Do you sell tiles, flooring or polystyrene by the pack, but want to show customers the price per square meter and make it easy for them to work out how many packs they need? That's exactly what we solved for the Centrum zateplení store – and the result is a smart solution that saves time for customers and store owners alike.
Project collaboration with our client Centrum-zatepleni.cz
Specialists with many years of experience in thermal insulation systems and materials. They cover everything from facade design to the delivery of complete insulation systems. They sell both B2C and B2B. More at centrum-zatepleni.cz.
What we needed to solve
Polystyrene boards are sold in packs of 25 m². But a customer may need to insulate, say, 37 m². The goals were to:
- show the price per 1 m² (for fair, comparable pricing)
- automatically calculate the number of packs needed
- show the total volume in m³ and the recalculated prices
- add clear inputs instead of "quantity 1"
How we set it up
- The product price is entered per m²
- The pack size (e.g. 25 m²) goes into the descriptive parameters
- The scripts read:
- the pack content
- the thickness, if relevant (to calculate the volume)
- other optional values
- The calculator then:
- shows an input field ("How many m² do you need?")
- works out the number of packs
- shows the resulting price per m² / pack / m³
- accounts for waste (e.g. 5% extra)
Why is it smart?
- The customer "doesn't have to think" about how many packs to add
- They see "the real cost before adding to cart"
- Search engines index the correct unit price
- The template stays clean, with no variants and no recalculations in the admin
What does it look like in practice?
On the product pages you'll find an intuitive calculator below the price, where you:
- Enter the m² you need
- Choose the waste allowance, if any (0%, 5%, 10%)
- Immediately see:
- how many packs you'll need
- how much you'll pay in total
- the volume in m³
- the recalculated unit prices
What you need set up correctly in the store
Products as non-variant items linked together
Each polystyrene thickness is entered as a separate (non-variant) product, linked with the Product Linking add-on. That gives you:
- no misleading "from €0.80" price in the categories
- a separate price per m² for every thickness
- an easy way for customers to switch between thicknesses on the product page
Buying in whole packs only
You need to:
- set the minimum order quantity on the product
- use the Order in Multiples add-on
The calculator handles the correct conversions before the item goes into the cart, while the add-on enforces the right multiples in the cart itself.
⚠️ One pitfall to watch out for
Search engines and price comparison sites (Google Shopping, Zboží.cz, Heureka) run automated checks that the declared price matches the price in the cart. When a customer enters 3 m² and the calculator rounds it up to 2 packs, "the bots can automatically run into a different price than the one in the feed". If that happens, the product or the whole store can be blocked temporarily.
To solve this, we teamed up on the project with the marketing experts at Filipesmedia.
Project collaboration with Filipesmedia
E-commerce marketing specialists experienced with product feeds (Google, Heureka, Zboží.cz). They helped set up the outputs so they pass the checks run by the ad systems. More at filipesmedia.cz.
The solution from Filipesmedia
Each ad system needs a different approach. The product data in the XML feed has to be edited in an editing tool. Mergado is ideal for that.
Google checks whether the offer matches the price on the site. We have to edit the g:unit_pricing_measure element and enter the real quantity in the pack with the correct unit (sqm for m²).
Steps:
- Create a custom export in the admin (Products – Export – Custom export)
- Import the minimum order quantity values into Mergado
- Use the "Bulk rewrite" rule to write the values into the g:unit_pricing_measure element together with the unit
Result: Google approves the product and shows it with the pack price and the unit price.
Heureka
Heureka requires the price for the whole pack and the pack size in the product name.
Steps:
- Use the "Calculation" rule to multiply the price per m² by the pack content → the price per pack
- Use the "Rewrite" rule to build the name from the original name and the value of the "Pack content" parameter
The result is a product with an adjusted name and a price based on the pack content.
Seznam
With Seznam (zbozi.cz), just like with Heureka, it depends on how the goods are advertised. Here the polystyrene is advertised at the price per m², so "there is no extra work in the feed". You only have to make sure the price per 1 m² is visible on the product page in the store.