Product variations

Question

I am creating a flowershop and I have the following dilemma.

Let's say somebody wants to buy a bouquet of roses. Roses comes with many colors, sizes and different quantity in a bouquet. Should I create different products with let's say 10, 15 and 20 roses and different colors and sizes or should I have one product where the user clicks it and he will choose the color, size and quantity (and have multiple images for each variation)? This one also will be the case for the other flower bouquets as well.

I am thinking the two approaches and I more on the the side of having different specific products (let's say a bouquet of 10 roses, another with 15, another with yellow roses etc.). User can see them all at once in an index page with their photo, their price and he can click add to cart to buy it fast. Also it won't need much input from the user, you will choose a bouquet with 10 red roses and that's it. Of course I'll have to create some different basic combinations.

If somebody wants something more custom (let's say 12 red roses and 3 yellow), I'll create another functionality (something like "create your own bouquet") where he will create his own bouquet with all the flowers he wants.

The other approach of having in each product all the options, feels to me a little more difficult for the user becuase I am asking to choose all the details. Of course I can have some defaults so he can do it fast but I am afraid that it may affect the conversion for the users who aren't very familiar or with devices like mobile or tablets.

What do you think?

Answer 1

People generally only buy flowers if it's for an occasion/season (eg. Birthday,Christmas) or if they want to express an emotion (eg.Sympathy, Apology, Congratulatory)

The flow can be:

1. User goes to the site and can Browse current featured/seasonal items.
2. Select Occasion to browse by other Occasions.
3. Select Bouquet.
4. Customize if needed.

Reasoning: Users generally would not know what they want unless they see it first. Start with some options, then offer to customize via a wizard if they can't find what they want.

You can also offer custom delivery to the recipient with a message.

Sort options should allow filtering by:

1. Flower type
2. Colour
3. Price

Flower site examples:

http://www.1800flowers.ca

http://www.canadaflowers.ca

http://www.simplyflowerstoronto.com

Here is an excellent TED Talk about Choice:

Sheena Iyengar: How to make choosing easier

She talks about how users can have choice paralysis from being bombarded too many options.

So in general, the primary focus should allow users to browse through a few items, find what they need based on occasion and flower customization secondary.

Answer 2

My recommendation would be to go for the first choice where you are showing all the different variations of a flower colour and amount in a single product page as that allows users total flexibility in choosing their options.

It also reduces the scope of them having to search for a particular set of roses as they can just use the drop-down and select number of flowers desired for the banquet and choose from the colour options.

A lot of ecommerce sites do that where they have a single product and multiple variants and users can quickly switch between options and choose the option they like best. Here are some examples

Zappos

REI

The challenge with the second option is that though users have a single call to action, you are forcing them to drill down to specific level of granularity they are looking for with regards to colour and number of flowers to be used in a bouquet. So if I was looking for "a bouquet with Yellow roses about 15 in number", I would need to search for yellow roses and then filter down based upon the number specified.

With regards to creating a custom bouquet, I do like your approach where you can provide potential combinations to users to create custom bouquets or give him total flexiblity in defining the bouquet he wants as that allows him to customize his options and gives him total control over his purchase.

That said, buying flowers is a visual aspect and total flexibility will restrict your ability to show all the flower combinations together (e.g. If I wanted one red rose and 10 yellow ones, I doubt your site can show me an image with that combination).So be careful of providing total flexibility. However there are ways to do it and here is a good example

Answer 3

My recommendation would be to build prototypes of the more sensible ideas/patterns and then test them with customers. They don't have to be high fidelity, pen and paper is great. But your test subjects should be the right people.

It's quite fun too.