Icons for product features

[martinkay]

The manufacturer of the products I sell uses little icons on the products so show which features or functions each product has. There are 12 possible icons and most products will have about 4 or 6 on them. What would be a sensible and efficient way to replicate this in my Actinic product layout?

[Mike Hughes]

With words.

Mike

[Duncan Rounding]

and the other way would be to create product level CVs for each icon and place them into the product layout with blockif around the code to only display if the CV is checked.

[Mike Hughes]

The key thing here is that product boxes and printed catalogs are short of space and will often use little icons to show which features a product has.

On the web though, you have all the space you need. Give the customer the information they need to make the purchase as clearly and with as little thinking required as you possible can.

Words are better than icons.

Mike

[leehack]

A picture paints a thousand words, so if you add a word to it also, you have 1001 words and the best of both worlds.

[martinkay]

I might try the CV option. I agree that words are good and also helps with the search engines, but these particular icons are so ubiquitous and well understood by customers it seems sensible to try and include them too as it's something you can quickly scan for. And if it then becomes just a case of checking a box when entering the product details to make an icon appear or not, that's ideal. How do I control where they appear (ideally I would want them in a row after the description text but before the price)?

[Duncan Rounding]

You will have to place the CVs in the product layout in the postion you want them.

[NormanRouxel]

You can automate this quite well. Create 12 product-level Variables called Feature01 - Feature12 (or use more meaningful names) of type True / False, the default value being false. Create 12 images to go with these.

Then in your product layout add snippets of code like (pseudo code here for readability).

<actinic:block if="Feature01 == TRUE">
<img src="feature01.gif" width="12" height="34" alt="Feature 01" title="Feature 01" />
</actinic:block>

And repeat for Feature2,3,etc.

See the Starter Guide and Help for info on how to create conditional blocks.

Now your products will have 12 settings available in the Properties tab. Set each you need to true and the image magically appears.

[martinkay]

That sounds just the job. A little project for Boxing Day, methinks.

[mash]

Strangely I was thinking on a similar requirement, in our store selling plants we have ones which are suitable for containers, new items, special plants and also keen to indicate if they are avilable for shipping. Felt an icon would be useful way to add this information to each product.

Interested to see how you get on, I will have a look at the starter guide to understand Conditional blocks as Norman suggested.

Kind regards Mash

[martinkay]

The job is done...! Boxing Day was mad so it turned out to be a New Year's job instead. See http://www.slotcarcentre.co.uk/acatalog/Road_cars.html or any other of the car pages. Took about half an hour to change the product layout (12 block ifs), another half an hour to source and size the images to 40px squares... and then a couple of hours going through the back catalogue and setting all the attributes to true or false! All as per Norman's instructions, so many thanks for that, it seems to have worked out just right.

[NormanRouxel]

A nicely done job.

One thing I noticed is that the Google Search is very prominent. I used it to search for a car (mistaking it for the site search) and it took me off site. You might lose customers the same way.

[martinkay]

Thanks for the pointer, I'll have a look at that. The Google search should be a walled garden of my site and a few others (in a separate window, and I get a commission on it) so hopefully I won't lose too many though.

[Darren B]

Perhaps it would help to put some mouse over text with the images so mouse over tells you what the icon means, would make it easier to understand IMHO

[martinkay]

Do they not already show that? It does on mine, using the alt tag.