Why configurable products are crucial for your online store
Customization, product configuration, and personalization boost performance and lead to better customer outcomes. Users love individually configurable products – and the possibilities today are nearly limitless and widely adopted: you can run in self-designed shoes, mix your own cereal, or have your smartphone engraved with your name. Even products that were once hard to imagine online can now be easily configured: Where a carpenter once had to measure in person, customers can now submit measurements and preferences online and order directly. Complex and individual requirements are no longer a problem in ecommerce.
But why is the potential of configurable products so exciting? For less emotional products, personalization primarily offers practical benefits: a perfectly sized cover fits better than a standard one. At the same time, configurable products open new markets and customer groups and ensure that customers get exactly what they need. Even small emotional personalization – such as a personal name engraving – can make a big difference.
These possibilities are also exciting for manufacturers and producers, as they receive precise product specifications or production requirements directly from the shop, allowing for much more efficient work.
Various examples of product configuration and personalization. All brands, logos, and designs are property of their respective owners.
“I designed it myself” – the power of self-design
A study on the so-called “I designed it myself” effect shows impressively how strongly self-created products influence perceived value.1 Products that customers design or configure themselves are not only rated more highly on an emotional level but also increase willingness to pay. The key factors are:
Creativity: Customers can contribute their ideas and design themselves.
Self-expression: Personalized products reflect the user’s personality.
Emotional attachment: People connect more strongly with products they created themselves.
This effect demonstrates that product personalization is not just a nice-to-have feature, but a strategic tool. It creates a deeper connection to the product and brand. Customers receive products that match their vision and that they actively shaped themselves, making them willing to pay more or accept longer delivery times.
3 types of product personalization & configuration
1. Configuration for made-to-measure products
For products that customers can configure themselves, perfect fit and individual needs take center stage: a window should match its exact dimensions and installation requirements, fitting the house’s style. Similarly, a sunshade is ideally adapted to the terrace with eyelets and seams in the right places. Customers can set all relevant parameters themselves. Materials, measurements, special details, or accessories can be selected directly, ensuring the final product matches their expectations.
2. Personalization through product sets
Some products only reveal their full value when combined with others. Customers can create sets according to their needs – for example, ski boots with matching bindings, a cereal mix with individually chosen ingredients, or a tasting set of jams. This flexibility increases satisfaction, as everyone gets exactly what they want. At the same time, it allows a shop to link products and utilize cross-selling potential without forcing compromises on the customer.
3. Personalized design adjustments
Sometimes it’s just about a personal touch: handbags, sneakers, or sports jerseys can be customized with names, numbers, or individual colors. This type of personalization strengthens emotional attachment because the product is perceived as “one’s own.” Customers experience the product not only functionally but emotionally – an aspect that significantly increases loyalty, purchase likelihood, and repeat purchase rates.
Practical example 1: Handrails & window sills made-tomeasure
A customer in the field of custom handrails and window sills uses the neonlines Product Configurator for Shopware 6, allowing their customers to select wood type, measurements, special details, and accessories. Step by step, users are guided through the process, supported by info icons explaining how to measure correctly or what differences exist between various options.
The product configurations led to the following improvements:
Increased conversion and high customer satisfaction because all requests can be fulfilled
Significantly reduced customer support, as many special requirements are handled directly in the shop
Access to new customer groups who can conveniently order made-tomeasure
Optimized and more efficient production thanks to precise product information
Practical example 2: Regional food in configurable tasting sets
How can you give customers a little incentive to try new products or increase their shopping cart size? This is a question many shop owners with a wide assortment face. In this shop, there is a strong focus on 3-, 5-, or larger sets. Customers can, for example, freely select five products of their choice from a range of 12 fruit spreads; the same applies to mueslis, nut mixes, or baking mixes. As an incentive, there is a discount on all sets, while the shop owner benefits from larger shopping carts. A win-win situation for both sides. In terms of implementation and inventory logistics – thanks to the Product Configurator for Shopware 6 – this is no problem at all.
The conclusion after six months:
High customer satisfaction and a high repurchase rate due to the attractive sets
Larger shopping carts because customers gladly use the sets and the associated discount
Take your ecommerce to the next level with our configurator
Shopware 6 combined with the neonlines Product Configurator provides the perfect foundation to create and market nearly any type of configurable and personalized product. Our extension enables you to efficiently create, manage, and correctly calculate configurable, individualizable, and personalizable products, ensuring a delightful shopping experience and smooth business processes. Our extension offers:
Perfect UX & UI for your customers: Choose from a wide selection of field types such as buttons, dropdowns, image and color selection, and visually organize configurations with flexible design options like grouping, step layouts, background colors, font sizes, and more.
Intelligent calculation & linking capabilities: Create simple price calculations or complex formulas according to your requirements. All key dimensions, such as dynamic price, cart, or stock calculations, are possible, even for linked products.
High performance: Even with complex configurations with countless options and thousands of fields, the configurator runs smoothly and efficiently.
Full integration with Shopware 6: The configurator is fully integrated into Shopware 6, meaning product information from the catalog can be used in the configurator and configurator results can be applied in elements like the Rule Builder. Configurations are integrated across all relevant order, email, and document elements.
Integration into your business processes: Thanks to close integration with Shopware 6, the configurator can be used with most ERP & WMS systems, allowing configurable products to flow seamlessly through the entire business process up to production.
Top-rated extension & support: The configurator is the highest-rated extension in the Shopware Store with excellent support – from setup assistance to complex individual adaptations.
With our configurator, you can implement almost any product configuration – even the most complex – all without programming knowledge, including a free trial month for extensive, risk-free testing.
Conclusion: product configuration, personalization & customization as a success factor in ecommerce
Product configuration is no longer a “nice-to-have” but a true driver of customer satisfaction, conversion, and revenue growth. Whether made-tomeasure products, individually assembled sets, or personalized design adjustments, customers appreciate the ability to shape products according to their own preferences. With the right tools, such as Shopware and our Product Configurator for Shopware 6, personalized offerings can be implemented, managed, and presented efficiently. This benefits not only your customers, who enjoy a unique shopping experience, but also your shop, which gains clear advantages: a more attractive product range, less individual support, digital interfaces, and process and cost optimizations.
¹ Report „The 'I Designed It Myself' Effect in Mass Customization“
