Product variant must be enabled if your product is an apparel
product. Non-US feeds are exempted from this. However, it is highly recommended
to set this up as Google has hinted that they will require product variants to
be entered for non-US feeds in the future.
If you have already set up
color / size product features, then you can easily link the variant to the
product feature and the module will automatically generate all the variants on
the feed.
For example, you have a product called "T-Shirt". This product
already has a product featureColor and also
featureSize related features assigned to it. All you need to do is
to let the cart know which feature is the "Color" and which one is the
"Size" by linking the product features with the variant fields.
To
setup Product Variants for apparel products, please follow these steps :
1. Go to your VPASP control panel : Store>Products>View/Edit Products.
2. Click edit icon for the apparel product you wish to edit.
3. In the edit product page, first you need to make sure that the apparel product already have features assigned under the “Product Features” section.
You can refer to Chapter
4.16.9. Product Features if you are unsure how to
setup product feature for a product.
4. Locate
the bottom section called “Google Product Feed”.
5. Try to
link the variant to the product feature or enter value for Single Variant
fields.
Please note the list of features on
the dropdown list is tied to the current product features that you've assigned
to the current product. If you have not assigned any features to the current
product, the list will be empty. Once the features are added, you will need to
click the "Update" button at the top or bottom of the page to update the product
and refresh the dropdown list.
For other fields such as Pattern, Materialand also Brand, you can link them with a product feature as well using the same steps as above although it's very unlikely that you've set those fields up as product features.
The “Single Variant” field
column is used when you setup a product variant as an individual product. So
instead of linking the variant column to a product feature, you simply need to
enter the values manually into the "Single Variant" text boxes.
For example, if you have a product "NIKE T-SHIRT BLUE XL" product, the
following should be the correct setup :
It is also possible to mix the linked variants with single variants. For example, you may only have a single Color but multiple sizes, in this case, you can use the following configuration :
VPCART will automatically generate all the possible combination of the variants based on the value of product variants that you've added to the product. For example :
Say your existing
product feature Color consist of Blue,Red,Yellow, and your product
feature Sizeconsist of S,M,L,XL, based on the values of variants
above, VPCART will generate 24 different combinations of the products which are
[Nike/Blue/S/Male],[Nike/Red/S/Male] and so on.
If you enter both the
linked-variant and also the single-variant on the same variant field, VPCART
will ignore the single-variant value.
For example, if you link the variant
"Color" to a product feature but also enter the value "Blue" on
the single-variant field, the "Blue" will not be included into the product
variants.
For more information on the definition of Product Variants, please visit the following page :
http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=1347943
6. You will also need to pick a category on the “Google Product Feed Category”. This basically lists all the valid Google Product Categories (GPC) which allows the user to easily select a GPC and also do a quick search.
Google Product Category is one of
the requirements from Google. If your products fall into the Google category,
please make sure to assign your product correctly; otherwise Google may remove
your feed from their listing.
To select a Google category, simply
click the arrow like in the screenshot above. Then another subcat will be
displayed, you can select the sub cat and then choose any possible category for
your product.
Once you have clicked that subcat, the selected subcat (Day Dresses) in the example below will be automatically populated into the text box of the Google Product Feed Category.
Another way to select category is
by using the "Category Search" box and simply entering the possible name
of the category and this will filter out the category picker with matching
values.
Click the category name and VPCART will then automatically add the
category to the product.
In this example below, by typing “dresses” as keyword, it will list all the possible results of Google Categories for the dresses. Then you can just click one of it.
Please note, Google Product Category is not the same as VPCART category. Google Product Category is only used by Google Product Feed.