Listing variable products on Amazon

Requirements

Creating new variable listings on Amazon is not much different from creating simple products, but there are some things you should know: 

• You will need to provide individual SKUs and UPCs (or EANs) for each single variation.
• You need to use global product attributes for your variations - read more about variation attributes
• Your variation attributes need to be allowed for the specific category you are using.

Variation Attributes

Not all categories (feed templates) allow you to list variable products - and the ones that do only allow selected variation attributes.

This means you can use attributes like Size and Color when you list clothes, but you won’t be able to use variation attributes like “Inseam” for example.

You may also need to select the right variation attributes in your listing profile. If your variation attribute is called "Shirt Size" in WooCommerce you need to tell WP-Lister that the size value should go to the column size_name. Visit your listing profile, search for the field size_name, click the magnifier icon next to the fields and select your product attribute Shirt Size.

If your attribute names match Amazon's requirements already, WP-Lister will fill in the values on its own. So if you’re using "Size" and "Color" it will populate the fields size_name and color_name automatically, even when they are left empty in the listing profile.

Once you have taken care of the above, you should be able to list variable products the same way as non-variable products.

FYI: Some feed templates allow different versions of the same attribute, like "color" and "ColorName" or "size" and "SizeName". To our knowledge, these versions are treated equally. Even Amazon Seller Support wasn't able to shed any light on why those different versions exist, so it doesn't matter which one you use.

Variable listings in WP-Lister

Because of how variations work on Amazon, where each variation is a “listing” with its own SKU and ASIN, you will see all variations as separate listings in WP-Lister as well – plus the parent variation, which “wraps” the child variations and has its own SKU and ASIN too.

So if you have a product that comes in 3 sizes and 4 colors, you’ll see not 12 but 13 listings in WP-Lister – which correspond to 13 rows that will be created in the product data feed. These are not duplicates so please don't delete them. Instead, check out the two view buttons on the top right next to the pagination - clicking the right one will only show parent variations and simple products.

This article is about listing new products which currently don’t exist on Amazon. For existing products which already have an ASIN, the workflow is different and explained  here.