The poster I am selling comes in two sizes: 16" x 20" and 24" x 30". But it also comes with two different types of paper: gloss or matt. In Shopify terms, there are two options, size and paper, and there are four variants available for this product in total. Let's see how we put in place the second option, paper, for this poster.

You might have noticed earlier when you clicked on the link edit options, there was a button to Add another option.

Clicking on the button will add a new option with a dropdown menu to select the option's name. The standard options size, color, material, title and style are available. We want to put in place a "paper" option so let's create one by selecting "Custom option..." in the dropdown. Type in "Paper" as the option name and "Gloss" as the default value. This makes the poster with size 16" x 20" and Gloss paper the default. In other words, visitors to the imposters store will see this variant (16" x 20" Gloss) when they first look at this product. Click Save changes to finish.

So now the "Inventory & variants" section will be updated with the new option. You'll notice that there are now columns for both size and paper. There are still the two variants that we created earlier, the posters sized 16" x 20" and 24" x 30" however they both are in "Gloss", the default paper.

The imposters store is going to sell both sizes of the poster in a matt finish as well so let's add these two other variants.

Click on the Add a variant button below "Inventory & variants". You will notice that we now have to choose both a size and a paper for this variant. Let's fill in the details for the next poster, 16" x 20", with the matt paper. The smaller posters are priced at $89. If we were using SKUs, we could specify the SKU for this variant. And if we had different stock quantities for the different variants then now would be the time to put in the stock for this variant. Click the Add variant button when you're ready. Follow the same process to put in place the 24" x 30" poster with the matt paper and we end up with the four different variants.

You can have up to three options for a product but it can very quickly start to get complicated. Often you can keep things simple and avoid having two or three options. For example if you have a t-shirt with five sizes and two colors, it's probably better to create two products, one for each color. For more complicated products, multiple options may be unavoidable.