Hey, @Patrick_McCabe !
Thanks so much for sharing your question with our network.
I’d be glad to offer my two cents to help you make the best decision for your company and I’m also looking forward to hearing feedback from other community members. To offer full transparency, I do agree with you that having one product with customizable and default options is the way to go. While I do think it’s helpful for SEO purposes, especially if both products will have virtually identical descriptions that’s not my only reason.
Here at Shopify I spend a fair amount of my time skimming through websites and even in my personal life when shopping online or managing my own store. Based on that personal experience, I am definitely drawn to visuals and clear, concise information found in one place.
The statistics even suggest that it’s safe to say we can miss the details because humans can simply “be impatient” as detailed by a recent Shopify blog. What that means for your product and store is then totally unique to your situation because you know your target audience the best. Some things you may consider are:
- are two or more products that appear similar going to add to the confusion and increase navigation challenges that could potentially result in conversion losses?
- or will these two, clearly separated products offer more convenience as opposed to one product with the customization options in the product page
To be honest with you, I can see the argument for both so I don’t know that there is a better answer here based on user interface.
Hope that helps!