This post covers the similarities and differences between Product Attributes and Product Options. Sometimes these two components of our ecommerce software solution, Lead Commerce, can be tricky to understand. Therefore, we would like to provide some details about these two components and how they can be implemented in real world situations. What is a Product Attribute? A Product Attribute is meta data about a product. For example, let us say we are selling vintage clothing online and we want to be able to describe the condition of the products we have in stock. Using Lead Commerce, we can use the Product Attribute feature to help us define the "condition" of the clothes we sell. Therefore, the Product Attribute we create would be "Condition" and the values would be New and Vintage. When you look at a particular item, let us say an old western shirt, the "Condition" can only be New or Vintage. As you can see, Product Attributes are typically used when there is a one-to-one (1:1) relationship between the product and meta data. What is a Product Option? Product Options are similar to Attributes except Product Options allow you to define variations within a single product. For example, let us say again that we are selling vintage clothing online, only this time the item we are selling is new and available in multiple sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL). You could argue that each shirt is a certain size, however, if you entered Size as an Attribute, you would end up having to create a separate product page for every single size that you have in stock. The alternative is creating a Product Option called Size and then defining the corresponding values, XS, S, M, L, XL. This allows you to load a single product one time and let your shoppers choose the Size they would like from the shirts product page. This is just one example of the power and versatility of Product Attributes and Product Options. For more information on Product Options, Product Attributes and the Lead Commerce platform, please contact us.