Magento Product Types Explained

Magento gives you control over your products in a way that few open source eCommerce platforms allow. The ability to have the control and flexibility to set up products to the specific needs of the store owner is incredibly enticing, thus allowing Magento to grow rapidly and gain a large portion of the eCommerce market share. While this customization is a great tool, if used improperly it can lead to a very frustrating experience and many hours wasted in the sizable Magento admin panel. Before setting up products, the first place to start is understanding the different types of products offered by Magento.

Magento Simple Products:

Simple products are, as the name implies, the easiest product type to understand, but also, in most cases, the building block to your Magento website. They are typically a physical product with no variations such as size or color. They are associated with a SKU and can be shipped anywhere your shipping options are configured for. A simple product, as well as any product type will start with the 40+ default attributes in Magento such as name, sku, price, description, short description, etc. You can also create custom attributes and assign them to your simple products or any of the other product types.

Example:

Below is a picture of a shoe. This shoe is your default Magento store’s shoe because your business is called redshoesrus.com. It is the default product on your site. The customer can’t change the color, size or any other options about this shoe. If they want a different size they would have to select a different simple product. So the category page on your site would be filled with red shoes that are sizes 9, 9.5, 10, 10.5 etc. With simple products a customer can’t change the options, only the store manager can. On the front end of the site if someone sees this particular product and wants a size 11, you can write in the description that it is size 11 etc, but no customer could change any of the options. In other words, you have to have a simple product in order to start a site, but they are not necessarily the product type you want being displayed to the customer.

Magento Configurable Products:

This is where Magento’s product system starts to shine. Configurable products are products that have multiple options. They also allow you to control inventory for one products multiple options in one place. With simple products you can only control the inventory of the size 11 red shoe for that one product. With a configurable product you can select inventory for the multiple varations all from the configurable product settings.
Example:
Think about the shoe above. You have now decided that the redshoesrus.com business model is not panning out, you want more colors, more sizes, so you create a number of configurable products. This allows the customer to choose size, color, width and that is only the start. With a configurable product you can add any option that is allowed by Magento’s attribute system. This can open up a world of product offerings for a customer shopping online that will keep them coming back.

Magento Grouped Products:

A grouped product is used to bring together a collection of simple products that “fit” together.
Example:
So your shoe business has been taking off since your introduction of multi-size and multi-color shoes. You decide to introduce dress shoes into the catalog. But you want to offer more than dress shoes, you want to offer a package that includes everything you need to maintain dress shoes. You add shoe polish and a brush as simple products to your store and want to pair it with each purchase of a dress shoe. By creating a grouped product you can include the pair of shoes, 2 brushes and 1 bottle of shoe polish. Using the grouped product you can set discounts on purchasing these items as a package deal.

Magento Virtual Products:

Magento Virtual products aren’t something you download, but rather a service that you offer. They are a specialized simple product that remove the requirement for it to be shipped.
Example:
Now that the shoe business has exploded you want to move into adding more departments to your business. You decide to add an on demand shoe cleaning service, maybe you even create an app for it. Customers can go onto the website and purchase shoe cleaning via the virtual product in Magento. Your service then follows up with an email to schedule the cleaning, but the purchasing of the service on the site is where to use a Virtual Product. You can also use the new recurring profile section to have a schedule monthly service, such as if someone wanted monthly shoe cleaning services.

Magento Bundled Products:

Magento Bundled products are either simple or virtual products that can’t be sold separately or out of the bundle. They are products that need to be used in tandem to bring the correct experience to the customer. The good news about forcing a customer to select this bundle is you can offer options for each individual simple product.
Example:
In the failure of your on-demand shoe cleaning department, (needless to say things aren’t going well) you make a rash decision. With all purchases of dress shoes going forward you have to purchase 1 shoe cleaning service. You can’t purchase the dress shoes with out it, or the shoe cleaning service by itself. That means each size and color of dress shoes must be bought through this bundled product.

Magento Downloadable Products:

Magento Downloadable products are anything that can be downloaded from the site that you sell. It can be anything from an eBook to a power point presentation.
Example:
The shoe business has not gone well. The forced bundled products has sent the customers running for the hills or off to their competitors. The last thing you have selling on your website is a small eBook about how not to run a shoe business. It’s actually selling quite well.