Simple Products that link to Configurable from product list.

[Boldonglen]

Hi.

So I have a Magento 2.2.8 site and the product setup is currently Configurable products with lots of simple products. What we would like to so is show all of the simple products on the product landing page and not show the configurable product. 

I have achieved this by setting all of the configurable products "Visible" attribute to be "Not Visible Individually" and the simple products "Visible" attribute to be "Catalog, Search".

This then shows the products how I would like them on the category and search pages however when I click on the simple product it takes me to the product page for that specific simple product.

What I really want to happen is that when you click on the simple product it takes you to the configurable product page with the simple product that you clicked on automatically selected.

Is this possible or does anyone know of an extension that would provide this functionality.

Thanks.

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[Tarandeep Singh]

@BoldonglenFunctionality you are looking for is not available by default in Magento. I Am also not aware of such extension. I believe you have to write custom logic to redirect your simple products to configurable product the way you are looking for.

Below are couple of URL which can help you achieve the functionality you are looking for.

https://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/239244/how-to-reroute-simple-products-to-associated-conf...

https://daan.dev/magento/2/redirect-simple-products-configurable-parent-attributes-pre-selected/

Problem solved? Please give 'Kudos' and accept 'Answer as Solution'.

[Boldonglen]

Hi,

Thanks for the links. I have stumbled accross those ideas before however I wanted to try and stay away from redirects if possible only because adding redirects can potentially impact on SEO especially if every product link needs to redirect.

If there is no other solutions available I may have to use this option. 

Glen

[Robert Rand]

Hi Glen,

If you're listing the simple products in the category pages and search result pages, then what's the purpose of driving shoppers back to a configurable product page? From a user experience perspective, wouldn't it be easiest to let them proceed naturally to add to cart without getting bogged back down with other options?

...and from an SEO perspective, wouldn't having these simple product pages live and accessible give you more longtail keywords that you'd get optimized for (Random Example:  Small Red Buttondown Shirt, Small Blue Buttondown Shirt, Small Purple Buttondown Shirt, etc.). When you have a product page with a product image, description, title, URL, and other parameters that are specific to the longtail, it usually helps SEO.

I'm assuming that your desire to list all of the products individually (and perhaps have users use sorting and filtering via layered navigation / faceted search) is because you believe it will provide a better user experience than having shoppers only see configurable products listed in the category and search results pages in the first place.

Just curious, as your motivation might actually lead to different recommendations. For instance, if you really wanted to drive shoppers to configurable pages, but wanted them to see all of the sizes and colors available for a product, you can typically do it with swatches shown with each product on the category and search results pages.

[Boldonglen]

Hi, 

Thank you for your explanation and questions. All of the decisions of the project have been decided by my client and although I can advise them on why we could or should do it a different way they have their minds made up about this one.

Their main reason is that they want their customers to be able to see all of the different colours of their products from the category/search pages. Like you say you can achieve this using swatches but that doesnt display all of the different color images of the product at a glance the user would have to click through and thats something my client want to prevent.

So at least for now im stuck with this scenario and need a technical solution as to how I can achieve it.

[Rixxo]

As you are able to output the swatch / thumbnails of the simple products on the category page you could modify the layout of each product to be much bigger and show all of the child images.

Technically you would be listing the configurable product on the category page and create a faux grid of the child images within it that all link through the selected option.

Make sense?

[Boldonglen]

Hi,

Yes that does make sense and sounds like a really good compromise. Ill put that to the client.

Thanks for your advice.