How to Design A Massive Custom Product

Hello!

I am creating a custom product for my site, and I have this idea where the customer can choose what they want from the very beginning. I know the website offers variants to products, but this is larger than than the 8 variants you can create.

Imagine walking in Blaze's Pizza, or Chipotle, or even Subway. You start with the base of the dish, the meat, the cheese, the toppings, all the way to the end. I want to do this with a product. Is there a way to create something that large, where size, shape, style, color of thread, page, paper weight, optional add ons and more can be created for a completely customized experience?

Any insight would be appreciated.

Typically the way to do this is by setting multiple variants for one main product:

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206540687-Adding-product-variants

Hello Ziggy,

I did find this, and with the level of customization needed, this would not be enough options. I think I'm going to need a custom product plugin because of how many variables.

There is size, style, paper, paper color, paper wight, thread, thread color, Page design type, etc. It goes well beyond the 8 options they give us.

Any idea on good plugins for that?

I don't know of any plugin that allows you to surpass the 250 variants limit. You may have to subdivide your products and have a good filtering system. Perhaps separate out the paper sizes?

I did look into subdividing the products, and I believe I can make it work, but it would requite a massive hierarchy of pages. While doable, I was hoping to find a plugin that would be a little more user friendly. 

Another user posted this link in another thread, and this would be ideal, but I haven't been able to find something similiar.  https://truenutrition.com/p-6704-custom-oatmeal-food-mix.aspx

That's a Shopify website, they are much more focused on commerce solutions than Squarespace, but Squarespace is improving.

Gotcha. So I assume there isn't much I could do within Square Spaces current platform to attain something such as that?

I really appreciate the time and info. You've been very helpful. 

1 hour ago, timothylyonjr said:

So I assume there isn't much I could do within Square Spaces current platform to attain something such as that?

I am not aware of any way to remotely do something like that, no.

5 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

I am not aware of any way to remotely do something like that, no.

Sounds good. Once again, thank you kindly for the help. Have a great day!

19 hours ago, Ziggy said:

I am not aware of any way to remotely do something like that, no.

Hello Ziggy,

I discovered this store, while on Shopify, had to be done with a customized Javascript. In theory, could that be applied to squarespace, and where would I begin with something like this. Would I need to hire a professional or is this something that could be learned?

In theory, you could do almost anything, but it may well be prohibitively difficult/expensive.

11 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

In theory, you could do almost anything, but it may well be prohibitively difficult/expensive.

Thank you again! I appreciate the help.

Hello,

I stumbled across a website recently that has an amazing custom product design, and I would love to do the same with my own. Some say this is something that would need designed from scratch for Squarespace. I haven't found any similar plugins to match this layout.

(https://truenutrition.com/products/oatmeal-customizer)

Any insight on how to go about this, whether it be finding a plugin, or finding a programmer, would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Timothy

16 hours ago, timothylyonjr said:

I stumbled across a website recently that has an amazing custom product design, and I would love to do the same with my own. https://truenutrition.com/products/oatmeal-customizer

To build something like this, I recommend looking at the $2000+ per month Shopify Plus platform. The site you've linked is hosted on this.

4 hours ago, paul2009 said:

To build something like this, I recommend looking at the $2000+ per month Shopify Plus platform. The site you've linked is hosted on this.

Hello Paul,

Thank you for the reference. I did find on WooCommerce as well the following plug in, but I can't tell if it's compatible with Squarespace. Any insight on that?

https://woocommerce.com/products/composite-products/

27 minutes ago, timothylyonjr said:

I can't tell if it's compatible with Squarespace.

It is not.

Squarespace a "serverless" product. It just wasn't designed for complex use cases like this. It will be much easier to meet this requirement on a different platform that was designed with this extensibility in mind.

20 minutes ago, paul2009 said:

It is not.

Squarespace a "serverless" product. It just wasn't designed for complex use cases like this. It will be much easier to meet this requirement on a different platform that was designed with this extensibility in mind.

Thank you, Paul. You've been very helpful. Have a great day.

49 minutes ago, paul2009 said:

It is not.

Squarespace a "serverless" product. It just wasn't designed for complex use cases like this. It will be much easier to meet this requirement on a different platform that was designed with this extensibility in mind.

Paul,

Do you know of maybe the next best thing I could do with it being within Squarespace's footprint?