Product Attributes Overview

Product attributes define the characteristics of products, enabling you to uniquely describe a product. They can be options, properties, or extras, depending on what type of information they are conveying and whether they should be configurable by shoppers.

Attribute Types

Refer to the following table for more information about each type:

OptionsOption attributes include details about a product that shoppers can configure, such as size or color.

When you assign an option to a product, Kibo eCommerce generates a new product variation (or unique SKU). For example, your shirt options may include sizes, colors, and a graphic image. Refer to Product Variations for more information about product variations.

Refer to Option Attributes for more information about creating options and assigning them to products.
PropertiesProperty attributes include inherent details about a product that shoppers cannot configure, such as brand or material.

Properties are useful when viewing reports about your sales. For example, you may offer a 100% cotton shirt of a leading brand, and you want to compare its sales to other shirt materials that you offer.

Refer to Property Attributes for more information about creating properties and assigning them to products. Any property can also be enabled as a "variant property," which allows the attribute to have a different value depending on which product variant is currently selected. Refer to Variant Properties for more information.
ExtrasExtra attributes includes add-on configurations that shoppers configure and usually includes an extra price, such as a monogram or gift wrapping.

Extras are useful when you want to upsell an item or another product. For example, you may offer monogramming on the chest left side or custom team text across the center back. You can also make another product an extra, such as a camera mount that can be sold along with a camera.

When you select another product as an extra, you can select standard products, product variants, and bundle components. You can also customize the label that appears for the product extra in the storefront.

Refer to Extra Attributes for more information about creating extras and assigning them to products.

For example, you sell shirts so you would have the following shirt attributes:

Diagram illustrating a standard shirt product with options for size and color, a monogram extra, brand property, and cotton property

Because all your shirts have one or more of the above product attributes, you need to add all of these possible attributes to Kibo eCommerce in order to account for all of your shirts.

You assign the attribute's type when creating and configuring product types. For more information about product types, refer to Product Types.

Attribute Input Types and Values

Attributes can have different input types that determine not only how you enter the values for the attribute, but also how shoppers can select attributes in the case of options, or enter values in the case of extras. For example, your shirt size attribute should be a number (2, 4, 6, etc.), while your monogram attribute should be a text string with a character limit you define. Kibo eCommerce supports the following input types:

  • List
  • Text box
  • Text area
  • Yes/No
  • Date

In addition, you can determine if an attribute value is required for either the shopper configuring the product at checkout or for the Kibo eCommerce user creating a new product definition. Each attribute value created for a predefined list is called a vocabulary value, which lets you create attribute values as localizable content.