Product Information Management (PIM)
A product is a single item in an e-commerce platform. Products are not necessarily physical items, they can also be digital or a service. A product is defined by a combination of property definitions.
Products with variants are products that have similarities, they are based on the same model but differ in some aspects from one another. An e-commerce platform offers to the customer many purchase options for the same product such as different colors, sizes, dimensions, flavors, materials, etc. For example:
- T-shirts available in different colors and sizes;
- Smartphones varying in color, screen size and internal memory size;
- Food and beverage with different flavors and sizes.
- Electric cars with different colors, number of doors, number of seats, battery autonomy and engine power.
- A product variant is a specific item that is grouped with related variants that together form a product. Variants usually vary from each other in one or more properties/attributes.
Let's see some benefits of product variants:
- Customers expect an easy-to-navigate, organized store. Product Variants make it easier for customers to navigate your store by combining products with multiple options and choices.
- Variety broadens product appeal. If the product comes with multiple options, customers can get exactly what they want and feel more satisfied with their purchase.
- Customers get personalized purchases. Offering a combination of product options means customers interact more with the product before they purchase.
- Variants are useful for organizing the inventory when we have products that vary in different ways.
- Better SEO ranking. The product weight of all variants will be aggregated in one single page, helping the products (with all possible variants) showing first on a search engine.
- Better catalog ranking. In that case, we don't have the same product with different weights on our PLP and release space to show other products.
- Reduce product data replication and increase data consistency.
- Flexibility to create specific assets, content, attributes, and prices for the same product.
- Accommodate new business and new kinds of products with low impact and effort.
Let's take a well-known example of products with variants that are T-shirts. A T-shirt model is available in 2 colors (white, black), 5 different sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL) and 2 different sleeve length (Short, Long).
- For all the colors and sizes of the T-shirt, some attributes are common, such as the name Cotton T-shirt with a rounded neck, category, brand, and care instructions machine wash at forty-five degrees.
- Each T-shirt color has different pictures and could have a different composition.
- Each T-shirt sleeve length could have a different description.
- Each T-shirt color could be available in different sizes: XS, S, M, L or XL.
- For each color/size, the identifier of the product is different (EAN/GTIN, SKU) as well as the technical specs like weight, sleeves length that could vary from a T-shirt from another.
The concept design was based on a simple idea, product variants are combined in a multidimensional matrix, where each axis/dimension is a product attribute variation with possible values for that specific product; so, the combination of each matrix element is a variant. The multidimensional variant matrix is very flexible because it's working at the lowest granularity of a product variation and also can be grouped by other information domains as they needed.