Woocommerce restriction to have all the variations selected for the image to change.

[imbacactus]

Prerequisites (mark completed items with an [x]):

• [x] I have checked that my issue type is not listed here https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues/new/choose
• [x] My issue is not a security issue, support request, bug report, enhancement or feature request (Please use the link above if it is).

Issue Description: This relates to an online clothing store. We have variable products set up with colour and size attributes, for example a product might have 2 variations; Green/Any Size and Black/Any Size.

There is an image of the product in the corresponding colour for each variation, but at the moment the image doesn't switch unless a colour and size is selected (I'm aware this is how Woo works out of the box). We would like to make it so that the image switches when just a colour is selected.

I understand that a variation is sum of all parts; it won't match a variable product with images until all attributes are chosen. Nevertheless I find this very strange as most ecommerce sites I’ve used so far as a client don't require to choose every possible option to change the product image. Just the color or the design of the product. You see the product, and if you like it you chose size. It doesn't make any sense.

How are people getting around this? Are there any plugins (paid or free) that make it behave correctly? Or is there any information on how to resolve this?

[juliaamosova]

Hi @imbacactus,

Thanks for opening this issue. I am documenting below the behavior you are seeing for the record:

I am not aware of a plugin that can allow for the variation images to change only if one variation out of a pair is selected. I am adding the needs developer feedback label here to see if it is possible to be resolved programmatically.

[imbacactus]

Thank you @juliaamosova for documenting the behavior and adding the correct label to this.

[negapo]

Hi @imbacactus The following plug-in does that: Variation Swatches for WooCommerce, it allows you to chose an attribute to change the image (like color). It works by fetching the first variation that has that color and it shows the correspondent image.

I also faced that problem, and as you pointed that out Woo doesn't work like that unfortunately. For that to work the concept of attributes and variations had to change to something like "Visual Attributes" like color/pattern/finish/etc., that have an image associated with each one of the attributes (they are visually different) and something like "Non Visual Attributes" like size / capacity (like battery capacity) / warranty period / etc.
We are very far from that, you cannot even add more than one image per variation, so we are very far away from those things that are now standard in other ecommerce platforms: listing variations as products in the catalog (choosing an visual attribute like color), having color swatches on the catalog, having bullets on the product image gallery. You cannot even hide the product image title when opening it full size on a product.

[imbacactus]

Thank you so much @negapo I tried the Variation Swatches plugin (Paid/Pro version) and it works fantastic. Thank you again for this great find! I believe this should be a default behavior in woocommerce - fetching the first variation that has that color and it shows the correspondent image until something like visual attributes is implemented. It is really a must for most ecommerce stores

[negapo]

Great @imbacactus , glad i could help, good luck to your WooCommerce store,

[vedanshujain]

Thanks for the report. This suggestion makes sense, but note that it might be a while before we are able to get to this.

[pacmanito]

This is needed feature indeed. I can imagine a lot of attributes which do not affect photos. The most obvious example is size. And when you have 3-4 attributes and tens of variations per product adding the same photos over and over again becomes rather time consuming and frustrating.

[peterfabian]

perhaps an interesting discussion for product editing revamp cc @jarekmorawski @pmcpinto

[pmcpinto]

Thanks for the heads up. This is a pain point and we'll take it into account as we explore how to improve the product creation experience.