Online Catalog (table format)

  • redspot

    (@redspot)


    8 years ago

    [ Moderator note: moved to Fixing WordPress. ]

    Hi

    I am about to quote on a new site for a client and am having trouble figuring out how to achieve their goal.

    They want their print catalog online as an interactive form where the customer can choose the quantity of the item they want and then enquire for a price. There are numerous variations of each product and they really need to be displayed in a table grid format, as they are engineering products.

    Are my choices either:
    An online form – my problem with this is there are 300+ products so that makes for an extremely long form! If I break it up into different sections, it still will be a very long page.

    An online store – thinking WooCommerce, with the transactional functionality turned off. Here, I would need to figure out how to display the variations in a grid format.

    I am not a developer so will be relying on plugins, and possibly outsourcing the harder parts of the configuration.

    Please advise which is the best way to go about this as I am stuck, and whether I am missing any potential issues.

    Thanks in advance ??

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    Huge tables do not make for a very nice visual user interface and can be prone to user errors. Would the product variations be conducive to cascading dropdowns or filters? Like you see on many sites with a wide variety of items where the first selection determines what options are available in the next dropdown or filter list. Each selection narrows the field further until all the matching items fit nicely on one page.

    I’m unsure of available plugins, but the logic is not any different than cascading menus and there are a number of mega menu plugins. Maybe one of these mega menus could be adapted. There may be something more specific, it’s a common need. It’s just that I’ve always built my own so I’m not knowledgeable of available plugins. Other things that use similar logic are expert systems and troubleshooting apps. Also classic taxonomic selections, like ones sometimes used for biologic identification.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • The topic ‘Online Catalog (table format)’ is closed to new replies.