Creating Bundles
With Product Experience Manager, you can create and manage bundles. A bundle is a purchasable product comprising one or more products that you want to sell together. You can have:
- Dynamic bundles. Dynamic bundles allow your shoppers to choose their own options in a bundle.
- Bundles of bundles. Your bundle consists of child bundles.
Dynamic Bundles
Dynamic bundles empower you to create customizable product sets where shoppers can select from a curated list of products. Think of it as offering your customers the freedom to build their own bundle within the guidelines you set.
Key Concepts
Dynamic bundles provide merchants with granular control over every aspect of the customer's selection process. Here's a breakdown of the key configuration capabilities:
Component Selection Configuration:
For each component within a dynamic bundle, you can define both a minimum and a maximum number of product options that a shopper must or can select. This allows you to:
- Offer Unlimited Choices: If you do not specify any minimum or maximum values for the product options within a component, your shoppers can select any combination of the available product options in that component, from zero up to all of them.
- Ensure a Minimum Purchase: By setting a minimum greater than zero, you can require shoppers to choose at least a certain number of options from a component. For example, requiring the selection of at least two accessories for a camera bundle.
- Limit Choices: The maximum value prevents shoppers from selecting more than a specified number of options within a component. For instance, limiting the choice of snacks in a movie night bundle to a maximum of three.
- Skip Components: By setting the minimum selection value for a component to zero, you can make that entire component optional for the shopper. This means customers can choose to either select products from that component or skip it entirely without affecting their ability to purchase the rest of the bundle. An example could be offering an optional extended warranty component in an electronics bundle.
Component Option Quantity Configuration:
Going beyond just the number of different options selected within a component, you can also control the quantity of each individual option that a shopper can choose. This allows for even more granular control over the bundle contents and provides deeper customization possibilities. You can configure a minimum and maximum quantity for each selectable product option within a component:
- Fixed-Quantity: If you do not set a minimum or maximum quantity for a component option, the shopper will be limited to the default quantity that you have set for that specific option within the bundle configuration. This is useful when you want to ensure a specific number of a particular item is included if the shopper selects it. For instance, in a "Build Your Own 6-Pack," if you set the default quantity of a specific craft beer to 1 and don't specify a min or max, a shopper can only add one of that beer to their 6-pack.
- Minimum Quantity: This sets the lowest number of units a shopper must select for a specific product option if they choose it at all. For example, in a "Mix and Match Socks" component, you might set the minimum quantity for each sock style to 2, forcing shoppers to select at least two of any chosen style.
- Maximum Quantity: This defines the highest number of units a shopper can select for a single product option. In the same "Mix and Match Socks" example, you might set the maximum quantity for each style to 4, preventing shoppers from selecting more than four of the same sock style.
Default Component Options:
You can designate specific product options within each component as the default selections. This is particularly useful when the bundle is initially displayed in the cart or when a shopper hasn't yet customized their choices. By configuring defaults, you can:
- Pre-populate the Bundle: Offer a suggested set of items that are automatically included in the bundle when it's added to the cart. For a "Home Office Setup" bundle, you might default to including a popular ergonomic mouse and keyboard.
- Highlight Recommended Items: Showcase products that are frequently purchased together or are strategically important. When offering a new flavor of coffee beans, you could set it as the default option in a coffee lover's bundle.
- Provide a Starting Point: Give shoppers a convenient base configuration that they can either accept or modify according to their preferences. This can be especially helpful for complex bundles with many options.
Bundle Configuration
Dynamic bundles have a bundle_configuration
which describe the options selected.
- Once your bundles are published in a catalog, a shopper can select the products they want.
- Use Get a product in a catalog release to check a
bundle_configuration
. - Use the configure a shopper bundle endpoint to store a shopper's selections. The response from the configure a shopper bundle endpoint updates the
bundle_configuration
with the product options a shopper selects. In your storefront, you can display this as a summary of the product options a shopper has selected.
Creating Dynamic Bundles: An Overview
- Create your products.
- Create a bundle.
- Specify minimum and/or maximum values for the number of product options that can be selected within the bundle. For example, if you want the shopper to select exactly 4 out of 10 options, set both the minimum and maximum values to 4 for each of the 10 product options.
- For each product option in the bundle, specify if it is a default option by adding
"default": true
to the product options that you want to be pre-selected for the shopper. - Publish the bundle to your catalog so you can display the products to your shoppers in your storefront.
- When a shopper interacts with the bundle on your storefront, they can select the products they want from the list of options. Use the configure a shopper bundle endpoint to capture the shoppers selections. This updates the
bundle_configuration
with the product options chosen by a shopper. - Once a shopper has configured their bundle, use the add a product to a cart endpoint to add the selected bundle to the shopper’s cart.
- When the shopper proceeds to checkout, the selected product options from the bundle are included in the order.
Bundles of Bundles
Your bundle can consist of child bundles. This is useful if you have a base product that is made-up of child products and the pricing of the base product changes, depending on the child products a customer chooses. This can be represented by creating a parent bundle that is made-up of other child bundles.
For example, you may sell sofas. For each sofa that you sell, your customers can choose a fabric, a sofa size, and a leg color. The sofas are the parent bundle. The sofa size, fabric, and leg color are the child bundles. If a customer chooses a large sofa, then the cost of the fabric increases.
You create a bundle of bundles by adding a child bundle as an option of a component of another bundle.
- You cannot have more than one level of child bundles. In other words, a child bundle cannot have a child bundle as a component.
- A parent bundle can contain both bundle and product components.
- Both parent and child bundles can be either fixed or dynamic in a bundle of bundles.
Adding Products From Bundles of Bundles to Carts
When using bundles of bundles, only products from child bundles should be added to a cart. This is because if you add a parent bundle to a cart and call the cart, the cart returns information about the parent bundle and the name of the child bundle, but no child bundle components are returned.
When designing your storefront, you must only allow child bundles to be added to carts.
Creating bundles of bundles: an overview
To create a bundle of bundles, simply add a bundle as a component to another bundle.
- Create your products.
- Create all your child bundles.
- Create a parent bundle and specify the product ID of your child bundle as an option of a component in your bundle. You cannot have more than 1500 options in a bundle.
Before you Begin
- Ensure that you have created at least one price book.
- Ensure that all products that you want to add to the bundle are created with the required details.
- Ensure any child bundles that you want to add to a parent bundle are created with the required details.
A bundle without a SKU must have a minimum quantity of components and options. Either:
- a single option with a minimum quantity of 2.
- 2 options, each with a minimum quantity of 1.
Commerce Manager does not sort components and component options. You must program your storefront to sort the components and component products in the order that you want.
Procedure
The steps below describe how to complete the basic information for a bundle and adding the components and product options that make up a bundle.
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Go to Products > Bundles.
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Select Create new bundle.
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(Optional) Expand Locale drop-down list. The languages you have configured in Store Settings > Locale are displayed first. Custom product locales are displayed underneath. See Configuring Locales.
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In Basic Information, provide the following:
- Name: Name for the bundle.
- (Optional) SKU Number: The SKU of the bundle.
- Commodity Type: Select whether the product is physical or digital.
- (Optional) Description: A description for the bundle.
- In Product Tags, either:
- enter a tag and press Enter. Repeat this step for each tag you want to use.
- select View as a comma separated list and enter a comma separated list of tags.
- Slug: A label for the bundle that is used in the URL paths. A slug can contain any combination of letters, numbers, periods, hyphens, and underscores. No spaces or other characters are allowed. By default, the bundle name is used as the slug.
- (Optional) External Reference: A unique attribute associated with the product. This could be an external reference from a separate company system, for example. The maximum length is 2048 characters.
- (Optional) MPN: Manufacture Part Number (MPN).
- (Optional) UPC/EAN: Universal Product Code (UPC) or European Article Number (EAN) used to scan a product in a Point of Sale (POS) system.
- Bundle products can have rich media assets, such as product images or a file containing additional product details. Only the main image for a bundle is shown. You can only replace or delete an existing main_image. If there are other files associated with bundle, they are not shown here. You can go to Media Management for a product to manage these files. To add media for the bundle, do one of the following:
- Drag and drop the file from your local directory.
- Click Choose File and browse and add the file.
- In the add by URL field, add the URL for the media. To delete media from Commerce, go to Products > Media. See Files in Media.
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In Manage Bundle Components, add the components and component products to include in your bundle.
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Select Add Component.
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(Optional) You can specify a sort value. A sort value must be a number. You can specify any numbers that you want. For example, 1, 2, 3, or 100, 90, 80, and so on. The sort value is visible when you add the products to your catalogs. You can then use the sort value to program your storefront to display the bundle components in the order that you want.
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In Component Name, enter a name for the component. The component name is the name that is displayed in your storefront.
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In Component Key, enter a unique identifier to identify a component. The component key can be anything you like but it should be relatively short and must not contain any special characters.
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(Optional) In Minimum, enter the minimum number of products a customer can buy.
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(Optional) In Maximum, enter the maximum number of products a customer can buy.
noteIf you do not specify any minimum or maximum values for the product options in your components, your shoppers can select any combination of product options.
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To add products to a component, select Add Products. The Add products to a bundle component pane is displayed. A list of all the available products in your store is displayed
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You can add as many options you want. You can also filter the products by SKU, Product Name, and Product status, or scroll through the list.
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Select + next to the products you want to add.
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Close the Add products to a bundle component pane. The products you selected are added to the component.
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In Order, you can specify a sort value for the product. A sort value must be a number. You can specify any numbers that you want. For example, 1, 2, 3, or 100, 90, 80, and so on. The sort value is visible when you add the products to your catalogs. You can then use the sort value to program your storefront to display the products in the component in the order that you want.
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All the products are listed with the following details:
- Name: The name of the product.
- SKU: The SKU of the product.
- Status: Whether the product is Live or Draft.
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(Optional) By default, the quantity you configured while creating the product is displayed in Quantity. You can enter a new quantity, depending on your requirements.
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(Optional) In Default, select the products that you want to configure as default options. Each component can have as many defaults as the maximum number of products set for the bundle. A shopper can either select the bundle with the default products or choose products from all the components. Shoppers must either select products for all components or use the default options for all components; they cannot choose products for only one component and leave the others with default options.
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Repeat steps 6 to 19 for each component you want to add to the bundle.
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Select Save Bundle.