What is RelatedVariants?

Get it on Opencart Extension store

Having a product available in different variants is a very common situation in a ecommerce.

For example, take a fashion store that sells a t-shirt model T001. The model T001 exists in different colors (red,green,white) and sizes (S,M,L).

In OpenCart you can model this example using two options: one for color selection and one for the selection of size.

But this is not always the ideal solution because it has several drawbacks:

• For the customer it is difficult to understand the associations between pictures in the product gallery and every single available variant.
• Often a model in a color or other variant type has special features that would not be highlighted if all is presented to the customer in a single product page.
• If the customer search using "search field" for some of the features may not immediately find the product looking for.
• Indexing (SEO) of each product variant is more difficult and the you risk losing sales because customers cannot find proper object variant in Google results.
• If a variation is given by more combinations of options (eg. color / size) is more difficult to show the customer the status of the stock and the price of the object.

To solve the problems seen, many famous ecommerce, opting to create separate products for each variant (based on the main feature).

So if we take the example seen, the tshirt T001, you will create many products as for colors available (T001-red, white-T002, T003-green). Each of these products will be correlated with the others. In order to best implement this solution you need a system similar to "related products" but with some differences:

• You have to declare variant types and their localized description (ie Color)
• Every item can have zero o one related variant type (ie T001-white have a Color variant).
• Every item is related to every other variant. (ie. correlate T001-red to T001-white imply correlate T001-white to T001-red).

Related Variants extension implement this behavior.

Please click on Documentation for installation and usage guide.

Dual licensed, Free with AGPL License. Contact me for alternative license type.