and if I want it as a gel I can choose from orange or lemon."

Otherwise they'd have to scroll through a category to see what's all out there.

[MockoB]

I agree it's more neat to have them that way, but when you have so many combinations it will be better from customer perspective to have them separated I think.

[datakick]

@30knees this actually got me thinking about combination selection. I come up with the idea of having some sort of intermediate page for products with combinations (well, some of them). If customer clicks on product, this page would be displayed instead of standard product page. It would work somehow like category, showing all combinations within product.

One attribute could be primary to let visitor quickly decide on some main characteristics, in your use case it could be gel or capsules. If he click on any of this, standard product page with pre-selected attribute would open.

Or he could scroll down and see all possible variants of the product. Something like this:

This flow could be interesting for some products I believe. And it shouldn't be that hard to implement as a module.

Just a morning brainstorming session to get me started my week :)

[30knees]

@datakick That's a brilliant idea! One could expand that and show on category pages the individual combinations, too, instead of the overarching product. But when you click on one it takes you to the page you drew.

[MockoB]

That's a very good idea! For such reasons I am thinking to make my category pages look like product listing, and when you enter category to see all combinations of that product.

[datakick]

well, we should pursuit this further, then. Once I have some spare time I'll investigate how hard it would be to make this happen (either as a module, or in core), and if it's feasible we can brainstorm this a little bit more and make it a reality.

[MockoB]

Great! Thanks for all your efforts.

[Baarssen]

This is a great idea! I have products with lots of combinations:

lets say: 4 Variants on quantity (ltrs or kgs) and 300 colors

So 1 product can have 1200 variants

I have been thinking already so long to get that in a simple and clean way.

@datakick do you know where to look for someone who can make a coloratribute like this: https://www.verfwinkel.nl/trimetal-ae-brillant-acryl.html

[datakick]

@baarssen said in Different flavors and combinations - best as one product or several?:

@datakick do you know where to look for someone who can make a coloratribute like this: https://www.verfwinkel.nl/trimetal-ae-brillant-acryl.html

any developer worth the name should be able to do something like this.

Customization like this would require:

1. custom attribute type - tb has dropdown list, radio buttons and color by default, you would probably need custom type.
2. additional metadata on attribute value - attribute value would need to capture color and manufacturer (or category) information
3. and obviously custom rendering, probably with some nice javascript to make the whole selection flow smooth and easy

Now, to implement this would take time. If I were to do this, I'd estimate this to 8-10 hours of work, so it would cost you €400. Custom development is not cheap, people should remember that when they purchase overpriced modules ;) Contact me if you'd like to proceed with this - I'm available for freelance work.

[Baarssen]

Yes i am very interested, so i send you a pm

[DavidP]

@baarssen fantastic looking site! I see it's Magento so it'd be very interesting to see that replicated in TB.

[alexblack]

thanks

[Albinush]

I’ve also noticed that customers like it when each product and each flavor are clearly distinguished from one another. The concept proposed by @datakick is excellent to my mind. It allows the customer to choose everything they want on one page and make sure they’ve chosen exactly what they need.
If anyone else wants a good example,  take a look at this website purerawz.co. They sell supplements and have various pages for various categories, and each of the pages contains all the options they have to offer. The website design looks logical, and it’s hard to get confused looking for what you need.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Albinush