Variants For Digital Products
Introduction
Variants are different options/versions for a digital product that you can create. For example:
- Allowing customers to choose between buying different file formats for the same product (eg an ebook in PDF, MOBI and EPUB formats)
- Selling software with different license types
You would just need to create a single digital product, and then assign specific files to different variants. Your customers can choose between your variants, purchase and then download the files associated with their selected variant. This saves you time since you don't have to create multiple products, you can manage everything within a single digital product.
How To Setup Variants
First visit your add/edit digital product page.
Next, upload all of the files you'd like include with your product. We can think about files to be included with specific variants later on - but for now just upload all of the files.
The next phase is to scroll down to the Advanced option section and then click on the "This product has different variations" checkbox.
From here you can add your variants and specify the variant name, price and description. You'll see an Assign checkbox listed next to each file for this variant. To specify which files should be made available to customers who purchase this variant, check the relevant assign checkboxes.
To continue adding more variants click on the Add new variant button.
Labels & Layout
Click on the gear icon which is beside the Add new variant button.
A modal will appear giving you the option to edit the label and layout of your variants.
By default, no label is set for your variants - however you might like to give customers on your product page more context about what they're choosing between. As an example, you can set the label as "Select license type" and your customers will understand the context.
The default layout for your variants is Radio however you might have a large number of variants and this type of layout might not suit you. As an alternative you can switch the layout to List and instead the variants will be displayed as part of a dropdown list. One thing to note though is that variant descriptions cannot be shown if the layout is List.
Assigning A Different Variant To Customer
A customer might have accidentally purchased an incorrect variant. No worries, you can correct this.
Visit your Customers page then click on the View order details button listed next to that customer.
A modal will appear showing you all the transaction data. You'll see a part showing you the variation purchased along with an Edit button. Click on this button, switch the variant to the correct one and then finally click the Save button.
Deleting An Active Variant
There might come a time when you'll need to delete a variant, however this variant already has existing customers associated with it who've purchased it in the past.
You can simply delete this variant without any issues. Your existing customers will still be able to download the files assigned to this deleted variant from their download page.
Please note that if you delete the file itself, this would be reflected on your existing customers download pages and they will no longer be able to download any deleted files.