Variations allow customers to choose the desired color and/or size of a product from a single detail page. This provides a cleaner customer buying experience.
Without variation relationships, every unique size and color combination for a product would be listed separately, resulting in a poor customer experience.
Creating Variations with a Flat File
The Parent product is the product that customers locate through search and browse. The Child product displays when a variation is selected by the buyer. The relationship of parent to child is the variation theme: size, color, or size- color.
There are three components to a Parent-Child relationship
Buyable products, related to a Parent product and varied by size, color, or both.
Relationship:
Non-buyable products, displayed in search results.
Buyable products, related to a Parent product and varied by size, color, or both.
Defines how the products are related to each other: size, color, or both.
All Clothing & Accessories categories support variation relationships. Use variations in the Baby category to minimize the number of similar items listed separately.
Child: Otterbox iPhone cover in Gunmetal Grey.
Child: Small, red bicycle helmet
Child: Men's large, blue dress shirt
When creating variations for your inventory file upload, you must provide information in these required fields:
sku | The item SKU. |
parentage | Defines whether the product is a Parent product or a Child (variation) of the main product. |
parent-sku | If the product is a Child, list the SKU of the Parent. |
relationship-type | If the product is a Child (a different size, color, or both) of a Parent, enter the value "variation." For Child items only. |
variation-theme | The parameter by which the Parent product may vary: size, color, or size-color. The value for this field should be the same for both the parent and child SKU. |