[intro]If you had Products with Variants that appeared in drop-down menus on the Product Page prior to the release of Pattern Variants, Size Variants and Colour Swatches, in this Guide you’ll learn how to convert your Variants from the traditional drop-down versions. Before you begin, it’s essential that you have Products with drop-down style Variants on your EKM online shop and that you have installed the Import/Export System feature which you’ll need to use in order to edit your Products using Spreadsheets.
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This advanced Guide will explain the process of editing an existing Product with two sets of drop-down style Variant Choices - ‘Size’ and ‘Pattern’ - so that the format of the Variants is changed when viewed on the Product Page.

A Product with Drop-down Variants

A Product with Pattern Variants

You may need to prepare images beforehand; in this Guide, when completed, my Product will have its Variants represented with Size and Pattern Variants. If you wish to use Pattern Variants, you will need to create Pattern Images:

A Pattern Image

Each image must be square and measure 1024 x 1024 pixels. You can upload images that are as large as 2000 x 2000 pixels or as small as 500 x 500 pixels as these will automatically be resized but we recommend 1024 x 1024 pixels for the very best results. These images need to be uploaded to the Product & Category Images area of your File Manager.

However, if your Products do not have patterns and are instead available in solid colours, then Colour Swatches may be the best option for you, as shown in this example:

If you’d like to use Colour Swatches instead of Pattern Variants, you will need to note down the hex codes of each different colour choice. If you already work with a graphic design program such as Photoshop, you can easily find out what your hex codes are there.

However, if you’re not using a graphic design program yourself, you can also find out what hex codes your colours are quite easily by using a free extension on Google Chrome (an extension, if you’ve not used one before, is an app you can add to your Google Chrome browser which will help you perform specific tasks. Many of them are free of charge and very useful!).

If you click here, you can install the ColorPick Eyedropper extension to Google Chrome. When installed, you’ll see it as a little colour wheel symbol in the top right-hand corner of Google Chrome:

To use the extension, simply click the colour wheel symbol and hover your cursor over an online image to see what colour it is, like this:

The hex code you need to copy from the Colorpick Eyedropper is the six digit number prefaced with a hashtag - # - symbol. 

1. When you have gathered together the hex codes for each of your colour choices or uploaded the Pattern Images to your File Manager, you then need to export the Products you’d like to edit the Variants of to a spreadsheet using the Import/Export System. Delete the rows containing any Products that don’t have Variants or Products that you don’t want to edit.

This should leave you with a list of existing Products and their Variants. Your next step is to delete the rows containing the Products, leaving just the ‘Product Variant’ rows intact. The Product Variant rows are still identified by the system using the data in the ID column - but as we only need to amend the Product Variant rows, the Product rows can be deleted.

2. When you have completed this task, highlight the A ‘Action’ column and use the Find/Replace tool to add the ‘Add’ command:

3. Your next step is to scroll through your spreadsheet to locate the VariantNames column. On the Product I’ve used in this example, the first set of Variants are called ‘Size’, whilst the second set are called ‘Pattern’ - which obviously relates to the colour/style of the Product.
With this in mind, you need to use the Find/Replace Tool on again and amend the VariantTypes column, changing:

DROPDOWN:DROPDOWN to SIZE:COLOUR

4. You now need to copy the contents of the VariantItem1 column in the VariantItem1Data column:

5. Now we need to amend the data for the ‘Pattern’ Variants. On my test Product, I have four possible choices; ‘Autumn’, ‘Leaves’, ‘Roses’ and ‘Snails’. I’ve already uploaded my four Pattern Images to the File Manager, and I now need to copy the URL of each Pattern Image into the VariantItem2Data column, after the choice listed in the VariantItem2 column:

However, if instead of Pattern Images I wanted to use solid Colour Swatches, we would need to populate the VariantItem2Data column with the appropriate hex codes for each of my colour choices, like this:

[remember] You can use both Pattern Variants and Colour Variants together. On your spreadsheet, you could have some of the Variants represented by a hex code for colour and others represented by an image URL for a pattern. [/remember]

7. After you have applied either a hex code value or the URL to a Pattern Image to the VariantItem2Data column for each of your choices, you then need to save your spreadsheet before uploading it back onto your EKM online shop using this Guide.

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[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert or the Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]