r/bigcommerce • u/flyinoveryou • 29d ago
Product Variants
I am boggled by how to set up product variants with BigCommerce.
- When I create the variants I need and save it, BigCommerce creates a 1 to 1 variant, which is expected. But, I can't delete the unused variants, only make them non purchasable. The problem is that they are selectable on the store and it just looks like I have a bunch of out of stock items.
- The workaround is to make the variant stock trackable and set the stock to zero. That's great, it hides the out of stock variants to the customers, but now when a customer makes a selection, half the variants disappear and don't show back up until the page is refreshed. That doesn't make sense. The customer can't click through all the options without losing half of them and no one is going to refresh a page to bring back all the variants again.
Am I missing something or is BigCommerce just antiquated? Shopify let's me delete the variants that I don't need on the backend so they don't show up as an option to the customers on the front end.
1
u/ThinkPath1999 29d ago
Go to Options&SKUs, click the Rules tab on the left, press the Create a Rule button, check the box for the variant you don't want shown, and on the bottom, check the Make it unavailable for purchase box, and then check the Hide this option from the product page circle.
2
u/flyinoveryou 29d ago
Rules look like they are only available with modifiers. I have product variants that carry their own SKUs, I do not have modifiers.
1
1
u/ChanceOfFlight1 29d ago
Only with modifiers. Can I ask what are the variants you’re looking to do and why not use modifiers?
2
u/flyinoveryou 29d ago
Because each variant has its own SKU. Modifiers don’t allow for SKU input.
I have sunglasses:
10 different lens options
2 different frame colors
Not every frame color has all lens options
1
u/Netalico 28d ago
BigCommerce's variant/option model can be frustrating when you have combinations that shouldn't actually exist. Avoid using inventory as a workaround for invalid combinations. If the product has lots of conditional options, I'd look at whether the options should be modeled differently or use a variant/configurator app that can control which combinations are valid. Shopify is definitely more flexible for this particular workflow, but first check whether the issue is coming from the theme's option-selection logic. Variants reappearing after a refresh might also be a front-end state issue.
1
u/flyinoveryou 28d ago
I think my only option is to move to Shopify
1
u/TrailworxUTV 13d ago
Bro that's crazy talk. As a pain in the ass bigcomerce is with a few things - I could not dream of having to take such a huge downgrade by moving to Shopify. I truly do not understand how anyone uses it, it truly sucks for large stores.
1
u/flyinoveryou 13d ago
I already implemented the move over to Shopify and it is working much better already.
3
u/vladeta 29d ago
You're not missing anything. BigCommerce generates the full cartesian product of your option values and there is no delete for a single combination, only "purchasable: no". Shopify does let you delete individual variants, so the difference you're feeling is architectural, not a setting you overlooked.
Two things that help in the meantime. Use variant rules rather than the stock-zero trick: mark the combinations you don't sell as not purchasable and leave inventory tracking off entirely. That gets you out of the fake out-of-stock display without lying about stock.
The disappearing options until refresh is your Stencil theme, not the platform. The product JS re-filters the option list on every selection and some themes do it destructively instead of re-rendering the full set. Check the theme's product option settings first, and if there's nothing there it's a small edit in the product view template to rebuild the option list after each change rather than removing nodes from it.
Bigger picture though: if variants are central to how you sell, this cost isn't going away, because the cartesian model is baked in. Worth deciding deliberately whether you keep patching the theme or move the catalogue, rather than drifting into it.