Capturing additional information - What are my options?

[timbraysha7cb2]

Hi there,

I am trying to decide whether out of the box magento is suitable for something i require.

My customers will be choosing a product which has colour variants (easily set up with attribute sets etc) and other such options which I could build in this way but there is something I can't readily see within the documentation - or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

I need my customers to be able to enter some information from a prescription. This will involve needing to input approximately 10 bits of information in the form of Drop-Down boxes for them to select from (they are alpha-numerical values - and quite a lot within one drop down). This could either be at the point of putting the item in the basket, or during the checkout process. As long as I get the information attached with the order, I'm not too worried how I get it - as long as It's simple looking for the customer.

Thanks in advance, i hope someone can help guide me in some direction.

[Robert Rand]

On a product level, you should be able to use Product Options: https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/catalog/settings-advanced-custom-options.html

In essence, you can create dropdown menus as described on the product page, and whatever the user selects will be associated with that product on their order. 

Product options are helpful for a variety of use cases, including paid and free options. In this case, you wouldn't be charging anything, you'd just allow the shopper to make a selection.

Best of luck!

[timbraysha7cb2]

Thank you so much for your reply regarding this.

If i just had these entries as 'Product Options' would it create a different product for each combination of dropdown selections.?

The only reason I ask is that the drop down menus will have possibly up to 100 numerical selections, and i have 10 drop downs roughly. This would create too many products, Or is it purely options that are added onto the single SKU?

Would I be right to say that next to every single  numerical value for the customer to select in the drop down it would say £0.00 next to it if it was a product option? I think that will look a little too messy unless it can be hidden.

Many thanks again!

Tim.

[Robert Rand]

These are options that are added to the individual SKU. 

If you used a Bundled product type, you'd be able to create various Simple products that you could associate. These Simple products could have their own URLs, Inventory, and other standard features of a product listing. 

However, using Product Options is more like adding questions to individual products. While you can charge based on the answer (ie. Do you want this item gift-wrapped? Monogrammed? An extended warranty? Installation services?) there are just as many use cases where you're asking a question that has nothing to do with pricing.

By default, if you associate prices with the options, these will show up as +$____, however, if you leave them all as $0, there will be no mention of $ on the product page in relation to the options. You should be fine on that front. 

[timbraysha7cb2]

Thank you so much for your help, this seems to be the perfect work around for me.

Last question on this front;

In a product option Drop-Down is there anyway to change the default selected value. So it looks like the following;

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3 <-- Have this is a pre-selected default in the drop down, with 1 and 2 still above it and 4 and 5 still below.

Option 4

Option 5

Basically creating the default selection the mid point in the list.

Many Thanks!

[Robert Rand]

I don't believe that you can natively select the default value through the admin in the way that you've described. I believe that would require an extension, like:

https://marketplace.magento.com/mageworx-module-optiontemplatesmeta.html