Is it necessary to reconfigure standalone products into options and variants?

Shopify Discussion
1

My assistant set up our store with standalone products when they probably should have been linked by options and variants. Is it worth my while to go back through and fix? What are the implications if it’s not set up properly? TIA

2

Hi, @silksmiths

I understand your store was set up without having your products set up with options and variants within each.

The implications of this are that you would have exponentially more products in your store than intended. For example, if you have a rug in 10 colors/sizes you would have 100 products in your store alone for this. Whereas with variants enabled, you would have a neat and easy-to-navigate store set up for any customer to intuitively have options at their fingertips.

What I would suggest here is to use a spreadsheet to update your product layout if you have a large inventory or you can do it manually product by product if it is a manageable size.

To do this via CSV you can first download your product list and change the multiple products to be variants of the parent product.

To export your product list from your Shopify admin, go to Products:

  1. Click Export.

  2. From the dialog box, choose the products you want to export:

  3. Select which type of CSV file you want to export:

    • CSV file for Excel, Numbers, or another spreadsheet program. Use this format if you plan to use a spreadsheet program to edit your product CSV file.
    • Plain CSV file. Use this format if you plan to use a plain-text editor with your product CSV file.

  4. Click Export products.

Sorting your CSV file in a spreadsheet program can cause product variants or image URLs to become disassociated. Importing a CSV file that has been sorted might overwrite your existing products with bad data, which can’t be recovered.

Once you have that downloaded, you can work towards making it work for you.

We do have a sample CSV file you can download and examine to make sure you have the variants set up correctly.

You can download and view a sample product CSV file to use as a template.

  • The sample file contains an example product and a couple of variants. Your import file probably contains many more products and variants. If you use the sample file to create your own import file, then make sure that you remove all the example products.

Then importing the products would only be a matter of uploading the file back to your admin, you can follow this guide here to accomplish this.

Alternatively, you can use the bulk editor build into your admin to edit your products. Either by removing them to import your new list or by changing things around. You can read the steps to accomplish this on our bulk editor page here.

If you are just starting out, have you given much thought to how you would like your store to look and feel with all these new products? Shopify stores are uniquely customizable allowing you to truly make it yours. That being said, we have some themes available that can help you build around you and your brand.

I would highly recommend checking out our article here on themes within Shopify on our blog.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

3

Hi Silksmiths,

The standard way to set custom options on your Shopify store as below steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Products.

  2. Click the name of the product.

  3. In the Options section, click Add another option.

  4. Enter the option information in the fields.

  5. Click Save.

By the help of third party app you can achieve the requirement.

These apps can help you to customize your products and offer a more personalized experience for your customers.

1.Smart Product Options.

2.Infinite Options.

3.Product Options and Customizer.

4

thank you!

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