In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to upload the first product to your store. In order to get there, you need to go to the menu on the left side and hover your mouse over products. You can click on “Add new product” or on “All Products”.
If you have clicked on “All Products” then you need to click on the “Add new product” button on top of the screen.
The first and most important part is the product name.
1. Product Name
Enter the name of your product here. The name should make it easier for you and your customers to identify the product. The name will also be shown on the shop page under each product banner. The name should also not be too long.
2. Product Description
Right underneath the product name, you can add the description of the product. Make sure to add any vital information about the product such as its benefits, features, and specs. The customer will use this information to determine if the product is right for them.
3. Product Data
This section is right underneath the product description. You can start by choosing which type of product you want to upload. You have an option between 4 different products that include the “Simple Product”, “Grouped Product”, “External Affiliate Product” and the “Variable Product”
In this scenario, we are going to choose a simple product which is a product with only one variation. For a product with more than one variation, you must use a variable product (more on that later).
You can also choose to make it Virtual (this setting will disable the shipping options) and Downloadable (If you are selling PDFs).
General – Under General you can set the Regular price and the Sale price. You can also schedule the sale by adding a starting and an end date.
You can also set the Tax status and Tax class if you plan to charge for VAT. At a later stage, we will go into more depth regarding your tax settings.
Inventory – Under Inventory, you can set your SKU and other identifiers. SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit and is used as a unique identifier that you can set for each product. This is very useful if you sell the product offline as well.
You can also choose to manage the stock of the product by enabling Stock Management. Once enabled, you can add the quantity of the product and select if you want to allow backorders.
A backorder is when the customer can purchase a product that is out of stock and you plan to send it to them once you have refilled your stock levels.
A low stock threshold can also be set for each single product where you will receive a notification email once a product is low on stock. You can also choose Store-side threshold which is set as default.
You also have the option to limit purchases to only one product per order, meaning the customer cannot add more than one of these products to their cart. This is useful for unique or custom products specifically made for the customer.
Shipping – For shipping you can set the weight and dimensions for the product. This information can be useful to the customer if you want to integrate a shipping company directly into your website to automate the shipping process.
You can also choose a shipping class that you have created to group products together under the same class. Shipping classes can be created under woocommerce settings.
Linked Products – Linked products are a great way to boost your average order value. Other products will be linked to the current one giving the customer more options.
If you do not have any products set, then it will automatically add products from the same category. You can also choose to use an upsell or a cross-sell if you want to manually choose the products.
Upsells enables you to add products that will be shown under related products on the single product page. Cross-sells will be added to the cart page that might complement the product.
Attributes – We will only worry about attributes in the next videos when we cover variable products.
Advanced – Under advanced settings, you can create a note that is unique to the product and will be emailed after the purchase. You can also change the menu order and also enable or disable the reviews for this product.
4. Product Short Description
The product short description will be displayed under the name of the product on the product page and will be the first thing your customer will see. The short description allows you to either summarize the product or highlight the most important benefit that your product will provide.
You can leave out this part or use it to its fullest to capture a potential buyer’s interest.
5. Search Engine Optimization
For Search Engine Optimization or SEO, we have already set this part up for you and will do it in most cases and you can leave these settings as they are. You are welcome to change them as you desire.
This is the information that will be displayed in the search results.
6. Product Image (Featured Image)
The product featured image will be the main image of your product and will also be displayed in the store or category pages for each product banner. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend that you only upload images that are 1000 by 1000 pixels in width and height.
We also recommend that you also only upload images in JPEG format and not PNG as the loading time of the image will be faster. JPEG images are always smaller in size than PNG’s. You will also then be able to upload more products when the file sizes are smaller for the images.
7. Product Gallery
If you have more images that showcase different features or angles of your product, then you can upload them here. You should also use 1000 by 1000 pixels and only use JPEG image files.
These images will be either displayed underneath or to the left of the featured image under the product page in the format of a slider.
8. Product Categories
You can add or select the product categories in which this product should fall into. Product categories can also be called collections. Your categories can also have a hierarchy displaying parent and child categories offering a structured and intuitive way to navigate through products.
Product categories are a great way to organize your products so that they are easier to find for your customers.
9. Product Tags
In contrast, Tags lack a hierarchical structure and provide a more flexible way of associating products. Tags are useful for applying specific descriptors to products, facilitating the discovery of related items based on shared characteristics, without the need for a rigid organizational framework.
10. Shoptimizer Settings
Under Shoptimizer settings, you can also change the position of the product’s short description to be either on top or bottom. We recommend that you do not change these settings.
11. CommerceKit options
You can change the product gallery layout for each product if you wish. We recommend keeping a consistent look throughout all the product pages by leaving the setting to Global Default.
You can also disable the product countdown, inventory bar, sticky add to cart, and the wishlist functionality for this specific product. We will discuss these options more at a later stage.
12. Product Brands
Woocommerce allows you to create brands for your shop, with a name, description, and image assigned to each. Brands work exactly the same as categories to organize your products by brands if you wish.
13. Publishing Product
Once all the necessary information is set, you can now either save the product as a draft (publish it at a later stage), publish it immediately, or schedule a date for when you want to publish the product. Go to the top of the page on the right-hand side to find the publish settings.
Creating a Variable Product
A Variable product is a product that comes with more than one variation. If you have ever shopped for clothes (local shop or online), you would have noticed that most clothes come in variations.
Here is an example.
Most clothing comes in different sizes such as small, medium, and large where each size can be a variation. To first create variations, you need to create an attribute to get the variations from. The attribute for this example is going to be called size.
There are many other attributes that you can use such as size, color, brand material, etc.
Creating a variable product involves the same process as a simple product except for the part where you have to assign an attribute and set the variations.
Here is how you would do it.
The first step is to go to the product data section and then select the variable product type from the dropdown. You will notice that variations and attributes were added to the menu for you to use.
1. Attributes
Click on attributes from the menu and then you will be presented with 2 options. You can create a new attribute or choose an existing one that you created from the global attributes under the product menu on the left-hand side.
Remember that if you plan to use the same attribute on more than one product, then you should create a global otherwise you will not find this product when you use the filter on your store. In this case, we are going to use size on more than one product so it would be best if we use the global attribute instead.
Here is how to do it.
Click on “Add existing” and then select size. Wait for the screen to load and then click on the values field. All the values will then be displayed for you to choose from. You can select multiple values and make sure that the order is also correct.
Make sure that the options “Visible on the product page” and “Used for variations” are selected then click on the “save attributes” button to save them.
2. Variations
The next step is to create the variations by selecting the variations tab underneath the attributes. Wait for the screen to load. For this example, we are going to clock on “Generate Variations”. You can also manually add them if you do not have that many.
A popup will appear and then click on “ok”. Wait for the screen to load and Woocommerce will create the variations for you. Click on the variation that you want to edit to open it up.
You can upload an image for each variation and then set the price and all the relevant information. You should also remember to enable the “manage stock” option because each variation will have its own stock level.
Once you are finished with the variation, then you can click on the other ones and edit their information as well. For the sake of this tutorial, we are only going to do one variation.
3. Attributes Gallery
The attributes gallery is located under variations. With this functionality, you can add separate gallery images for each variation. The gallery images for that variation will be shown once you select the variation on the product page.
The first step is to click on “Select an attribute” and then select a single attribute that you have galleries for. Once selected, then click on the “Add to gallery” button. Next, you need to click on the arrow-shaped button and then select the images you want to add.
To add more than one image, you can hold the “Ctrl” button on your computer’s keyboard and then select the images that you want to use. You can then click on the blue “Save changes” button to update the changes.
4. Attribute Swatches
The attribute swatches are located under the attributes gallery. You will notice that your attributes and values are already set for you.
There are three different ways to display the variations on your product page. You can display them as a clickable button, a custom color, or as a clickable image. You can play around with each of these methods and then see how they are going to look like on the product page.
You can view the page by clicking on “Preview changes” on top or opening the link in a new tab. Now let’s see what the product page is going to look like.
You will notice that the variations will be displayed above the “Add to Cart” button. By clicking on each variation, you will notice that the price and image will change to reflect the selected variation.
Product Page Details
Below are images that will showcase how the product page will look like and how each element fits into it.
