When you shop online, you notice that the same product is available in various sizes, colors, materials and price points. These purchasing options are product variants.
What are product variants?
A specific item that is bundled in with related variants to form one distinguishable product is known as a product variant. Product variants have unique identifiers, such as price, and every variant is based on the same product definition.
Managing Inventory and Sales for Individual Products
Product variants allow businesses to determine how many variations of an individual product are available. For example, if a product such as a t-shirt is available in five different sizes and four different colors, then there is a total of 20 variations of the same product.
These 20 products have their own inventory and sales records which are managed using product variants.
What Product Variants Can Do for You
Barcode
Adding the barcode of each product using the product variant increases conversion rates.
Price
The public price on every product variant is computed based on the template price. If you want to charge extra for a specific variation of the product (such as a red colored t-shirt) then that can be computed as an option for every variant.
Inventory
As mentioned before, the product variant is used to manage the inventory. For example, if you are selling t-shirts on your eCommerce website, the inventory managed by the product variant will not display the number of t-shirts that are in stock.
Instead, it will give you numerical data on “T-Shirts, S, Red”, “T-Shirts, M, Blue” and show what is currently available.
Set Availability
When the availability of each product is clearly visible in your data feed, you do not have to waste precious time and advertising budget on products that are out of stock.
Add Product Type
Adding a product type makes it easier for you to bid separately for each product. You do not have to identify the products with general categories provided by Google Shopping. You can use the categories that are more closely linked to the navigation of your website.
Picture
The product variant controls the product picture. Each variation of the product may have its own primary picture. However, this may not be the case if the variations are only based on the size of the product.
For example, the same picture can be used to display a trio of small, medium and large blue t-shirts.
Include Promotions
Adding promotions to your product using product variants is a simple and effective way of drawing attention towards the product.
Why Product Variants Are Useful to an eCommerce Business
Product variants can make life easier for eCommerce website owners and entrepreneurs. Here are three important examples:
Increased Clicks
People looking for a specific item (such as a red t-shirt) may not find your product in the search results unless you use product variants. This allows you to include the specification (the color red in this case) of the product.
Enhanced User Experience
If product variants were not put into effect, then visitors would not be able to click on a product and look through the variants to make a customized purchase.
If visitors are not given the option to choose, then it takes away from the user experience.
Simplified Bill of Material
Product variants make it easier for website operators to define a single, simplified bill of material for a product template that includes slight variations for the variants.
Improved Pricing System
As previously mentioned, the default price of a product can be computed based on the price of the product template. Additional prices can be displayed depending on the dimension of the variant.
This prevents the pricing system from becoming complex.
Also, it makes it easier for the operators to maintain prices, as there is no need to set an individual price for every variant.
In conclusion, product variants are needed to simplify the task of managing an eCommerce website. Also, they optimize the user experience to improve sales conversion rates.
