Mix & Match Products in Optiontics: Build-Your-Own Bundles

Overview #

The Mix & Match Products block lets a customer build their own selection from a pool of your products, right on the product page. You choose which products they can pick from, how many they must pick, and whether the selection has one price or adds up. It is part of Optiontics Pro.

Most shops sell a “family platter” or a “half-dozen box” as a separate product. That means the same stock counted twice, a kitchen ticket or picking list that does not say what is actually inside, and a customer who takes what you decided rather than what they want. This block removes the duplicate product. Every item the customer picks becomes a real line in the cart, so your stock, your reports and your packing list all stay honest.

Requirements #

• WooCommerce and the free Optiontics plugin, both active
• Optiontics Pro, where this block lives

Step 1: Add the Mix & Match Products block #

1. Go to Optiontics → Options and click Add New.
2. Click Add Elements.
3. Under Custom, click Mix & Match Products.
4. In the Title field on the right, type what your customer should read, for example “Build your platter”.

The Title is the heading above the picker on the product page. It is your words, not ours, so use whatever your shop calls it: platter, half-dozen, sampler, routine.

Step 2: Choose where the products come from #

Under Where do the products come from? you have four options.

Source	Use it when
I will pick them myself	You want a fixed, curated list and control over the order
From a category	You want the pool to grow as you add products
This product’s Cross-sells	You already keep the list on the product itself
This product’s Upsells	Same, using the other WooCommerce field

A restaurant building a platter usually picks the dishes by hand, because the order they appear in matters. A coffee roaster building a three-bag sampler usually points at a category, so a new roast joins the sampler on its own.

If you pick them yourself, search for each product and click it to add it. Use the up and down arrows to set the order your customer sees.

Step 3: Set the rules #

Under Bundle rules there are three numbers.

1. Min Qty is how many the customer must pick before they can add to cart.
2. Max Qty is how many they are allowed in total.
3. Max Qty per Product is how many of any single product they can take.

Note: 0 means no limit in all three. An empty field is not “none allowed”, it is “as many as you like”.

For a platter of four dishes where nobody should load up on the expensive one, set 4, 4 and 2. The customer must pick four, cannot pick five, and cannot take more than two portions of the same dish.

Turn on Hide products that are out of stock if you would rather a sold-out item disappear than sit there unavailable.

Step 4: Choose how it is priced #

Under Price there are two modes.

Per item means each pick keeps its own catalogue price. A bakery selling “half a dozen cupcakes, pick your flavours” wants this, because a red velvet costs more than a vanilla and the total should reflect that.

One price means you set a single amount for the contents, and it is split evenly across whatever the customer picks. The platter is 24 whether they choose the cheapest four dishes or the dearest four. That amount is charged on top of the product’s own price.

Step 5: Style the picker #

Open the Appearance tab to change how the picker looks.

1. Set Layout to Grid or List.
2. Set Columns for how many products sit side by side.
3. Adjust image ratio, image corners, spacing and colours to match your theme.

Columns dims when Layout is set to List, because a list is one product per row and has nothing to arrange in columns.

Step 6: Assign it to your products #

1. Click Publish.
2. In Product Selection, choose a Product Type: All Woo Products, Specific Woo Products, or Specific Woo Category.
3. Click Create.

Step 7: What your customer sees, and what you get #

On the product page the customer sees your products as cards with a plus and minus on each, and a counter showing how far along they are, like “2 of 4”. If they try to add to cart too early, the page tells them what is missing rather than that something is wrong.

In the cart the selection arrives as one line for the product and one line underneath for each item they picked, grouped and indented so it reads as a single purchase. The same grouping carries through to checkout, the order screen, the customer’s email and your packing list.

The group behaves as one thing. Remove the main line and the picks go with it. Change its quantity to 2 and every pick doubles.

Frequently Asked Questions #

Q: Does stock go down for each product in the selection? Yes. Each pick is a real order line, so a three-bag coffee sampler is three stock movements, not one. Your reports show which roasts actually sold. Cancel or refund the order and all three come back, exactly as they would for separate purchases.

Q: Can a customer fill a “pick 4” platter with four portions of the same dish? Only if you let them. Set Max Qty per Product to 2 and the plus button stops at two portions, with the reason shown on screen. Leave it at 0 and there is no per-product limit, so four of one dish is allowed.

Q: What happens if the customer removes it from the cart? Removing the main line removes every pick with it, so you never get orphaned items. If the customer also bought one of those products on its own, that stays, because it is a separate line that was never part of the selection.

Conclusion #

The Mix & Match Products block turns a “build your own” offer into real cart lines, so your stock and reports stay correct while the customer gets the selection they wanted. Next, look at the Upsells block for adding optional extras to the same product page.