Product Specific Attributes

While it is possible to add attributes to a specific product, it probably should be used rarely. The attribute should be something where it is highly unlikely to be used by another product. The other case is were the values only apply to a single product. An example of the later is part number which is used by a number of products, the values for one product should never the same as another product, and using a common attribute would mean a long list of values.

Personally I would recommend adding part number as an attribute, at least by hand. Such products tend to have a table which on examination it would seem the products could use one to three column as attributes. You would want the smallest number of columns (other than part number) that combined would pick a unique variation. See below for more on part number as an attribute.

Adding a Product Specific Attribute

It starts in the same place as adding a common attribute, but instead of picking an existing attribute from you leave the drop down on “Custom product attribute” and click “Add”.

This will add a new attribute with a blank name. Provide a name and then add the values.

Adding values is a little different in that you have a blank text area and type in a list of values separated by ‘|’. So for example, if you are adding a Color attribute with the values Red, Green and Blue you could enter Blue|Green|Red (I have a preference to add values alphabetically or numerically (say for sizes like 1/4″).

Part Number as an Attribute

There are 155 products that had Part Number automatically added as the only attribute. These were added as a product specific attributes and the product had to have a table that showed the variations. Note in these cases that part number needed to be the SKU. This table had to be formatted a particular way and the table needed either

• A column with only the part number
• or it had to have the same number of rows as existing variations plus one (for the header row)

An example of such a product is Bow Shackle – Shake Proof Pin. Besides the only drop down being labeled Part Number, the table used has a blue background and selecting a part number from either the drop down or by clicking on the row in the table will copy the header column and values associated for the selected part number in to a “mini-table” just above the “Add to cart” button. If you were to add Part Number by hand as a local attribute the product would lack this extra functionality. In some cases it maybe able to add/modify a table to be “correctly” formatted.