Overview

Attributes and Attribute sets form the foundation of both the Magento and MicroBiz Product Catalogs. If  you sell a large number of products with diverse attributes you need to keep your attributes and attribute sets organized so you can create new products quickly.

MicroBiz might be easier for you

• MicroBiz will create your simple items automatically when you define the configurable item. All simple items will get the same cost and price - these can be changed later if you like. You can also go through and change the SKU,UPC or anything else in the simple item if you like. In some cases this will be an easier way to work than creating all the simple items in Magento.

Use Attribute Roles

If you are a softgoods retailer many of your attributes will be used to create sizes, subsizes and colors - use the attribute role to designate which are which. This will be useful in the near future when we introduce matrix data entry - but it also makes it simpler now to create products because these attributes are organised a little better for you when creating configurable items.

Group Sizes Together

As you can see from the example above creating size 'runs' that match the customer's expected choices will make things easier for you when creating items.

• Don't make one big attribute called sizes with 50-100 sizes in it - it's too hard to quickly find what you want. 
• Group Sizes and subsizes into distinct attribute sets like men's shoes 6-12 in one attribute and Men's Pants 28-42 in another. This will allow you take advantage of dimensional size matrix features.
  

Name:  Wmn’s Shoes 2 – 10 (UK)

 Name:  Men’s Shoes 4 – 16 (US)

Name:  Men’s Shoes 36-49 (EU)

Group Attributes together in Attribute Sets

Group attributes for similar products into attribute sets. So all your apparel attributes will be grouped into your apparel attribute set, all your footwear attributes are in your footwear attribute set. Now you can quickly find the attributes and attribute options you want when creating new items.

Tip: You can hide or reveal unused attributes in MicroBiz. So you can decide whether unused attributes are visible on the edit product screen; Attributes have an Apply To field. Set it to none to always hide unused attributes. Set it to Configurable to show unused attributes when editing configurable items and so on.

Examples of Attributes Grouped in Attribute Sets

Each Attribute may contain between 2 and 20 or so sizes. And Each attribute set contains between 2 and 10 or so attributes. This helps organize

Sort Your Sized Attributes

For each of the attributes above you will probably want to sort the sizes to make sure they are displayed in the order that makes sense to you. To see XS S M L XL 2X 3X you need to define Adult XS-3XL like this

..and so forth otherwise they will sort like this 2X 3X L M S XL XS ....

Tip - What Sizes and SubSizes to Create

• When creating the simple items for a Configurable item create all the sizes you are likely to stock, buy or special order not just the sizes and colors you are receiving in your first shipment.

Colors

• Colors can be especially problematic in that they can be very large lists full of duplicates. 
• Create a small basic colors list for items without exotic colors.
• Suppliers with very specific color lists e.g. Gray/Red/Blk D7854, Wht/Red/Blk W7845  should be listed separately in their own attribute list such as Adidas Turf Shoes 2014.