What a busy and interesting life an online store has! The Black Friday excitement is replaced with the holiday season rush, and so it goes on and on. But, no matter the season or occasion, your products will be always be ready to attract customers. Great product customization opportunities are among the numerous great features of Drupal Commerce 2.0, the new version of the famous module for building Drupal 8 online stores. So, let our ecommerce development agency takes a glimpse at how product customization works in Drupal Commerce 2.0.
Product customization in Drupal Commerce 2.0
The new version of Drupal Commerce offers a better user experience as well as a new product architecture. In Drupal 7, all products had to be created in their own UI. In the eighth Drupal version, you can easily and quickly create product variations of the same product right away and customize them to your liking.
Unique product variations
Everyone loves a broad range of choices. Your products may (as products usually do) come in various colors, sizes, etc. In Drupal Commerce, these are called product attributes. Each attribute has values (for example, S, M, L for size or red, green, blue for color).
A combination of these attribute values makes a unique product variation. For example, a red, S-size sweater is a product variation that has the “red” value for the “color” attribute and the “S” value for the “size” attribute.
Each product variation is assigned its own SKU (machine-readable ID). Among other benefits, SKU lets you easily track how many products of each variation has been purchased and how many remain in stock.
Product creation and customization: a little step-by-step “crib”
- Creating product attributes. First, in admin/commerce/product-attributes, create product attributes and define their values. You can configure the options display for the buyers in the cart, drag to reorder the values, make them translatable and more. For extra customization, use fields.
- Creating product variation types. Next, in admin/commerce/config/product-variation-types, create product variation types and add attributes to them. You can also add fields, like an image field.
- Creating product types. In admin/commerce/config/product-types, you can create product types and select the newly created variation types.
- Creating products and their variations. Finally, in admin/commerce/products, create new products by filling in all the required information (description, price, SKU, and more). Use the “Add new variation” button for multiple variations.
The Commerce Fancy Attributes built-in module
Let’s return to our attributes for a second. Thanks to the Fancy Attributes module now built into Drupal Commerce 2.0, you can display creative selectors for product attributes. For example, you can show a color swatch to your customers instead of just a color list.
The Commerce Customizable Products built-in module
Here is another interesting novelty among built-in Commerce 2.0 modules. It’s not just you and your website’s editors who can product customization. Buyers can do it, too (for example, visiting cards require a contact information and a logo). Here is a module that lets your buyers customize products during the checkout process.
The automatic SKU generation option
There is also a contributed module called Commerce AutoSKU that will generate SKUs for you automatically based on the product field values. You can configure the SKU generation pattern for each product type. The Token module will be additional help in this process.
Final thoughts
This has been a short glimpse at product customization opportunities in Drupal 8 online stores, which are truly endless. To organize this process exactly in accordance with your preferences, or get a fresh new online store, contact our Drupal developers who know Drupal 8 well and love Commerce!