We’ve got BIG NEWS that we are excited to share with you: Cratejoy is upgrading the way your Marketplace listings work! With our new Variant Pricing Feature you can set prices, SKUs, and inventory for subscription products on a variant combination level. (We are releasing this feature in phases to all of our sellers.)
Offer more choices to your customers and get more sales —without the hassle of creating listings for each variant— with this new feature!
In this post we’ll cover:
What is Variant Pricing?
Benefits of Variant Pricing
How to Set Up Variant Pricing
Variant Pricing FAQ
Watch the Cratejoy Product Team walk through how to set up and use Variant Pricing!
What is Variant Pricing?
Variant Pricing allows sellers to set their prices, SKUs, and inventory for subscription products on a variant combination level.
Previously, sellers were unable to set their own SKUs for their subscription products. Sellers were also restricted to setting their prices and inventory for subscription products at the product level.
Allowing sellers to set prices, SKUs, and inventory for subscription products on a variant combination level enables them to better represent their marketplace offerings and improve their listing quality.
Examples of variants:
- A coffee subscription box that offers 1, 5, or 10 lb bags of coffee at different price points
- A spa subscription box that offers different choices of bath bomb scents
- A comic book subscription box that offers different t-shirt sizes
- A craft subscription box that offers enough materials for 2 crafts or 4 crafts at different price points
Benefits of Variant Pricing
Here are some benefits of this new feature:
- Offer more customization and selection to your subscribers
- Subscribers value the experience of personalization
- Sell different versions of the same box on one listing
- Offering a lower cost/ mini version of your products will help increase sales
- Set different price points for different variants
- Offer more expensive/ luxury items without raising the prices for all subscribers
- Better control of your inventory
- Use variants to present your inventory more effectively
- Increase buyer confidence
- Customers are more likely to buy from a clear, concise listing where they can easily understand their purchasing options
- More opportunities for marketing/ getting invited to Cratejoy sales
- You can market each individual product you sell
- Cratejoy can merchandise your box more easily
With this new feature, each store can have variants on products separated out on individual listings. We’re putting the power into your hands to make the decisions that work best for your business!
How to Set Up Variant Pricing
Once Variant Pricing is enabled for your store, all new and duplicate products you create will have the Variant Pricing controls after the product is created.
For existing products, you can either duplicate a product or add variant pricing through a new button at the top of your Product Pages in the seller portal next to the Save button. Duplicating a product will let you preview what new controls Variant Pricing gives your product.
Read more about how to set up Variant Pricing here.
Example of how Variants display on your Cratejoy Marketplace Listing
Variant Pricing FAQ
Q. Is there a way to add variants to existing products?
- No. Not at this time. The recommended way to add variants to a product is to create a new product and hide the old product. Variants are a required, non-trivial choice from the buyer. When you add a new set of choices, there is no way for Cratejoy to generally and intelligently make that choice for buyers.
Q. Is there a way to automatically transfer existing subscribers to a new product?
- No, not at this time.
Q. What do I do with existing customers on old products?
- For short-lifetime subscriptions, the natural churn of subscriptions will move your active subscriptions over to the new product over time. You can also use the “Change Product” option in the Subscription View’s “Actions” menu to move long-running subscriptions over to the new product and make variant, term, and survey choices on behalf of the customer. Read more about the Change Product Tool here.
Q. How many variant combinations can I offer on one listing?
A. Currently Variant Pricing can support up to 2,000 variant combinations. We do not
recommend offering this many variants as it would be difficult to manage inventory and
SKUs if you offer this many combinations.
Q. What is the difference between the customer survey and product variants?
A. Variants are interchangeable variations of a product. From the size, color, style, etc. Your subscribers choose from the specific options you set up.
Surveys are a way to gain information from a subscriber without having to know all the options beforehand. Examples include ‘Do you have any allergies?’ or ‘When’s your birthday?’
Survey responses cannot be changed after a customer has ordered their subscription.
Variant selections can be updated by the customer at any time and will reflect on any unshipped shipments for that subscription. Read more about the difference between surveys and variants here.
Q. I use a fulfillment center. Should I use Variant Pricing?
A. Our team highly recommends using Variant Pricing if you use a fulfillment center. The different SKUs are needed to ensure that each box has the correct variants.
*IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are making changes to a subscription that change the general contents or price of the subscription, be sure to use the “Notify Customer” options when using the Change Product tool.*
Watch Cratejoy’s Product Team walk through how best to use Variant Pricing and answer many frequently asked questions.
Want to keep reading? We think you’ll like this blog post about how to create a high-quality listing on the Cratejoy Marketplace.
