Beyond Standard: Implementing Clickable Variant Images and Order Pad Functionality on BigCommerce

Enhancing BigCommerce Product Pages: Advanced Variant Selection and Bulk Ordering

For e-commerce merchants dealing with products that boast numerous variations, the standard BigCommerce product page, while robust, sometimes falls short of delivering the most intuitive and efficient user experience. A common request from businesses, especially those with B2B models or extensive catalogs, is to move beyond simple dropdown variant selectors towards more visual and bulk-ordering functionalities. This community thread highlights two such advanced customization needs: making variant images directly clickable to add to cart, and creating an 'order pad' or 'matrix' style product page for simultaneous multi-variant purchases.

The Merchant's Challenge: Visual Selection and Bulk Ordering

The original poster, Lou Butt, outlined a clear vision for their BigCommerce store, centered around products like candles with many aroma variations, each with its own image. Their requests were twofold:

1. Clickable Variant Images: Currently, selecting an aroma from a dropdown updates the main product image. The desire is to reverse this – making the variant images displayed below the main image clickable, so that clicking an image directly selects that specific aroma variant and allows it to be added to the basket. This shifts the interaction from text-based selection to visual selection.
2. Order Pad / Matrix-Style Product Page: The more ambitious request was for an 'order pad' functionality. This would involve listing all product variations (e.g., 10 candle aromas) on a single page, each with its own quantity input box. Customers could then specify quantities for multiple variations (e.g., 6 of one aroma, 4 of another) and add them all to the cart in one go, rather than individually.

BigCommerce's Native Limitations and Expert Insights

As confirmed by the replies from Daniel Olvera and Solomon Lite, these functionalities are not natively supported by BigCommerce's out-of-the-box product page behavior. The platform's default setup treats variant images primarily as visual aids that update upon option selection, not as direct 'add-to-cart' triggers. Similarly, the concept of a multi-quantity, multi-variant order form on a single product page goes beyond standard BigCommerce templates.

Implementing Clickable Variant Images:

Solomon Lite's detailed response clarifies that achieving clickable variant images requires significant theme-level customization:

• Custom Handling of Variant Selection Logic: The default logic needs to be overridden to map image clicks to specific option values.
• Modified Image Gallery: The product image gallery must be altered to recognize clicks on variant images as a selection event.
• Controlled Add-to-Cart Action: This selection then needs to trigger the appropriate add-to-cart action for that specific variant.

This typically involves custom JavaScript development to manipulate the Stencil theme's front-end behavior.

Building an Order Pad / Matrix Product Page:

The order pad functionality is even more complex. It transforms the standard product page into a dynamic ordering interface:

• Custom Templates: Requires custom Stencil templates to display all variants simultaneously, often in a table or grid format.
• Custom JavaScript Handling: Extensive JavaScript is needed to manage individual quantity inputs for each variant, calculate totals, and handle the bulk add-to-cart action (which might involve BigCommerce's Storefront API for optimal performance).
• Careful Inventory and Option-ID Mapping: Ensuring that selected quantities correctly correspond to inventory levels and unique variant IDs is crucial to prevent errors in pricing, stock control, and cart behavior.

Daniel Olvera also suggested that some advanced themes might include 'product pick lists' with quantity selectors, or that setting variants as individual products on category pages could be a workaround. However, the latter often sacrifices the benefits of true product variations.

Pathways to Solution

For merchants like Lou Butt who lack coding expertise, the options generally boil down to:

• Advanced Themes: While rare, some highly specialized or premium themes might offer partial implementations of these features. However, they may not perfectly match specific business requirements.
• Apps/Extensions: The BigCommerce Marketplace offers various apps that enhance product options or bulk ordering, but finding one that precisely fits both requirements and integrates seamlessly can be challenging. Many apps address only parts of the functionality.
• Custom Development: This is often the most robust and flexible solution. Engaging a BigCommerce development expert or agency (like Big Migration) allows for tailored solutions that precisely meet unique business needs, leveraging Stencil theme customization and potentially the BigCommerce APIs for complex interactions. This ensures full control over design, functionality, and integration with other store processes.

In conclusion, while these advanced product page functionalities are not native to BigCommerce, they are certainly achievable through strategic theme customization and development. Merchants looking to implement such features should be prepared to invest in custom solutions to deliver a truly optimized shopping experience.