How to add variants in Magento

First, create a new product and fill in the required fields. For this product, the required fields were “Product Name”, “SKU” and “Price”. When you input a product name it will try to auto-generate an SKU based on what you input. For this example, we added 00 to the end of the SKU to keep it distinct from the product name.

 

To add variants, go down to the “Configurations” options panel and click on “Create Configuration”

Step 1

The attribute screen will show up and allow you to create a new attribute. First, select 'Create New Attribute'.

Next, fill in the information.

The attribute should now be visible, as you can see below. To add more attributes, simply select "create new attribute" again and repeat the process.

Once you have created all the attributes you want for the variant products, select the attributes you wish to use and press “Next”.

Step 2

 

Now you have chosen your attributes, you need to add some values to them. This will dynamically create variant products based on the number of values per attribute e.g. 2 attributes each with 5 values would be 25 products.

Step 3

For this step, you can add image, price and quantity data to the added variants. This process is handy for cutting down time on having to manually add images for each product, making it easier to add images for specific categories.

For this example, we have used different images showing different coloured shirts. They will be added using the “Apply unique images by attribute to each SKU”. This method ensures that an image/set of images is correctly attributed to a product.

 

Make sure you have the images ready for uploading, as having to edit the images for each product manually will take considerably more time!

Step 4

This step gives a preview of the variants before they are added to the table of products

This process is not too difficult to follow and repeat when familiar with the interface and navigation of products. However, the process of uploading and updating products and variants can be made much simpler for users.

This is possible through the use of third-party plugins and applications. One such useful application would be a PIM. A PIM would allow a user to quickly upload select data to Magento and automatically create the variant products, ready to be populated with data and media stored within the PIM.

 

The centralisation of data also makes it easier to edit and update, as any changes in the PIM can be synchronised automatically with Magento.