These are a lot more interesting than the name suggests. PrestaShop allows you to create attribute groups and then actual attributes within those groups, and then assigns them to products. A very quick and simplistic way of describing an attribute would be as a product variation.
For example, attributes are a perfect way to have a single product: teddy T-shirt. Then create a Color attribute group and lots of actual attributes—Red, Blue, Pink, and so on. The customer could then, from one single product page, select any of the available colors for that teddy T-shirt. Have a look at attributes in action:
As you can see, the customer is able to click on a drop-down box and choose from the different attributes (product variations). The first thing to note here is that this is a simplistic example and we will get a bit deeper into this before we try attributes out. The other thing to point out is that just because you might sell a product with multiple variations does not mean you must...