Product variants

Everything on this page lives on the Products tab, inside the product card you already know. Nothing moves, and there is no new shortcode to add: the buy button you have already pasted grows the pickers by itself.

Turning variants on

Open a product and tick Has variants. The card grows an options section beneath the usual fields.

Variants are for products you added here, in the plugin. They are not mapped onto Stripe's own price objects, so a product synced from Stripe cannot carry them - Stripe would have no idea which combination was sold.

Naming your options

You get up to two options, and you name them yourself. Colour and Size for a jumper; Scent and Weight for a candle; Flavour on its own for a jam that only comes in one jar. Both start empty, with a placeholder suggesting Colour, Size or Flavour - the plugin does not assume your product varies the way clothing does.

Under each option name, list its values: Navy, Sage, Oat; Small, Medium, Large.

The combination table

The table builds itself as you type. Three colours and four sizes make twelve rows, each with a price and a stock count, and each appearing the moment its value does.

Twelve rows is not twelve pieces of typing. Each column has a Set all box at its head: type one price, press it, and every row takes it. Then change the two rows that differ. Most shops price a size run flat and only the large one costs more.

Combinations you do not make

Each row carries an x. It switches that combination off rather than deleting it, so the Navy in Extra Large you have never made simply stops being offered. Switch it back on later and its price and stock come back exactly as they were - the row was never thrown away, only set aside.

A switched-off combination does not appear in the customer's pickers at all, and cannot be bought.

Pictures

One option can carry the pictures. Tick each [option] has its own photo against whichever one it is - usually the colour, because that is the thing a customer wants to see.

The picture belongs to the value, not to the combination, and that is what makes this quick. Two colours in three sizes needs two pictures, not six: Navy looks like Navy whether it is a small one or a large one.

Each value gets a photo well, and each well takes one of two things:

• A photograph, uploaded from your media library like any other product photo.
• A flat colour swatch, picked from a colour box. Navy reads better as a square of navy than as a photograph of a navy shirt in bad light - and a shop that has not photographed its range yet can still get its variants live today.

You can mix the two freely across one option's values. There is no requirement to picture every value, either; a value with nothing set simply shows its name.

The product's own price box goes grey

This is the single most confusing moment in the editor, so it is worth understanding before it happens.

Tick Has variants and the product's own Price field greys out. It is not broken and nothing was lost. The variants carry the prices now, and a product-level price would only be a fourth answer to a question the combination table has already answered three ways.

A product with options listed but nothing priced yet saves normally and keeps everything. It just stays off sale, with a note on the card saying exactly why. Nothing you typed is discarded to punish you for stopping halfway through, and nothing goes on sale at a price nobody set.

What the customer sees

The pickers sit above the Add to basket button that is already on your page. You do not place them, and you do not re-copy a shortcode.

• They filter each other, in both directions. Choose Navy and the sizes narrow to the ones you make in Navy; choose Large first and the colours narrow instead. Whichever order the customer works in, they cannot land on a combination you do not sell.
• A price range shows until a choice is made - £18–£24 rather than a single figure that would be wrong for half the range. It settles to the exact price as soon as the combination is known.
• Sold-out combinations grey out, the same way a sold-out product's button does. Stock is counted per combination, so running out of Small in Navy takes nothing away from Large in Sage.
• Nothing reaches the basket without saying which one it is. The line reads the product name and its chosen values, and two colours of one product sit in the basket as two visibly different lines - as they do on the order, the emails and the receipt.

If Pro is not active

A product with variants pauses. It shows the NOT ON SALE pill in your admin and stops rendering on the storefront, rather than picking one combination and selling it at a guess.

Every option name, value, price, stock count and picture is kept exactly as you left it. Reactivate Pro and the product returns to sale with nothing to set up again. This is the same promise every Pro feature makes: a paused feature is better than a wrong charge, and nothing is ever deleted. See What Bang! Cart Pro adds.

What variants are not

They are two choices on one product, with a price and a stock count each. They are not a general product-options system: there is no per-option surcharge on top of a base price, and no third axis. If your product genuinely needs three, it is two products.

A variant is also a thing you stock rather than a thing the customer writes. If what you need is a box for the buyer to type in - a name to engrave, an allergy, a note about delivery - that is order and product notes, which is also in Pro. The two work together: a product can sell in three sizes and still ask what to embroider on it.