Hey! we’re having a problem with product variation. We sell secondhand jewellery and offer our clients three options: one without polishing, two with polishing, and one with machine polishing. However, because we only offer one of each product, when someone buys it should show that the product is sold out on all the three variations, but it still shows that it is available on the other variation options. Thank you and looking forward to anyone’s reply.
Hey there, @Guldklippet . Thanks so much for coming to the Shopify Community today with your question. I hope you’re doing well!
Your question here is one that I’ve seen a few times here in the community. I’m sad to say that the ability to sync inventory between variants does not exist natively within the Shopify platform, but third party applications can achieve this functionality and help you avoid this issue of variants appearing that you don’t have stock for. I have a few options for you to consider.
The first option is to use an inventory syncing application, such as Connected Inventory, so that when one variant is selected and is ordered, any other variants that have their inventory synced with the ordered one will be marked as sold out and made unavailable. This application is a paid option, but it’s one that we’re happy to recommend to merchants seeking this functionality, as we know it does the job.
Another option to consider is a free application called Product/Variant Options. If you were to use this application, you would instead be removing your variants, and using one product. Let’s take your necklace as an example. You would have one product for your necklace, and this application would allow for your customers to select from a list of pre-determined options, like polished or machine polished. In this scenario, you’d no longer have three variants to manage, and instead you’d have one product that has selectable options, meaning that once the necklace is sold, the other variants that would have been appearing wouldn’t be a factor since they wouldn’t even be listen on your website! If you wanted to try something slightly different than your current set up, this could absolutely be worth giving a try.
Since this functionality has been requested before in the past, I wanted to let you know that I’d be making our Product Team aware of this interaction, so we can keep letting them know that the desire for this functionality is still present!
If you have any questions about this information, please, feel free to follow up with me here and let me know!
Hey Imogen,
Thank you for the assistance.
We have other issues we would like to ask you about regarding https://smyckesbanken.se/:
- One, checkout is too complicated for the customer, we wonder why a customer has to go through multiple processes before making a payment (please refer to the following link - https://smyckesbanken.se/63238635774/checkouts/e8bf288200bffd2f30acc645e606303c)
- Two, when someone chooses a product, the URL to the website is too long and there is an error in translation as shows in link below - https://smyckesbanken.se/collections/guld-organgen/products/mormors-orhangen-med-monster
Thank you and look forward to hearing from you.
Hey there, @Guldklippet . Thanks for getting back to me. I’m happy to hear that you found my previous reply and suggestions helpful. I’m happy to touch on your two additional questions here.
1.) - The Shopify Checkout has been built in such a way to ensure that all online transactions completed on your website as secure as possible. The steps of going from ‘Information > Shipping > Payment’ is largely standard for online order and shipping - with some differences being noticed when order through platforms where a payment provided, or even the machine you’re using, has your personal information saved to ensure a quick experience. The Shopify Checkout is built to flow this way to ensure accuracy of orders, accuracy of shipping methods selected, and to ensure payments collected are secure. If a customer wants to skip these steps, your checkout does offer Express Options such as Shop Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal, which will use the customers saved information with these services to provide a one-click solution. Changing or customization the Shopify Checkout isn’t possible, in order to protect the privacy and security of the checkout, your customers, and your business.
2.) The URLs generated by your store represent the flow that your Theme takes your customers through to reach the destination page. For the link you provided, we can see that the URL roots down from the homepage, through your collections, through your products, and then finally on the specific product. This is important for things such as Search Engine Optimization, as it helps your pages get featured on platforms like Google when searches related to your products are done by prospective customers. At this time, there is no way to customize these URLs that are generated within your store. This is intentional however, as creating a less-specific, and more general URL could hurt your store’s SEO optimization, and could impact your visibility on search engines like Google or Bing. Are you interested in changing the style of the URLs used in your store? Do you mind sharing with me why you’d like to do so?
Let me know if you have any questions regarding the information I’ve shared with you above.
Hey Imogen,
Thank you for the information given once again.
The reality is we don’t have a problem that the link is too long/complicated. We mostly want to correct the translation (as mentioned above). If you could help me with that, it will be great!
Thank you
Hi again, @Guldklippet . Apologies for the delayed response!
So I did some digging into the translated areas of your URL example (collections and products). It turns out that editing these URLs to include the translations is possible, but strongly recommended against for a few reasons that I will describe below.
1.) The English portions of these URLs are a result of something called ‘routing’ - a process all Shopify Stores use to ensure that webpages load as expected without any issues. Shopify is built on something called ‘Ruby on Rails’, and it uses English wording to ensure that routing happens as expected. If adjustments were to be made to these URLs that would affect routing (such as changing the wording of ‘collection’ and ‘product’ from English to German), then 404 errors may begin to popup for customers shopping your store. This routing also relies on the English wording to ensure that pages load quickly and cleanly across your entire store.
2.) This isn’t something Shopify is able to support directly. Customizing the URLs is possible, but requires knowledge on how to change the coding of your shop to ensure that the URLs route appropriately, prevent 404 errors from appearing, and ensure that Google can index your pages properly for SEO purposes. If someone were to try to make these coding changes, and something were to go wrong, we’d be unable to support that user with repairing things. If you decided that having these words translated to German was something you absolutely wished to do, then I recommend getting some help from a Shopify Expert to ensure things go properly.
I did some additional digging and found that you can alter some sections of these URLs by going to the bottom of the product or collection page within your Admin. At the bottom of the page is a section where you can alter the URL to show something that may be more SEO friendly. However, it’s important to note that even when using this tool, you won’t be able to change anything that comes before the ‘collection’ or ‘product’ root, as those roots are critical to the successful loading of the page.
Hopefully you find all of the above information to be helpful. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to follow up with me here.
Hey again, @Guldklippet . Hope you’re doing well!
So what you’re showing me there is your packing slip. That date in the corner represents the date in which the order was created. Many folks do leave this as is, just for the sake of having accurate information (as the date is pulled automatically from the order within the admin), but you can customize the packing slip to alter that date how you see fit. Let me provide you with the steps on how to get to the customization step:
- Login to your Admin
- Go to ‘Settings > Shipping and Delivery’
- Scroll down until you find the section called ‘Packing Slips’ and click the blue text that appears in that box that says ‘edit’.
From there, you will be presented with an HTML Box. This box is where you will make coding changes to the packing slip form to achieve customizations. The Shopify scope of support is limited here, as we’re not able to provide support around HTML customizations, but I did see in the code that there is a section related to this date in the template on line 13. Any changes or customizations you’d want to make to the date would likely be done around this line.
Though Shopify isn’t able to support making HTML changes directly, we do have a document that outlines how to make some simple, common changes to this HTML template. You can check out this document here as it may shed some light into some of the steps you may need to take while customizing the date.
If you have any additional questions, feel free to follow up again with me here!
Hi @Imogen_1 ! I have a similar issue. While the inventory quantity is the same across my variations, the pricing between each variation is different. Etsy makes these distinctions between variants very simple. Is this functionality something that Shopify will be adding natively in the near future? I don’t believe the inventory syncing application you linked will work in my case, because I am also using an application to sync my inventory & product listings between etsy and shopify… Is this an issue that I could hire a shopify developer to solve for me?
Hey there, @wookearrings ! Apologies for the delayed response. I’ve been out of office for the past few days, but I’m around today and catching up with folks that I’ve missed since I’ve been away.
You should be able to adjust your variant prices within your Shopify Admin, so if you’re looking to have them be the same on Shopify, then you can adjust that manually. I have some screenshots I’ll provide you below, along with some listed steps to help with this.
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First, login to your Shopify Admin, and select ‘Products’ from the left hand menu that appears
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Find the product that has the variants that you want to adjust the price for, and click on it
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From there, scroll down the product page that loads and find the ‘Variants’ section. Click on the Variant that you would like to change the price of
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Once down, find the ‘Pricing’ section for the variant, change the price to what you’d like, and then be sure to hit ‘Save.’
This should assist you with changing your variant prices. If the information I’ve provided you here isn’t quite what you’re looking for, please let me know, and I’ll see what other information I can provide you with.
Hi @Guldklippet ,
I have a solution that can easily resolve your issue using the free Easify Product Options app 
. This app allows you to create custom options separately from your product, providing a more flexible approach. Here’s how you can set it up:
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Instead of creating your product and its 3 variants as usual, start by creating your main product with a stock quantity of 1. This indicates that there is only 1 item available for sale.
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Create your option set within the app. This set will include the 3 options you mentioned.
- Assign the option set to your relevant product(s). This ensures that the options will be associated with the specific product(s) you choose.
By implementing this approach, regardless of the option a customer selects among the 3, your product will be marked as sold out once any option is sold.