The store owners running their stores on Magento ® platforms often confuse the product variations and their purpose. Let us review what products in Magento ® are and what types they have.
General Product Type information
Here are following product types in Magento ®:
1. Simple products;
2. Configurable products;
3. Bundle products;
4. Grouped products;
5. Digital products.
Now let us review in details why there are so many product types.
Simple products are a standard basic product type.
Grouped products are groups of simple products which are combined by some specific principle.
Configurable products are a more complicated type. They allow users to choose necessary options for a product. They can be searched using specific filters. The configuration may be done for almost any kind of product: apparel, technical products, foods, etc.
Grouped products are often confused with bundle products. A bundled product is a product which consists of other products. For example, a computer consists of a system board, coolers, a hard disc drive, etc., this system cannot belong to apparel, toys or food, but a computer, loudspeakers and a monitor are considered grouped products because these products are different and united by a common principle.
There are many modules for Magento ® that work with these kinds of products in the eCommerce sphere.
Now let us get acquainted with a more detailed instruction of configuring such product types as Cross-sell, Upsell, and Related.
Upsells Products
Upsell Products are so-called ‘substitutes’. Ideally, this product type is supposed to replace the product chosen by a customer as it is more expensive and gives more profit to a seller. Upsell Products are better to increase the income but not for sales, as they create a strong product competition inside the web store. This product type is beneficial for well-developed and highly profitable stores.
Step-by-step instruction:
- Go to Magento ® admin panel;
- Move to Catalog -> Manage Products;
- Find the product which you wish to combine with Upsells;
- In the tab ‘Upsells’ check the necessary products that will be tied to the product you have chosen;
- You can use a filter to choose several products;
- Verify that all details are correct and then configure the output positions. This will determine the products sorting order;
- Save the changes and make sure that they are present on the main page.
Cross-sell Products
Cross-Sell Products are such products that are visible to a customer only after they add a product to their cart. They are similar to impulse purchases in usual shops – chewing gum, magazines, candies, chocolate, keyrings, etc., that a customer sees at the cash-desk and suddenly decides to buy.
Cross-Sell Products increase both profit and sales, they can be used in new web stores as well as in the well-known and highly-attended ones.
- Go to Magento ® admin panel;
- Move to Catalog -> Manage Products;
- Find the product you wish to use for Cross-sell;
- Click ‘Edit’ for that product;
- Move to the tab ‘Cross-sell’ in the product management section;
- Use the filter or manual input to select the product groups that will be outputted on the shopping cart page;
- Check the correctness of all data and save the settings;
- Refresh the main page;
- Try to add the product you have just configured into the cart to check that all Cross-sells will be shown there
Related Products
Related Products are the products that complete a customer’s purchase. They may be additional components, parts, mechanisms, and many others. For instance, an LCD monitor can be completed with some means of care, brushes, 3D glasses, etc. This is a very effective type of product relation for newly-created web stores as the associated sales are increased with the help of the products that are necessary and available for customers. This is a highly efficient clean marketing strategy.
Step-by-step instruction:
- Go to Magento ® admin;
- Go to Catalog -> Manage Products;
- Find the product to which you wish to add related products;
- Edit it;
- Use the filter to choose the related products;
- Complete configuration, save the settings and then reload the main page to check that all related products are there.
You can also search for the third party extensions for Magento ® which will show you’re related, cross-sell and Upsell products in the shopping cart or on the checkout page.
The product relations configuration is very important for increasing sales and profit. For a large web store, it is recommended to use all product types listed above. For a small store, it would be enough to use only one type, Related Products are the most efficient in this case.
If you have any additional questions please leave a comment to this article, and GoMage experts will assist you.