Product Types Overview

The Marketplace Platform allows for a variety of different Product Types in the Admin from online only products, to products with various combinations of children products. This is broken down in the following:

Simple Product

A Simple Product is a very common type of product. It is a physical product sold as a single item which has no variations.

Example: A computer mouse, or a dish rack, items sold in a fixed size, colour, weight etc.

Configurable Product

A Configurable Product is the parent product, which will contain multiple simple products that are variation options following the same SKU.

Example: A T-shirt, that comes in multiple sizes (S / M / L) and multiple colours (Black / White / Blue). The SKU for the Configurable parent product could be tshirt005. The Simple children products will include the variation in the SKU, which will look as follows:

Configurable Product T-shirt SKU: tshirt005
Simple Product Small Black T-shirt SKU: tshirt005-small-black
Simple Product Medium Black T-shirt SKU: tshirt005-medium-black
Simple Product Large Black T-shirt SKU: tshirt005-large-black
Simple Product Small White T-shirt SKU: tshirt005-small-white
Simple Product Medium White T-shirt SKU: tshirt005-medium-white

And so forth for all possible combinations.

Virtual Product

A Virtual Product is a type of product which has no physical properties when sold. Virtual products do not require shipments / delivery.

Example: A 5 year warranty, or a 1 hour consultation service, or a subscription to a software license or access to a product.

Downloadable Products

A Downloadable Product behaves in a similar way to a Virtual Product, in that it has no physical properties. The difference here, is that after a customer purchases this product, they will be able to download the file that was attached for this product type. You may also include sample files to provide customers a preview of the product to entice them to buy the full item.

You may set restrictions such as amount of download per customer.

Example: A PDF E-book, or a collection of files/imagery that can be used as templates or stock photos.

Grouped Products

A Grouped Product is a set of Simple or Virtual products that are similar or related, and presented as a single product that can allow customers to buy one or all products in the group. This is typically used to allow customers to easily buy multiples of different variations of the same item or similar items, where they can dictate the quantity of each item in the group.

When the products are added to the cart, they are added individually as the Simple or Virtual Products.

Example: A set of elastic bands, which can be purchased individually as various different strengths, or multiple as a set.

Bundle Products

A Bundle Product is a collection of specifically targeted Simple or Virtual products, that are combined together in the cart. Customers can customise the product if it has variations or options, however they must buy ALL items in the bundle (no choices to remove certain products).

Example: A gaming bundle which contains a specific gamer mouse, gamer keyboard, mousepad and a headset. Customers may be able to choose between 3 types of gamer mouse, however a mouse must be selected and included in their purchase of the bundle.