Requesting advice on how to setup our product options from the start

Shopify Discussion
1

Greetings! We have ran a custom store for the last 5 years and we’re finally making the switch to Shopify.

My question is pretty simple, but important as it will decide how we setup our entire catalog. So our flagship product is an energy supplement. It’s available in 60ct and 30ct bottles. It’s also available in regular and extra strength. Each strength is also available in sample packets that contain 3 capsules each and we sell those in sets of 5 packets which our affiliates use to sample our product to others in person.

So basically we have 2 strengths, regular and extra. Each has a size option of 60ct, 30ct and 15ct (5 packets with 3 capsules each)

Because we did not launch all of these options at once back when we started in 2015, we added these options as their own products in our custom online store.

We also use these options to sell several combos and bundles with other wellness products we’ve released over the years, which is a huge reason for us moving over to Shopify as the work it takes for us to setup combos and bundles on a custom online store is ridiculously tedious.

My question #1 is…should we list the regular and extra-strength as two separate products and then list their sizes available as variants of the two? Or should we just have one single product and have their strength be option/variant set 1 and the container size be option/variant size 2?

Question #2…Since our existing customers that will be shopping our products for the first time on our shopify store have been used to shopping for their preferred options as individual items in our store, so should we keep it that way to make it easier for them?

My last question and this one might answer both of my questions: Can a product variant be displayed in a collection as an individual item in a store view? For instance, if I setup the container size as an option for our regular strength, would we be able to display our 60ct bottle and 30ct bottle as separate items in the store view?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

2

So one thing I found regarding my last question was this product variants app: https://apps.shopify.com/show-variants-on-collection-page

I’m assuming that if people are paying $30/month to be able to show product variants as individual store items in their store, than it’s probably not a feature available in Shopify’s core functionality (but please correct me if I’m wrong!).

We’re kind of leaning towards doing both. Setting up variants as individual products as well as setting up the different options available as variants within products. We’ve got a pretty small catalog, even with our options, and this approach should make finding exactly what our customers are looking for pretty fool-proof. We won’t be using Shopify to track inventory, as we do all our own fulfillment and have a pretty good handle on that. If there is any other red flags to taking this approach, please let us know! Thanks!