Hi folks,
We've been going around in circles a bit trying to figure out how to optimize the shopping cart experience for a client's customers. The product line consists of weights for low-impact exercise; they come in different weights for wearing on e.g. your wrists or ankles and are in 1/4, 1/2, and 1 pound sizes. Each type has a name, for example, the 1/4 pound wrist model we'll call the "Wristy" for this discussion.
The kinds of weights customers might want to use depends on their situation. When someone visits the site, they can read about different uses and qualify themselves accordingly. For example, if they are interested in everyday use, then 1/4 pound wrist weights (the "Wristy") might be perfect for them. If they are interested in physical therapy, perhaps the ankle weights are best.
The weights come with slip covers that come in many different styles and colors. There are a few sizes of slip covers; one particular size might actually fit on more than one weight. For example, one size of slip cover might fit both the 1/4 pound wrist weight and the 1/2 pound ankle weight. The product will be sold such that you buy a weight with a slip cover at the same time.
An imagined optimal flow example is: a customer visits the site and reads the usage descriptions. Suppose they decide that since they are an "everyday user", that a "Wristy" (1/4 pound wrist weight) is right for them. There is a link on the "Everyday use" description page for "Wristy". The customer clicks the link which takes them to a catalog page which shows all of the slip cover styles available (images, of course!) for the Wristy. They select a style and what shows up in their cart is one "Wristy" and one correctly-sized slip cover in the chosen style.
Our "plan" has been to use Product Kits to combine a weight with a slip cover. There would be an individual product in Ubercart for each weight kind and each slip cover size. Each slip cover product would have an attribute of "Style". Each "style" has an associated image that shows the look of it.
What we can't figure out is: how do we display all of the styles for a given slip cover type in a catalog page? Meaning - we only want to show them all of the styles available for the "Wristy". To be explicit another way - we do NOT want just one "Wristy" product shown in the Catalog with a drop-down list of names of styles that the customer can choose. Rather, we would like to see a screen full of "Wristy"s in all styles, the image for each style being displayed.
A complication is that we require inventory tracking, so we've been looking at the "Inventory API and Simple Stock Levels" contribution. Slip covers are not replenishable (this is because the fabric used to make them ceases to be available) so the shopping cart must make sure that customers cannot order more of a given style than is actually available in inventory.
Our preferred scheme seems reasonable, but figuring out how to do it in Ubercart has been making us crazy!
Thanks for any tips!
Chuck
