I am trying to experiment with the best way to get my customers to the product they need.
Right now I have a massive assortment of categories. I have 6 or 7 main categories, each of which have several sub and sub-sub categories. This suits me to some degree, but I am certain there is a better way for me to go about this all.
I’ll use chimney caps as an example. I have about 350 different chimney caps available. Within those 300, I have several suppliers, a few colors, and maybe a dozen or two size options, as well as a few other variables. Some sizes are ruled out by some colors, some colors are ruled out by some manufacturers, etc.
Size is the customer’s main starting point. His chimney is only one size, and there’s no changing that. That seems like the best place to start narrowing it all down. But from there, his options are still quite immense. If he chooses, lets say, Stainless Steel as the color, he is then left with fewer options. Eventually he will be drilled down to a handful of options that meet his needs.
I have started to play around with the Product Features feature within CS Cart 2.04, but with so many products, it is hard to know where to start.
In fact, I’m not even sure how the Features is supposed to be displayed on the site. I have made test features and have been able to see the features on the detail pages of products where that feature has been assigned, however I have yet to see it show up anywhere else on the site, even though I have checked all the boxes for showing on the Product and Category pages.
Can anyone point me to a site where I can get a better idea of how this can work? And if anyone has any other thoughts on how I could best layout my catalog, I wouldn’t mind hearing about it.
It seems like if I can get a handle on the Features, and if indeed it serves the purpose I am thinking, then I could trim down my product categories a bit - they are so immense at the moment because I have yet to setup another way of delivering the customer to the items that best suits his needs.
Thanks a lot.
Could anyone tell me of a site that shows how the Product Features is meant to function? The KB article on this says to see the demo store, but it is unclear. I understand that features can be added to products, and that they can be seen on the product detail page, but I can’t see how it can be used to help the customer narrow down the product list.
Am I just misinterpreting this?
EDIT: Okay - I guess I spoke too soon. I just added a product filters block and see now that that was what I needed in order for this to behave the way I was imagining.
using the product features combined with using the filters will probably work best…
Yeah, I think you are right. I can’t figure out what the Prefix and Suffix are for on the Add Feature page.
Also, I was able to add a feature into the product filters with a test I did this morning, though now, for some reason, my new features are not showing up as available as filters. Still getting the hang of it.
You know anything about the feature Prefix and Suffix?
I’m making some progress with the product features/filters, but I still have some distance to go with it.
I am having trouble getting it to behave the way I want.
Right now I have a few features assigned to the products in my “Caps and Dampers” category.
If you look, you will see that when you clock on that category, you can see the filters on the left. Manufacturer and Color are the only filters I have set thus far.
The trouble is that if a customer clocks on a manufacturer, they are then only shown products from that manufacturer. There seems not to be a way to make it such that more than one manufacturer can be selected. As it is now, if you click on HomeSaver, you are shown the HomeSaver products. But if you ALSO want to see the Gelco products, you can not. Once a feature is selected, you can “choose other”, but there is no way to choose more than one.
Also, if you choose “Advanced” and select more than one manufacturer, zero products are shown, as no product has two manufacturers. I care less about that, as I would rather make it easy enough to not need the advanced filtering. But that symptom may be related.
I have experimented with the “Type” of feature (selectbox, multiple, number, etc) and none of the ones that allow for variants make this happen.
Thoughts?
Well, continue to ignore my last question 
because I’m going to arrange my site in such a way that it will not matter.
I have another question though.
Right now I am using “Size” as my one and only product feature and filter. The rest I am going to be using subcategories for.
Take a look at my rot category “Energy Saving Dampers” You can see that I have the filters enabled on the left for size.
In parenthesis next to each filter is the number of products that have that feature. For example there are 4 products within the subcategories of “Energy Saving Dampers” that have the size 13x17.
If you click on that filter, you are then shown those 4 products listed below the Images of all of the subcategories within “Energy Saving Dampers”. However, only one of those subcategories contains products with the 13x17 size.
Is it possible to set it up in such a way that when a filter is selected, ONLY the categories that contain products matching that feature continue to be shown? And then having the same behavior for subcategories down the line?
As it is now, if I choose a filter and then choose a subcategory, the subcategory may not have that filter as an option. I would like the filters to “stick” until they are unclicked by the customer. Is this possible?
Anyone willing to tackle this? I will pay.