Variant Search Question

General General Questions
1

I’m considering CS-Cart for my store (previous X-cart user). One important feature I’m looking for is a “search product variants” feature.



I sell t-shirts and customers want (need) the ability to search various designs according to size. That way, they can focus on just those shirts that are in stock and are in their size (only), while disregarding those shirts that aren’t in their size.



If there’s another (or possibly better) way to acheive this with CS-Cart, I’d be interested.



If this feature isn’t native to CS-Cart, is there a third party add-on avaiable?



(I’ve downloaded th 60 day trial, I plan to install it this weekend and play with the features then. Thx.)



Any and all feedback will be appreciated. Thanks to all.

2

I dunno if there is a more efficient way but we sell shirts too and I have added, 3XL,4XL,5XL and ^XL to the serach words tab to acheive the same thing only fo rthe bigger sizes and it works OK. It will be easy to copy all size option info from option column in csv and transfer it to the search words column in the same csv



JOhn

3

Snorocket’s “shop by features” addon might be what you need [url]http://www.snorocket.com/addons/shop-by-features.html[/url]

4

@ John

  • I used to do a variation of what you do in X-cart. I was hoping for a “cleaner” way to do this.



    @ sixnin9
  • Thanks, but… the Snorocket addon woudn’t work. Variants are different than features, shirt size isn’t considered a feature, and variants are directly tied to inventory. X-cart has this feature (offered by a 3rd party vendor) but, as is everything else in X-cart, it’s too expensive.



    Clarification: the X-cart addon to search by variant isn’t too expensive, but all the add-ons needed to customize X-cart is just too difficult and expensive to maintain year after year. I’m tired of it, which is why CS-cart looks so appealing.
5

Looks like this question has been asked before:



[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?p=73309#post73309[/url]



I’ll have to look into this over the weekend.

6

I now have a better understanding of your requirement. It’s not a “clean” solution, but you could assign each size as a product feature to the items - which would then allow you to use the Shop by Features addon. A cron job could keep the size feature synchronized with the size inventory levels.



good luck,

Glen

7

@ sixnin9

  • I appreciate the suggestion… but I can’t go that route, especially since I know there’s a better way of doing this using a competitor’s cart.



    I’m surprised this issue hasn’t come up and been addressed before.



    This is a show-stopper for me. Even with all the advantages CS–cart has, this is the most important modification I need - it’s an absolute requirement. I guess I’ll have to pay for it using my old cart.



    Thanks anyway.
8

This is what I’m talking about:



The Advanced Filter module… You can assign any type of attributes to products and your customers can use those to filter your products quickly to what they are looking for.



[url]http://www.bcsengineering.com/store/advanced-filter-for-x-cart.html[/url]

9

Here’s another example:



[url]http://ecommercesoftwaresolutionsonline.com/product-attribute-filter-module.html[/url]

10

[quote name=‘ManFromDet’]Here’s another example:



[url]http://ecommercesoftwaresolutionsonline.com/product-attribute-filter-module.html[/url][/QUOTE]



Thanks for pointing out this addons for X-cart and Magento. Magento is too slow, hopefully will improve in the future.



This addon for cs-cart will be absolutely fantastic.

11

I agree that cs-card needs to allow customers to search by size OR have a drop down that lists variants.



For example:

tshirt size - small

tshirt size - medium

tshirt size - large

tshirt size - x-large