Storefront Dynamics supports all variants created in Dynamics ERP. The Storefront Dynamics starter site implements variants and gives the visitor a webshop that respects the variants.

This is a variant

Variants are the best-practice-way to present choices of a particular product to a visitor of a web site or a brick-and-mortar-shop (BAM-shop). A product may have zero or more variants and variants are created for one or more dimension, such as size, colour or type. A variant is always created from one and only one product meaning that a variant can’t be shared between to products.

A classic example of variants is a t-shirt. The product created for the t-shirt contains common information such as product number, name and description. The name and description are something generic, like “T-shirt in different colours and sizes”.

The t-shirt product then has one variant for each combination of colour and size of the product. The visitor will search for, and be presented with, the t-shirt product displaying the generic information, and will then be able to select the favourite colour and size. The selected variant will display a more detailed name and description.

In a webshop, the visitor searches for a t-shirt and is presented with a search result containing the product but also the variants of colours. There is no need to also display variants in the size dimension since it is impossible for the visitor to see any visual differences between sizes.

A Product Master is created in Dynamics ERP as a template and is used to create variants. If a product doesn’t have any variants, e.g. the product is a variant by itself like “A red t-shirt in size medium”, it is created as a Product in Dynamics ERP.

Instead of creating nine products (in this example), one product master is created and Dynamics ERP creates nine variants with each combination of size and colour. Some values that are inherited from the product master are overridden in this simplified example.

Colour	Size	Description	Price
Small	Red
Small	Blue
Small	Grey	A grey t-shirt in size small.
Medium	Red
Medium	Blue	A blue t-shirt in size medium.	115,00
Medium	Grey
Large	Red		100,00
Large	Blue
Large	Grey

Every variant is displayed in the webshop and the BAM-store with name, description and translations unique for each variant. Each variant also may have a unique price and may be part of any trade agreement and discount needed. Most common is that the variants inherit the name, description and price from the product master and that only the product images are explicitly assigned the variants. Avensia Storefront start site uses the dimensions to create a name automatically. A variant has a warehouse and storage location of its own, and therefore a unique stock status.

Why a web site shall use variants

The two main reasons to use variants are the user experience in the shopping and the administration of product information.

• User experience
  • The visitor is used to select variants since it is the best-practice method to present dimensions of a product.
  • The user interface used to select a variant can be very user-friendly. Gadgets designed for a specific dimension may be created.
  • From a responsive and adaptive design point of view, the variants are the appropriate way to expose options to the visitor. Variant selection may be designed based on dimensions mostly selected.
  • When a visitor views a product, the most relevant variant may be preselected by Avensia Storefront using the most relevant variant for the visitor.
  • The variants are searchable for the visitor using the search feature of the web site. Since the variants are specified with their dimensions, the search result will be more precise.
  • Since the variants share the dimensions, the search result can be filtered using facets in a category- and search result page. This gives the user a more precise search result.
• Administration
  • In Microsoft Dynamics AX the information applied to a product is automatically inherited by all its variants. This simplifies the enrichment of variants. Only variant information that differs needs to be edited.
  • Business rules assigned to a product is automatically inherited to all its variants. Business rules may be trade agreements, discounts and attributes.
  • In Dynamics AX the assignment of a product to a list, trade agreement and similar, will automatically assign all of the variants of the product. The assignment only needs to be manually adjusted for exceptions.
  • Each variant can override information inherited from the product. This minimizes the efforts needed when administering product information.
• Merchandizing
  • Relevance and recommendations are much more accurate when the dimensions used in variants are taken in considerations. To simplify – visitors viewing red variants will probably be interested in red variants in product recommendations.
  • Retail kits are made up by components that may have substitutions based on product or variants. It is a great user experience to be able to select variants of the products presented in a retail kit.
  • The cashier in a BAM-store needs to see variants of a product to be able to make a relevant recommendation to the customer. Using the merchandizing engine in the online store will make great improvements to the recommendations in the POS. The recommendations will be based on web shop behaviour of the customer and the customers.
• Other considerations
  • License models of software may be depending on products, and not on variants, which affects licensing costs.
  • Most ERP and e-commerce systems in the market have the full support of variants.

A solution without Variants

In a solution where no variants are used, the products need to be related. When a product is displayed in a web page, all dimensions of the product needs to be displayed to let the visitor select. Since every product is an isolated entity without any relations, the relations must be added manually. The relations then needs to be manually administered during the life cycle of the products. If a product is removed from the assortment, the relations from other products must be manually updated. This will, of course, increase the risk of mistakes.

In Dynamics ERP product relations may be used. A product relation is an assignment of one or more products in a relation, like “Accessories” to a specific product. When the product is displayed on a web site, the related products are also displayed in a product list.

Product relations are meant to be used for recommendations when a user views a specific product. It can be recommendations of accessories or replacement products. A product relation is most often a one-way relation where a product relates to another, but not the other way around. Product relations are not the preferred substitution of variants from an administrative perspective. Using product relations instead of variants requires customization of the webshop since most e-commerce solutions are designed for variants.

The related products are fetched by Storefront Dynamics in the product page in the start site. Since the relations used and displayed are implemented as a recommendation by Avensia Storefront and most e-commerce systems, the relations used for variants need a specialized design. The relations used as variants shall be displayed on the web page as selections, and not as recommendations. This is the best-practice design of a product page.

From a user experience perspective, the lack of variants affects the shopping flow in a negative way. If a visitor would like a product in a specific dimension, the visitor has to search for a completely different product using the search feature or use the relation feature since there is no simple selection available. In a high-performance webshop, we don’t want to make the path to the product complicated. We don’t require a lot of clicks of the visitor. The product information shall be available and must be simple to add products to the shopping cart. The most popular variant of the product should be preselected based on the relevance of the visitor.

By creating a retail solution without variants it will be a solution that leaves the track of standard. Creating a non-standard solution will always increase the complexity of the solution. Customizations needed in the company organization, workflows, ERP implementation, integration and web sites will result in an expensive project and that will have an impact on all future maintenance of the solution. Every upgrade of the systems involved in the solution will require hands-on efforts.