I don't ordinarily post about our custom programming projects but I feel this one may have fairly wide applicability and wanted folks to know about it.

 

Note the size/inseam search tool in the left nav.  Switch to one of the shirt categories and there is a size dropdown. 

 

http://www.rockiesjeans.com/shop/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=2 - http://www.rockiesjeans.com/shop/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=2

 

In the admin we provided a tool that allows the merchant to declare which product options are to be used for a search.  Those declarations may be named.  So for this store, "inseam" and "size" have been defined as a search option named "jeans", and another product option named "size" was defined as a search option named "shirts". 

 

In the category admin, we added a dropdown where the merchant may declare which search option (or none) must be associated with that category.  So the jeans category gets the inseam/size search option, and the shirt categories are all assigned their respective search option.

 

Code introduced to header.asp determines when to cause the search options to appear.  As a category is rendered, we examine the subproducts and populate the dropdown with only data which is present.  So if there are 12 possible sizes (attributes) assigned to a "product option", but only 8 such sizes are actually used by products in the current category, then we only show those sizes in the dropdown.  No point is presenting sizes that the site visitor simply won't find as being available for any product in that category.

 

Performing a search based on the shopper's preferred size and inseam will query the subproducts in the current category, then display the screen only those parent products which offer the requested size.

 

If this is a feature you would find useful, please contact us directly via our web site.

 

 

I can see this being very useful

 

Nigel