E-commerce variants with different delivery options

Jason Howard asked on October 28, 2015 13:26

We have just started to use the E-commerce application and need to support having a product that can be downloadable as a PDF or delivered as a physical book.

Using product variants doesn't really fit as the delivery fields are defined on the product and not the variant so the PDF variant would get charged a delivery price. Using option categories seems to suit this better as the main product can have the price allocated to it and the optional products with an additional price of zero can have different delivery charges applied but it seems like two products being ordered at once. Both approaches feel like it is bending the current implementation to fit the problem.

Just wondering if anyone has come across this scenario before and whether variants or option categories were the best approach or maybe even keeping the products completely separate.

ecommerce variants

Recent Answers

David te Kloese answered on October 28, 2015 14:31

Hi,

there are some a built-in product types for this type of order called E-product:

https://docs.kentico.com/display/K8/Managing+E-products.

The E-product representation is designed for various electronic files that your customers can download after the purchase. Specifically, you can use this product representation for software installation files, audio files, videos, e-books, etc.

Hope this type fits your needs.

Greets,

David

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Jason Howard answered on October 28, 2015 15:11

Hi, Thanks for the reply David.

The product is a publication that is available as an E-Product that can be downloaded but also as a standard physical hard copy that requires delivery. This is why I thought the option categories were a good fit as we would create a product in the store with a price of say $45 and attach option categories for both formats - hard copy and soft copy, both with an additional price of $0 and add a delivery option for the hard copy. The soft copy option would represent an E-Product and the hard copy option would represent a standard product.

That does seem to work in practice but it just feels like that is not how option categories were intended to be used and if we go down that route I don't want to cause more pain in the future as we get more familiar with the E-Commerce application.

We did look at variants but delivery is defined on the product and not the variant so the downloadable product would get a delivery charge, although I guess that could be customised.

Best regards, Jason.

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