Attributes

Attributes are the building blocks of your product catalog, and describe specific characteristics of a product. Here are a few ways you can use attributes to enhance the shopping experience:

• Input controls for product options
• Provide additional information on product pages
• Search parameters
• In product comparison reports
• As layered navigation “Shop By” parameters
• In catalog and shopping cart price rules

Each attribute contains a value that describes a characteristic of a product, such as “color” or “fabric.” The “color” attribute with the “dropdown” input type might contain many values, although only a few apply to any given product. Because a single attribute can be used with multiple products, your store needs to have only one attribute for color. You can create as many attributes as you need, and assign the most common value as the default, to make it easy for your customers to select the option.

The attributes that make up a product are combined into an attribute set, which is used as template to create new products. The attribute set determines which fields are included in a product, and how they are grouped in the Product Information panel. Magento has a default attribute set with a standard selection of product attributes such as Name, Price, Description, and so on. If you want to keep it simple, you can use the default attribute set for your entire catalog.