Hello folks!

In the previous tutorial we learned how to create custom variants for your product’s offer, but since a lot of our users were still asking questions between “Native” Vs “Custom” variants, we decided to do a case study where we show you a real example of both offers.

1. Native Vs Custom variants: The principle #

Before we jump in the case study, it is suitable to do a quick reminder of the principle of both methods.

First, you should know that the Bundler plugin helps you create offers and bundles within the SAME product using different techniques (Quantity discounts, BOGO etc…). Here we have 2 cases:

1. The product is “simple” and does not include any options (attributes): this is the most basic scenario. Bundler will help you create bundles for the same product: Buy 1 get 30% on the second, Buy 2 get 1 Free, etc…

Let’s take the example of the bracelet:

So this bracelet is an example of simple product. It has no variants (no color, no size or any other attribute).

Here you are creating bundles for the same unique product: the bracelet.

2. The product is “variable” and has “options”: In this case, Bundler allows you to create bundles of different variations for this product. Here is an example of bundles for variable product: The hoodie.

Since hoodies have options (Colors and Sizes), multiple variants can be bought. Someone may want to buy a Black/L Hoodie for himself and a Green/M Hoodie for his friend.

Bundler allows you to create bundles of different variants easily, without having to introduce any additional options and without using custom variations option. Here is what the back-end looks like:

As you can see, the custom variations option is off. That’s because we are bundling variants from THE SAME product, the hoodie.

2. Using Custom Variants #

Now imagine that you would like to bundle the hoodie with the bracelet. While it’s not the perfect combination from a marketing point of view, we will take it as an example just to illustrate the usage of custom variations.

Like mentioned before, if you try to bundle different products using native Woocommerce variations, it is not gonna work!

That’s because the bundles form is setup for each product, which means if you change the product, you are changing your offers system too.

That’s why we created the custom variations option which helps you overcome this limit by creating custom variants of multiple different products into the same product.

Now let’s get back to our example to see how it works:

1. First, we create a new product and can call it “WooBundles Hoodie” just for the example.
2. Make sure to set a the product’s type as “simple product” and don’t forget to add the price

3. You may want to add pictures of the hoodie and the bracelet to the image gallery like that:

Keep in mind that the hoodie has variants : Colors and Sizes, while the bracelet does not (simple product).

Now here is the target offer structure that we will setup:

• The Hoodie for $39 instead of $49 for all sizes and colors.
• The Bracelet for $19 instead of $29.
• The Hoodie + Bracelet bundle for $49 instead of $79.

The first step is to setup offer titles and prices, here is how it should look like on the backend:

Like mentioned before, since we are setting up offers for 2 different products (Hoodie + Bracelet) and the hoodie is a variable product with options, we need to activate the custom variations option:

When turning on this option, 4 new columns will appear:

As you can see on the screenshot, Bundler allows to add 2 options max. Let’s take a look on these columns:

1. Custom option 1 and 2 names: Those are the names of the first and second attributes (options) of your variants.
2. Custom option 1 and 2 values: All the possible values of option 1 and 2, separated by “|”. Be careful, you need to use this separator when introducing the values, otherwise the plugin won’t be able to process them.

So for our hoodie, we need to create 2 custom options:

1. Color: with values Black, Red, Green and Blue.
2. Size: with values S, M, L and XL.

Here how to do that on our form:

As you notice, we didn’t setup any custom options for the second offer. That’s because it doesn’t include the Hoodie, the only product that has variants in the bundle.

Here is what our offers look like on the front-end:

This is how it looks like if you add the bundle to the cart:

As you may have noticed, the offer “Hoodie + bracelet” is considered as a single product, with the 2 options for the hoodie. This means that you need to manage your SKUs accordingly to be able to fulfil the order.

We have a dedicated tutorial on SKU management, but keep in mind that custom variants are a great solution if you want to bundle multiple products. I however you want to create bundles for the same product, we recommend you stick with native variations, because the SKU management will be easier.

Hope this tutorial helped you understand the difference between native and custom variants!