Quantity Calculator for Your e-Commerce Store
When selling products per unit, you definitely need to provide buyers an easy option to calculate the exact quantity they would need, based on certain units. Not just this, a bonus feature for the customer is the possibility to choose the measurement units, when making the purchase. Consider the following scenario:
Joe wants to retile his bathroom floor. He knows that his floor is 7’ x 5’. And these beautiful ceramic tiles he wants to purchase, are 0.6m2. But Joe is bad at conversions, so he doesn’t know how many tiles he needs.
“10 feet = 3 meters + 1 apple-length… right?”
What’s worse is that different tiles have different dimensions. All Joe knows is that he needs the tiles to be beige in color (Yes! Joe knows his colors).
But, who is Joe?
Joe, is literally the Average Joe. The average shopper. So, even though my website, which might be the best-remodelling-store-with-the-most-number-of-tile-options, might lose Joe as a customer because he can’t figure out the number of tiles he needs! But this is not really Joe’s problem is it? He’ll just wander off to the next website, and buy what he needs. It’s a problem I as a store owner, need to resolve. But what can I do here?
Introducing the Product Quantity Calculator
If Joe had walked into a physical store and asked me for the same, I would have grabbed a calculator and done the math. But let’s save Joe the trouble here. I’ll make it simple for him. What I can do, is add a ‘Product Quantity Calculator’ in my online store.
Product Quantity Calculator
The Price Quantity Calculator, allows several potential customers, like Joe, to easily purchase the right amount of product units they would need. For example, in continuation to the above scenario,
- Joe would select the product (tile) he would be interested in from the ‘Shop’ page.
- On the ‘Product Page’, the product image, description, along with the per unit price will be displayed ($0.30 / sq.m).
- A ‘Area Dimensions’ section, will be displayed, with the fields ‘Length’ and ‘Breadth’.
- Joe can use this section to input length and breadth of his floor and set the units as ‘Foot’.
- Once he inputs these values, the needed quantity of tiles will be automatically updated.
For such a price calculator to work, there have to be custom fields which have to be part of the product. Hence, the administrator has the possibility to specify the attributes which will be displayed for the product. In our case, that would be the length and breadth for the tile. For example, in your WooCommerce store, there would be fields added to a single product admin settings page, for attributes.
Where can the Product Quantity Calculator be Used?
Such a Product Quantity Calculator could be used in several scenarios. For example,
- If you sell Carpet by length unit, say meters: You could add each carpet fabric as a product, with a field for length, with measurement unit options(centimeters, yards, etc).
- Or say you sell a Paint by volume: You could ask for area (like of walls which have to be painted), and calculate the volume.
You could the quantity calculator could help make it simple for customers to buy the exact amount of products they needed. An additional advantage that it offers is that attributes can be entered in user-preferred measurement units.
A simple quantity calculator would be something like the one I’ve explained above. An advanced calculator would have many fields and perform complex calculations. For example, if you sell fabric in length units, for shirts. Your quantity calculator, could have fields, such as shirt length, sleeve length, sleeve width, chest width, etc. These fields could be used to calculate the fabric length needed to stitch such a shirt.
Advanced Quantity Calculator
This functionality can fit seamlessly into your e-Commerce store. Since it’s a matter of just calculating the product quantity, it does not affect the product type as such. Hence, regular fields for the product, or extensions can be used as usual. For example, in your WooCommerce store, a great extension you could consider using would be the Min-Max Quantities Extension. This could help you sell product units is batches. Yes, and another great addition to your WooCommerce store could be the Product Enquiry Pro plugin, which can help out clueless or yet confused customers 🙂
The Product Quantity Calculator makes measurement calculation and purchases simple for your customers, and is a needed functionality for any e-commerce store which sells products in units. So then what are you waiting for?
You may also like to Read: How to Set Customer Specific Pricing in WooCommerce
Please note, some of the links in this blog post might be affiliate links. This means if you go on to purchase a product using such a link, we receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). This helps us support the blog and produce free content. We only recommend products we work with or love. Thank you for your support!
neil :
Where is this product?