Technical data per product and combination: where to store it and how to display it

A product page has to say more and more. Ingredients and allergens in food, composition and washing instructions in textiles, product safety information in almost everything, packaging recycling information, dimensions, power ratings, compatibility. And this information often changes with the variant: a 250 gram jar and a one-kilo jar do not have the same batch number or the same nutrition table.

PrestaShop has several places to store information, and choosing badly means you cannot filter later, you have to copy the same text into hundreds of product pages or the customer sees the data for another variant. Let's take it step by step.

The places PrestaShop provides

This covers a lot, but not everything. What is missing is a place for structured data that changes per combination and for texts repeated across many product pages.

The rule for deciding where each piece of data goes

1. Does the customer choose it? It is an attribute: size, colour, flavour, format.
2. Does the customer filter by it in the product list? It is a feature: material, use, compatibility, certification. PrestaShop's faceted search works with features, attributes, brands, price and availability.
3. Does it change with the variant and the customer only needs to read it? It is a per-combination field: batch number, the nutrition table for the format, the composition of a specific colour, a model's energy efficiency.
4. Is it the same for many products? It is a reusable block: shipping policy, warranty, size guide, care instructions. Written once and assigned to the relevant product pages.
5. Is it commercial copy? It goes in the description.

Per-combination data: the trickiest case

When information depends on the variant, stores tend to improvise:

• Writing it all in the description: “250 g format: batch X; 1 kg format: batch Y”. Customers have to look for their case, and nobody updates it.
• Creating one product per variant: it solves the information problem, but multiplies product pages, splits reviews and complicates SEO.
• Images containing the information: unreadable on mobile, not indexed by search engines and not accessible.

The right approach is for each combination to have its own value and for the product page to show the one for the selected variant, changing instantly when the customer picks another. And to avoid filling in the same thing a hundred times, combinations should inherit the product's value when it is common to all of them.

Mandatory information

Some of this information is not optional. In food, the EU food information regulation requires mandatory information to be available before the purchase is completed in distance selling. For product safety, the EU General Product Safety Regulation requires online sales to display manufacturer details, product identification and any relevant warnings or safety information. We will not go into the detail of each regulation here: what matters for the store's structure is that this information is in a fixed place, complete and linked to the correct variant.

Reusable texts: write once

At the other extreme are texts that repeat: “Shipping in 24/48 hours”, “Three-year warranty”, a brand's size guide, the care instructions for all cotton items. Copied page by page, they have two problems: they take effort to add and, above all, effort to change. The day you change your shipping policy, you have hundreds of product pages with the old one.

The practical approach is to write each block once and assign it by category, brand, supplier or feature, with the option of making exceptions for specific products.

Common mistakes

• Features with values typed by hand on each product: “Cotton”, “cotton”, “100% cotton”. In the filters they appear as three different options. Create the values once and reuse them.
• Attributes nobody chooses: creating a “Material” attribute with a single value per product just so it appears on the page. It multiplies combinations for no reason; that is a feature.
• Fields nobody fills in: designing twenty fields on day one and filling in three. Start with the ones the law requires and the ones customers ask about most.
• Information in the wrong language: a batch number or a measurement is not translated, but a safety warning is. Decide field by field.
• Imports that overwrite data: if you import the catalogue from your supplier, check that the import does not wipe the fields you have filled in by hand.

How to display it on the product page

• What drives the purchase, close to the price: compatibility, key dimensions, highlighted allergens.
• What is looked up, in tabs or accordions: full technical sheet, composition, care, shipping.
• On mobile, accordions rather than horizontal tabs that do not fit.
• Real text, not images, so that search engines, screen readers and AI assistants can read it.

The fields shown on the product page depend on the theme's hooks. If the theme is not up to date with your PrestaShop version, a hook can easily stop being called and the information disappears without warning: check it after every update.

How to do it in PrestaShop

The Módulo campos extra en productos y combinaciones lets you create the fields you need (integer, decimal, short text, long text or HTML) and fill them in per product or per combination: when the variant changes, the product page shows that combination's data without reloading. Combinations inherit the product's value when it is common, you decide which fields are multilingual, and each field accepts its own CSS and the product page hook where it appears. RKR Unlimited Tabs handles repeated texts: you write a block once and show it as a tab on all products, on one, or by category, brand, supplier or feature, with per-product exceptions, three layouts (horizontal, vertical or accordion) and import and export.