Selling downloads with variants in PrestaShop, with no shipping step

You sell a course in three levels. The customer picks theirs, pays… and along the way the shop asks for a delivery address and makes them choose a carrier for something that is downloaded. Some fill it in grudgingly; others close the tab.

PrestaShop makes you choose, and both ways out are bad

There is a box on the product page saying the product is virtual, and that is where the trouble starts: tick it and PrestaShop changes the product type and the variants tab disappears. So much for the three levels of the course, the three formats of the ebook and the one- or two-year licence.

The other way out is to leave the variants alone and put up with shipping: the customer goes through the delivery address screen and the carrier screen in order to buy a file. Every extra screen at checkout is people dropping out, and this one is baffling as well: nobody expects to be asked where to send a PDF.

How a product is edited and whether that product ships are two different things. The shop treats them as one.

Duplicating the product is not free either

The homemade way out is one product per format: the ebook in PDF, the ebook in EPUB, the ebook in MOBI. Three pages, three descriptions to keep up to date, three prices to change when you run an offer and three addresses fighting each other over the same search.

And the customer is no longer comparing variants of one product: they see three near-identical products and have to work out how they differ. The search engine is not clear about it either, and splits between the three the place it would have given to one.

One switch, and the product stays what it was

What is needed is to be able to say "this does not ship" without touching anything else. That is exactly what Virtual Products with Combinations does: it adds a "this product does not require shipping" switch to the product page and leaves the product exactly as it was, with its type and its variants.

From then on, an order carrying only products like that is recognised as a purchase that does not travel: no carrier, no delivery address and no shipping costs. The customer goes from basket to payment with one screen less, and the summary shows a download, not a shipment.

Products you do not mark never notice a thing. There is still an ordinary shop for everything that goes out by courier.

Every variant with its own file

Here is another PrestaShop limit that catches people out: a product takes one file, only one. If the advanced course and the basic one come with different material, there is nowhere to put it.

With digital delivery switched on, each variant carries its own: you upload the file that belongs to each one and the customer downloads exactly the one they bought, from their order details. You decide how many days that link is good for and how many downloads it allows; at zero, it does not expire.

And if you already have your own delivery system —an email, a customer area, a licence—, that part is left off and the module sticks to shipping.

Whichever product page you have

Real shops are not all on the latest version. The switch looks the same on the old product page and on the new one, from PrestaShop 1.7.6 onwards, and in multistore too. It does not replace core files or touch your theme's templates, so updating the shop later does not turn into a problem.

Nor does it decide for you: each product's stock, the type you chose and the orders you have already taken stay as they are.

Where this is running

This very shop works like that. The modules we sell here have variants —the length of the licence— and they are downloaded; nobody has ever typed a delivery address to buy one. It is the same module you have right below: install it, turn the switch on for the products that are downloaded, and the checkout stops asking where to send a file.