New in e-commerce and cs-cart too. Wonder if my question is already somehow supported by cs-cart but I'm missing the skills to identify proper settings page or there is another approach which is better suited for me.
Use case:
I have some products that can be sold as both independent products but also as options (accessories) for other products. For sake of this example, think guitars as main products and also accessories like strings, picks, straps, cases etc. - people can buy just the guitar, can buy the guitar plus accessories, or can simply buy just accessories separately.
I have created entries for each product in their respective categories (say “main products” and “accessories”), no problem with that.
I am trying now to create options for some products and use available accessory products as options. That is, in my example, on a guitar page, I'd like to add existing product from accessories category (pick, strap, case etc) as options. I was looking for a “select from” list of available products to pick this and that accessory for my main product page.
Is this doable and I overlooked something obvious or this feature is simply missing in this version?
Searching forums and KB I was not able to identify something similar, maybe other fellow sellers are using different approach for such use case?
Thank you johnbol1 and Triplets for quick and useful replies! I was aware about Buy Together, is good for defining combos of products, when somebody wants to buy full pack (main product+ selection of accessories at a discounted price). Unfortunately does not allow customer to select some options only - is more like all or nothing.
Just to let you know, I identified several Product Configurator Bugs in the Bug Tracker and Cs-cart says they are working on resolving the problems. So keep your eye out for the next release.
And before you ask, the Configurator has its limitations. The two big ones are you can not select an individual qty for a configured product. Its qty always matches the main product. Also, configurable products can not have options, only the main product. We have been trying to get cs-cart to correct these limitations for years, but they do not seem to be interested in enhancing the Configurator.
Good to learn in advance about possible caveats. I also noticed another limitation of Configurator: as soon as I select a product as configurable, the Buy Together tab dissapears while Configure tab gets displayed; I suppose this means the two add-ons cannot be used together (in case somebody would need this).
The more I test with Configurator, the more I think it's been designed mostly for “manufacturing” type of stores, such that one can customise or build a product asembled from various parts. Will definitely keep an eye on this add-on, however for start I think I will keep simple my use case and just add a sideblock with “Recommended Accessories” for each specific product.
I am in a bit of a learning curve for CS Cart and have the same need.
Could you provide some details of how you created a Recommended Accesories sideblock that included recommendations that were unique to each main product.
Here's a quick tutorial on how to add such sideblock - if you need additional info please get back and I'll try to add more details.
First, create a sideblock in Design/Blocks (select Products tab); myself I shrinked existing Main content block to width of 12 instead 16 and added a new grid of width 4 to its right, but you can of course add it wherever fitted. In this new region I created a new block of type Products, its content filling set to Manually. Leave Content empty, if you fill something here this will be globally displayed on all products and I assume you don't want this.
Now, on each product you want to have something displayed in this sideblock, open respective product page in admin panel, go to Block tab, scroll down to the new sideblock you created above, click on its settings icon, then Content tab and add all related products you want. The products you add here will be displayed only on the product page you had selected. Then open another product page, go to Block tab, repeat, save etc.
This way, each sideblock will display only the content you manually added for each product.
Not sure I managed to be clear enough, English is not my primary language. Hope this helps, feel free to ask more details if you need.
One caveat though (I'd like to hear from others if/how I can overcome this): since I shrinked Main Content grid to 12 for Product page, all products pages will now be shrinked no matter they have or not such side block with recommended products; would be nice to have an option to shrink this grid automagically to fit the sideblock only for those products where I choose to display this block, whereas for pages with no such block, the Main Content stays in width 16 (fill whole page).