Interactive demo
A product page that draws the build the photographer never shot
A task chair page where three frames, four upholsteries, two bases, a headrest and two armrests make ninety-six builds — and the camera only ever got to four of them. Change an option and the picture changes with it, with a configuration code to order against.
- 01
Change the upholstery. The seat and back change colour — eased, not switched, so it reads as the same chair.
- 02
Change the frame. The armrests, the gas lift and the back frame all follow it.
- 03
Add the headrest or the 4D arms and a real part appears on the picture, not a line of text.
- 04
Configure past those four photographs and the gallery says so: no photo of this build.
- 05
The code and the price are generated as you go. The enquiry leaves with both.
The problem
A chair factory sells OEM to buyers overseas. The first question is always the same: what does the white frame look like with the sand fabric? Nobody at the factory can answer it. A photo session covers a handful of combinations, so the website has four pictures of the standard build and the other ninety-odd exist only in the customer’s imagination. So the buyer asks for a sample. A sample takes a month to reach him, he opens the box, it is not what he pictured, and the whole thing goes round again. What actually held it up was very small: he could not see the combination he had in mind.
What we built
The product picture is drawn in layers — frame, upholstery, base, headrest, armrest are separate — so changing an option changes the shape and the colour on the page. **It is deliberately not 3D**: a model you can spin costs a few hundred kilobytes of library, and on a phone it is too small to read anyway. What has to be proven here is not that we can do 3D, it is that all ninety-six builds are visible. Alongside the picture the build gets a code — NX1-WH-SD-AL-HR-4D — which is what the buyer orders against and what the factory schedules against, so nobody in the middle has to interpret anything. The enquiry leaves carrying that code and that image.
Try it yourself
- The demo changes two things by itself: sand fabric, white frame.
- Set the base to polished aluminium — the star base goes from matt black to metal, and the price moves $42.
- Add the headrest. It slides in rather than appearing, because a part that pops into existence reads as a page fault.
- Change anything else and watch the gallery line turn orange: “No photo of this build.” That line is the whole reason this exists.
Who this suits
Any business where the options multiply faster than the photography: furniture, windows and doors, lighting, packaging, print, custom hardware. The test is simple — if the question you answer most often is “what does X look like with Y”, and your answer is to ship a sample, this is how you get that month back.
Built on
- WordPress
- WooCommerce
The catalogue, accounts, cart and enquiry handling are standard WordPress and WooCommerce, running on hosting you own. Only the part that is specific to your business gets written from scratch.