Attribute Setup
Once you've decided which type you want, there are some other bits and pieces you need to set up.
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Once you've decided which type you want, there are some other bits and pieces you need to set up.
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These configurations are what makes the Pakk custom product attributes more powerful than the simple "custom fields" you might be used to.
Note that many of these configurations have repercussions for product display on your websites. Read the article in the Website documentation for more details.
The Name is the internal designation of the custom attribute, whereas the Label is what the customer sees. Normally these would be the same, but sometimes you might have attributes that need to have the same label; "dress size", "shoe size", "bra size" might all just need to be displayed as "size" to the customer, but use the Name to differentiate them internally for your own purposes.
Just like other entities in Pakk, custom attributes are translatable. This can take some getting your head around, so stick with me. We are not yet talking about translating the value of a custom attribute. So let's say we are talking about an ingredients list - we are not talking about the translation of the list of ingredients into Spanish for each product (that comes later). Here we are talking about translating the actual attribute - which basically comes down to translating the label. After all, "ingredients" is not "ingredients" in Spanish - its "ingredientes"!
Custom product attributes are set up at account level for everything you sell, but of course, certain attributes are not applicable to certain products, or even entire product ranges. Use the 'web' controls to determine on which websites these attributes are displayed/used for filtering and, even more specifically, which categories.
The category aspect is worth emphasising a bit more. Isn't it annoying when you're on a website and the filters show a load of attributes that are not applicable to the product you are looking at? You're looking at pianos and want to filter down by number of keys, but there's a massive list of useless filters that might apply to other products in the store, but not to pianos.
Make sure that the filters you set up are applied only to the categories where you want them to be available as filters in the left-side filter bar in product category views.
Sometimes, customers might need help understanding the custom attributes you set up. For example, if you use a size attribute for clothing, you might want to provide help in the form of a size guide.
Pakk allows for the provision of help resources in a simple way - you create a page or post (using the relevant tools in Pakk) and link to it from the custom attribute. The attribute provides fields for help link text and help link destination (the relative URL of the page to link to) in order for you to set up this link. Where is the link displayed on the store?
When the custom attribute is used as an "axis" for a variant group (see the Product Categorisation and Grouping tutorial), the help link will display next to the variants.
In the "Product Information" section of a product drilldown page in the store, where each custom attribute is displayed, an information link is displayed if help is available.
In both cases, when the user clicks the help link, they are kept on the same page and the help content is displayed in a modal pop up.
Another way to display more information about this attribute to customers on web pages. When a product has this attribute it will be displayed in the 'Product Information' section of the product page. If you think the attribute requires extra explanation, you can add it here and the customer will be able to click on a dropdown to see the description.
When you have lots of custom attributes for a product, the "Product Information" section can get somewhat packed, so use the Group field to indicate that certain attributes should be grouped together for display. For example, if you have 6 numeric fields relating to the nutritional properties of food products (Carbs, Protein, Fats, Fibre), group them all together with a field name like "Nutrition".
Pro Tip: You can specify the order in which your custom attributes groups will appear on product pages by prefixing the name of your group with a number in square brackets. E.g.
[1]My First Group,[2]My Second Groupetc. Don't worry, the ugly number in square brackets will be stripped out for display, so only you will know it was there!
Just to clarify, here's what the net order of product attribute groups will end up being on a product drilldown page on your sites:
A group called "Product Information" consisting of built-in fields, like product weight and dimensions. This will always go first.
"Numbered" custom attribute groups, in number order
"Unnumbered" custom attribute groups, in alphabetical order
Ungrouped custom attributes, in a group called "More Details"
