How to enable complex pricing on customisation products
If you sell customisable products or products with variations on your eCommerce website, then you'll know just how stressful setting up all the different pricing options can be.
Most eCommerce website solutions have their own ways of dealing with this problem, usually through their own built-in customisable product pricing or with plug-ins and widgets.
In this post, we're going to explore more about what customisable product pricing is, and how it's implemented in some of the most popular eCommerce solutions.
What is customisable product pricing?
Customisable product pricing is a feature that can usually be found in the back end of your eCommerce website. It gives you the option to set up different prices for the different variations of the same product (For example, a table that is available in a range of colours, sizes, and finishes.). This very helpful feature helps to improve your customer's shopping experience and also keeps your website free of duplicate products.
A good example that shows customisable product pricing in use is this product from Bradley Stoves Sussex Ltd's eCommerce website. Customers can choose specific features, letting them customise the product before buying it. When the different options are selected, the base price will increase or decrease to match the new custom product. Although this is a very basic example of customisable product pricing, it still gives a good example of how it works. A more complicated customisable product pricing example might show different images for each product variant or more complicated pricing additions.
How is it used with other eCommerce platforms?
Shopify
With Shopify, customisable product pricing can be set up using their built-in variants feature. After setting up the product and creating a variant for your product, you can add up to three variant options (for example, "Size" as a variant and "Small, Medium, large" as variant options). When the options are all set up, you can set a price for each option, as well as a more specific SKU (stock keeping unit). If you wish to add in further customisation you will need to employ a Shopify Expert as coding knowledge is required.
Customisable product pricing with Wix is a little more complex than Shopify's. With Wix, after setting up the product with your desired product options, you'll need to click the "Customize Settings Per Variation" toggle. On this screen, you can add a "price surcharge". This changes the price of the product by adding the original price with the surcharge. Wix also lets you reduce the price by entering a negative surcharge. You can also change the SKU and the weight of the product.
Customisable product pricing with iPages
Within iPages, you are able to add extensive customisation options to your products - everything from 'select' boxes or radio swatches to text fields and colour options.
Our latest update also added the ability to calculate a bespoke price, based upon a formula. For example, if your product increases in price by 20% depending upon the option chosen, you can now calculate this for the customer (previously only set increments could be calculated!)
Here are a selection of our favourite customisable products:
- Dragons of Walton Street - Rush Seated Chair
- Emma Jayne Handmade - Wooden Block
- Print Me Pretty - Custom Printing
Can we help?
If you have any questions or are interested in customisable products and eCommerce, feel free to contact us, and a member of the iPages team will be happy to talk.