Attribute templates are a great little built-in feature in Miva Merchant which allows you to easily apply an entire set of attributes to different products. The most common example of this is a store who sells clothes. Most likely the clothes are going to come in four sizes: S, M, L, and XL.

If you have a few hundred products, the task of going through and adding all four attributes to each product is not practical and very time consuming. The easier and more proficient way to do this would be to create an attribute template containing the different sizes offered, and then assign that template to each product.

Here is a simple example:

To create an attribute template click on the “Attribute Templates” link on the left side of the Miva Admin.

To create a new template, click on the “Add Template” Button on the right. It is going to ask you for two things: the template code, and the template prompt.

Template Code: This is a unique code you give to your template. It can contain letters and numbers but no spaces.

Template Prompt: This is the text that will display in the dropdown menu when you go select an attribute type.

The last two on this list are Attribute Templates. Choose a Template Prompt which will enable you to easily find the attribute.

Once you click “Add” a new tab will appear called “Attributes and Options” This is where you are going to actually add the different attributes such as Small, Medium, Large and X-Large.

Click on the “Add Attribute” Button.

Here you set up your attribute. An attribute consists of two parts. The actual attribute is just a code and a prompt. This differentiates each attribute. Then there are the attribute options. These are the small, medium and large options you want to show on your product page.

Give the attribute a code and a prompt. For our example I am going to use “SIZE” for the Code and “Select Size” for the prompt. Here, the Prompt is what the customer is going to see on the product page. Then select how you want the attribute options to be displayed. I am going to choose “Drop-down list”. The little checkbox under the “R” is to indicate if the attribute is required. Check this box if it applies to your attribute. Then hit the “Add” button.

This brings up the screen above. Now that our attribute is created, it is time to create the attribute options. Each one needs a Code and a Prompt. For Small I am using “S” as the code and “Small” as the prompt. The price cost and weight fields allow you to further modify the attribute.

Price – This allows you to add on an additional amount to the price of the product. For example, say you want to charge $5.00 more for a shirt when someone selects XL. You would add, 5.00 into the price field.

Cost – This is the same as price, but affects the cost field. Usually this is where the actual cost of the product is stored. Leave it at 0.00 if nothing needs to be changed.

Weight – This will add additional weight to the product. This is helpful to calculate correct shipping charges.

Enter all the attribute options you need for this attribute. When you are finished hit “Update”

You attribute template is now complete. The last step is to assign it to your products.
In the Miva Admin, navigate to a product where you wish to add the attribute template you just created. Click on the Attributes tab at the top. Click the “Add Attribute” button in the top right. Now from the drop down menu, select the name of the attribute you just created, and hit Update. You do not need to fill in any of the other fields such as prompt or code. All these will automatically be populated by the attribute template.

That’s it. Verify that is worked properly by finding the product in your store.

It worked. Our attribute template was applied to this product. To make changes just edit your attribute template. The changes will automatically propagate throughout all your products, where the attribute template is assigned.

You can read Miva full documentation about attribute templates here. It is for Miva 4, but it is really similar in Miva 5.

About the Author: Brennan Heyde is an e-commerce consultant working in San Diego, Ca. He specializes in online marketing and SEO for e-commerce.  Have a struggling e-commerce website? – Contact Brennan today for a site analysis.