In attempting to convert a site from 6.x-2.12 to 7.x-3.5 I was looking forward to some of the new dynamic behavior on the product page to make things clearer for my customers. My products typically have several attributes, most of which affect the final price. I was even using CANO to make some attribute prices dependent on other attributes. From the customer’s perspective things were relatively clear in that for each option of a given attribute they would see the price of that option and decide if they wanted it or not. To see the final result of their attribute selections, however, they’d have to put it in their cart. If they didn’t like it they could remove the product and start over, but the price for each option remained the same regardless of what other options for other attributes were selected.

Now with 7.x-3.5 things are less clear. If I select “Display price adjustment” for option price format customers won’t see the actual price of all the options, they’ll just see adjustment prices compared to what is currently selected. If I select “Display total price” for option price format, then again customers won’t see the actual price of a given option, they’ll see the total price with that option.

I’m loathe to request any more of a team of developers than they already have on their immense plate, but perhaps it would be relatively simple to allow for a setting that would leave the various option prices unchanged as the customer went about selecting them while at the same time dynamically updating the display price. That way customers wouldn’t have to add the product to their cart to see what the price as configured would be, but they’d still see actual prices for options and not totals including those and yet other options. I think it would make things a whole lot clearer in a scenario with multiple attributes and options. I apologize if I’ve reposted an existing issue, but I couldn’t find one quite like this.

Comments

longwave’s picture

Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

When the option prices are dynamically updated, the "display price" field should be updated at the same time to show the current total price of the options, without the customer having to add the item to their cart. Is this not working for you?

longwave’s picture

Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Closed (works as designed)

No further info provided.

Grabby’s picture

Yes, this is working. When the attributes are changed the “display price” field changes accordingly, but this is not the problem. The problem is described in my previous post, but let me try illustrating with examples.

The first alternative for displaying attribute prices is to display price adjustment, the amount by which the purchase price changes with a given option. I’ve illustrated this alternative with a test product at

http://dpa.boxsand.com/

For thoroughness I’ve included the test product with each of the three possible option widgets: select box, radio buttons, and checkboxes.

On first visit to the select box version of the product, clicking on the down arrow of any of the select boxes reveals how much that given option costs. The “+” sign could easily enough be changed to a hyphen or colon for consistency with this approach. Then if we make our selections in the order of the attributes as they appear on the page everything is fine: we select the size and the display price changes accordingly, then we go to foundation and make our selection based on the price of each option, then we go to steel frame and seeing the actual price of each option we make our choice. The display price reflects this accurately. But if we change our mind and go back to change any of our selections, we no longer see the actual price of the given options, we see the adjustment to the price that would be made if we chose something else. For example, if we chose a Double size initially, we would see that a King size would cost $400 more, not that a King size costs $1,000. In my view it would be clearer if the options maintained their original prices rather than changing to reflect the adjustment of changing them. With only the three attributes listed it could become confusing as to what things cost to begin with quite quickly. The radio button widget exhibits this same behavior, and the checkbox doesn’t work because it allows multiple selections. Then there’s the issue of screen real estate for lots of options. Of course this is not what the display price adjustment alternative is designed to do, so let’s look at the other alternative illustrated here

http://dtp.boxsand.com/

The display total price alternative also reveals how much given options cost when we click on the down arrow of the select boxes. The $0.00 price next to no-cost options isn’t ideal, but that’s the least of my worries. Much greater is that as soon as we select any option for any of the attributes, the prices of the remaining options are misleading. Even if we go in the order on the page, we have to remember that, for example, a Queen size bed cost $800, so the cost of a single box foundation isn’t really $850, it’s $50 ($850 - $800), and a steel frame isn’t really $875, it’s $25 ($875 - $800 - $50). If we go back and change the size then we have to remember that a King isn’t $1,075, it’s $1,000.

All I’m saying is that in my opinion it would be great to be able to list options whose prices don’t change when selected while changing the display price accordingly. If there was a way to concurrently display the prices of the selected options as for example here

http://www.usbeds.com/american_national_manufacturing_4.5_inch_expressio...

that would be icing on the cake. Thanks for all your hard work on this … uber module!

longwave’s picture

Status: Closed (works as designed) » Active

So the feature request here is to split "Update product display based on customer selections" into two separate options, "Update display price based on customer selections" (which would be the same as now, but only affect the display price) and "Update attribute options relative to current price" (which would be the same as now, but only affect the attribute fields)?

Grabby’s picture

Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

Yes, in essence that’s the feature request, though I think only the first split would be useful since in the second case I can’t imagine a situation when you’d want the attribute prices changing but not the display price.

longwave’s picture

Status: Closed (works as designed) » Active
mikeaja’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

Deleted

mikeaja’s picture

Status: Closed (works as designed) » Active

Sorry got confused!