Products: Choices - Edit

Overview

Choices allow you to give customers the ability to select different attributes for a product.  A simple example of a choice you might give a customer is color or size of a garment.  You'll find that whether you choose to add no choices, or many, what you end up with is an amazingly flexible system to give your customers exactly what they were looking for.  Choices are sometimes referred to as "options" as well.

Requirements

The following prerequisites will be necessary to accomplish the goals of this article:

• Have access to your Hotcakes store administration
• Have an understanding of which choices you would like to add

Getting Started

If you haven't done so already, determine which choices your product should have before you begin adding choices.

Products: Choices - Edit

In order to manage the choices, you'll first need to begin editing a product.  Once you do, you'll see the "Choices - Edit" menu item in the left panel.

When you first arrive at the "Choices - Edit" view, there won't be any choices to see or manage.  You'll need to create your choices.  You can choose from several choices using the tools given to you in the left panel.

Once you've added one or many choices, they'll be shown in a grid, like shown below.

Column	Description
Sorting	This first column allows you to sort the choices in whichever order you prefer.  This will change the order that the choices appear to your customers.
Choice Name	This value will be both the value that you have saved when creating your choice, as well as the label that your customers will see when viewing the product on your site.
Example	This column allows you to see an example of what the choices may look like.
Variant or Shared	If the choice is a variant or a shared choice, it will be noted here.  Otherwise, the column is blank.  Variants and shared choices are discussed in more detail in other documentation articles.
Edit	You have the ability to either edit the choice with the first icon, or permanently delete the choice with the second one.

Choices and Product Pricing

If a choice is tied to pricing, your customers will see the product price instantly updated upon selection.  The customer will know what they're paying at all times.

Common Choice Settings

When you create or edit a choice, there's some common fields that you'll end up working with.  Instead of repeating them over and over below, you can see what they are here.

Setting	Description
Name	This is the language-friendly name of the choice, as both you and your customers will see it.
Choice is Required	If checked, this choice must be made by the customer before they can add the product to the cart.  In some instances, this setting will not be present.  Depending on the choice, the choice will either be implicitly required like with files, or it is a choice that can't be required, such as the HTML Description.
Hide Name from the Product Details View	If you check this checkbox, the name label will be hidden from your customers when they view the product.
Show Color Swatches for this Option	Swatches are discussed in great detail in other areas of the documentation.  When checked, this choice will display the swatches as defined in the other areas of configuration and this one.  This will only be available for choices that have a list of items.
This Choice Changes Inventory, Pictures, Prices, and/or SKU	This setting is what makes a choice behave as a variant.  Variants are discussed in other areas of the documentation, but this setting turns on the variant settings.  If you want this choice to adjust the mentioned things in an order (inventory, price, etc.), then this checkbox should be checked.  Choices that don't have this item don't functionn as a variant.
New Item	This textbox only appears for choices that have a list of choice items.  The value will be the name of the individual item, such as "Small" when dealing with a choice of "Size."  You'll end up using this textbox over and over when building choice lists.

Editing a Choice Item

Choices that have a listing of items allow you to not only create them, but you can also edit and delete them.

Setting	Description
[no name]	This first column allows you to sort the choice items in whichever order you prefer.  This will change the order that the choice items appear to your customers.
Label	If the choice item is considered to be a label, this icon will appear as a checked checkbox.  Otherwise it will appear simply as an unchecked chceckbox.
Default	Only one choice item can be the default.  The default choice item will be represented by a checked checkbox in this column.
Item Name	This is the name of the choice item as you and your customers will see it on the site.
Price	When choice items are variants, they can change the price of the product.  The amount that will be added to the product's base price will be listed here.  If a zero dollar amount is here, then the product price will be unaffected.  If the base price of the product is $10.00 and your choice item is $10.00, then the product price will be $20.00 when the customer selects the choice item.  Pricing should be in the same format as the currency format in the store.
Weight	When choice items are variants, they can change the weight of the product.  The weight that will be added to the product's base weight will be listed here.  If a zero weigh value is here, then the product weight will be unaffected.
[no name]	This column allows you to edit the choice item with the first icon, opening an editor in a popup window. The second option allows you to permanently delete the choice item.

When you edit the choice item, you'll see a popup window that allows you to edit several attributes of the choice item.  Those attributes are discussed in the table below.

Setting	Description
Name	This is the name of the choice item as you and your customers will see it on the site.
Price Adjustment	When choice items are variants, they can change the price of the product.  The amount that will be added to the product's base price will be listed here.  If a zero dollar amount is here, then the product price will be unaffected.  If the base price of the product is $10.00 and your choice item is $10.00, then the product price will be $20.00 when the customer selects the choice item.  Pricing should be in the same format as the currenct format in the store.
Weight Adjustment	When choice items are variants, they can change the weight of the product.  The weight that will be added to the product's base weight will be listed here.  If a zero weigh value is here, then the product weight will be unaffected.
Is a Label	If you wish for this list item to function as a label, check the checkbox.  When this is the case, the choice will only be shown to the customer.  They won't be able to select it.
Is Default	When you have a list of choice items, one can be the default that's selected when the product page first loads.  Check this checkbox to make the current choice item the default that your customer first sees.

Choice: Drop Down List

The drop down list choice allows you to supply a large number of choice items for the customer to choose from, in a compact way.

When editing the drop down list choice, you'll have all settings available to you.  These settings are described above.

If you choose to make this choice required, a new choice item will be added for you that's both a label and set as the default, if you don't already have a default item created.  If you're not pleased with this new default item, you may edit or replace it.

Choice: Radio Button List

Radio button lists work in an almost identical way compared to the drop down list choice item.  If you haven't already done so, you should make one of the choice items here the default. This will save your customers a click, and more importantly a decision that could delay or prevent the customer from making it to the checkout.

Choice: Checkboxes

The checkboxes choice allows you to have a listing similar to the radio button list, but your customer can choose more than one option.  This is great for quick add-on choices.

When you're working with this choice, you won't have the option to treat this choice as a variant.  If you need an actual variant, you should instead choose the radio button or drop down list options.  However, this choice automatically functions as a variant in a way.  It will allow you to change pricing and weight without you having to do anything futher.

Choice: HTML Description

The HTML description isn't really a choice, as much as it is a helper object you can employ to make your product details more usable.  In the example below, you'll see this "choice" used to describe another choice to the customer.

When editing the HTML description, you only have a couple of settings to choose from.  However, the most important setting is the description itself.  This will be the content that's displayed to the customer.

Choice: Text Input

The text input choice is ideal when you need information from your customer.  The most common example of this is when you need text for personalized products, such as a name to embroider onto a jacket.  

The settings you're given aren't initially different from what's already been discussed, but there are a few new ones.

Setting	Description
Columns	This essentially will work itself out to be how wide the text input is that the customer sees.  You may end up want to play with this setting a bit until you get it to the size you want.
Rows	The rows will define how many rows of text the customer can work with.  If you expect for customers to need to have a lot of text or anything more than a phrase, you may need to consider making this value at least 2.
Max Length	You should always specify a maximum length for the text that customers will insert.  This is essiential to protecting your site.  You'll want to make sure that you enter a number high enought to accouunt for the text your customers might want to enter.

Choice: File Upload

Some stores need to sell personalized products, such as conference goodies like mugs, pens, and thumb drives.  When this is the case, you might need to have file-based input from the customer, such as a company logo.  This choice allows you to ask for the file, and it's always required.

The file upload choice has standard settings, with one exception.  You can decide whether the customer is allowed to only upload one file, or several.