Need to refine size/color drop-downs for clothing products

[verveclimbing]

Our site uses the Elegant Shopify Theme from Reconfigure.  No changes have been made to the default template.

The theme (which was designed for clothing/apparel webstores) features two separate drop-down menus on the product page.  The first menu is for Size, the second for Color.  Depending on the active selection of the two menus, three things happen:

1. Size/Color combination has inventory count greater than zero = Display Price
2. Size/Color combination has inventory count equal to zero = Display 'Out of Stock'
3. Size/Color combination does not exist = Display 'Unavailable'

Situation 1 and 2 are normal and expected, Situation 3 is an artifact of the way the menus were created in this theme, and something we want to get rid of.

Currently, both menus function independently of one another, meaning that the Color options are not filtered based on the selected Size.  What would be ideal is the following scenario:

• User arrives at Product page
• Size menu is active, Color menu is inactive (e.g. greyed out and not clickable)
• User selects size
• Color menu becomes active and displays only choices that actually exist (inventory count of 0 or greater) for the given size
• If inventory count is zero, then 'Out of Stock' would appear to the right of the Color name in the drop-down menu list.

We have received a handful of emails from our customers who land on a product page where the default Size/Color combination does not exist, and because they see 'Unavailable' where the product price should be, they assume that all variations of the product are unavailable (instead of just that Size/Color variant).

Example:

Assume a T-shirt is available in S-L sizes and one color (navy).  All variants of this product exist, and will have an inventory of zero or greater.  

However, if the retailer decides to add a leftover from last year's inventory (say, the same t-shirt in medium red), the Size menu will display Small, Medium Large and the Color Menu will display Navy, Red. and the following instances occur

T-shirt S/navy     Exists

T-shirt M/navy     Exists

T-shirt L/navy     Exists

T-shirt S/red     Does not exist

T-shirt M/red     Exists

T-shirt L/red     Does not exist

++++

We are looking for someone who can make the desired change.  I am not familiar enough with Shopify to know how to proceed (whether to export the theme and send you a copy, or what), and may need your assistance in facilitating the necessary information transfer.

We also don't know what the time requirement for doing this would be, and would like any responses to include an hourly rate and expected number of hours for this job.

I can be contacted via email (james at verveclimbing dot com) for additional information, and all responses should be directed to the same address.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

James Traub

VERVE CLIMBING

[Caroline_Schnap]

The problem with dependent drop-downs is that they are usually “one way”: if you make a selection in the second drop-down, the first drop-down will not be updated with all the new available options that can go with that selection.

You have to begin somewhere, and to solve that problem...

We have received a handful of emails from our customers who land on a product page where the default Size/Color combination does not exist, and because they see 'Unavailable' where the product price should be, they assume that all variations of the product are unavailable (instead of just that Size/Color variant).

... begin here: http://forums.shopify.com/categories/2/posts/38738

That's simple enough.