Part Finder - Make / Model / Year / Variant Relationships

Do you need to create relationships between your products, and the make/model/type of products where they can be applied? eg Car automotive industry, some parts fit many different types of cars. Yes you can.

Most importantly, your customers can easily search by make/model/year/type to find the part they need. They do not need to know the category nor anything else. They can find all your parts that match their vehical. 

Setup Steps

1. Go to E-commerce > Add the Plugin named "Product Applications Tab"
2. For each product editing area, a new product applications tab will appear, where you can enter make/model/year/type relationships for each product/part you sell
3. You can alternatively import these relationships via a CSV file, with the columns code, make, model, year, type
4. On each product view page, an applications tab will appear, so that customers can see the valid application table for each product/part.
5. If you add our advanced search widget to your website, you will see a "make" drop down box appear.

Part Search Function

If the user selects a make, they can continue to select a model, then year/type, and then search and our system will quickly find all matching parts for the chosen vehicle (or similar type search).

Our suggestion for year data, is to enter/import the data showing the year range (where applicable) and not breaking it into individual years. In many ways it does not matter which approach you take, however, it is noted that some cars have different year ranges spanning the same year, and therefore the year range indicates more specifically the vehicle chosen. If you separate it into individual years, you create more work, and there will be confusion if some products match the year (but not the range)

Product Search Function

The above approach assumes you are selling parts for other products (eg cars) where there exists a one to many relationship between a part and the applicable use. If instead you want to provide a similar sort of search just for your products, where the make/model/year etc is an explicit search for your products, then please see make model year search.

Adding applications in the CMS:

How this might look on your website in the Extra info section of your product: