Manually enter items
Now that we have completed the Setup Wizard, we should have the foundation of a basic e-commerce system. The next step is to populate the Store page with products. You can either upload a CSV of products or manually enter them in via the Product tab. Let’s look at the latter.
On the Products tab, go to Add New.
Here you can set up your product with some pretty self-explanatory fields. Item name, description, categories & tags, images and image galleries and SEO data.
First we will title the item ‘baked apple,’ add a description, add a category and then provide a few tags.
More importantly, let’s scroll down to the Product Data section.
Product Data
This section is a bit extensive but essentially outlines what your product is. The first step is to select a product type, there are four main types:
Simple Product – this is a single physical or digital product, can also be Virtual or Downloadable, or both!
- a website subscription would be virtual but not downloadable
- a service would be virtual but not downloadable
- an e-book would be both virtual and downloadable
Grouped Product – A collection of products with separate SKUs that are grouped into one ‘parent’ product to be purchased together.
- Consider a clothing store, sometimes there may be suggested outfits, the ‘outfit’ would be the ‘parent’ product, while the pieces of the outfit would be the individual items with their own SKUs.
External/Affiliate Products – products that you promote on your website but are actually fulfilled through an external service.
- Consider stores where they sell items found on Amazon when the user clicks on the item your site will redirect them to Amazon to complete the purchase, then Amazon will compensate you through their affiliate program.
Variable Product – A product that comes in a variety of variations
- A t-shirt can come in a variety of colors, this would be a great option to sell the type of shirt but also offer a variety of colors.
Let’s begin selling some Zelda Breath of the Wild foods. This is all imaginary since I do not actually plan to sell any food, especially shipping food.
General
The first step for our Baked Apple is to select the type, in this instance we wiill choose a Simple Product, since this is just a simple, solitary ‘Baked Apple.’ I am setting the regular price to $3, the sale price to $2, scheduling a sale (optional) and using the standard tax methods for my given location.
Inventory
On the Inventory tab we want to set the SKU or ‘stock keeping unit,’ I chose 001, you can choose any number. I want WooCommerce to keep track of my stock. WooCommerce has inventory management built in, so I can say ‘I have 500 Baked Apples.’ When I sell 500 Bakes Apples I can also tell WooCommerce to back order any additional orders and notify the customer that their purchases will be back ordered. Once I receive more stock I can ship out to the back ordered requests. I can also sell items individually.
Shipping
On the shipping tab I can set the weight of the item, the dimensions of the item (once boxed) any the shipping class. The shipping class will be defined at a later point. All of this information is used by WooCommerce to estimate the shipping cost for the customer when they are in the checkout process. Note: When Virtual is checked the Shipping tab disappears because you cannot ship a virtual product.
Linked Products
Linked products are products you associate with the item the customer is interested in, such as accessories for a laptop that they wish to purchase.
Upsells: Upsells are items that are more profitable or better quality than the item chosen.
Cross-sells: Cross-sells are items commonly bought with the desired item.
Attributes
A product’s attributes are the different variables the product is offered as. You can set custom attributes such as Size or Color, anything variable you want.
Advanced
Lastly, the Advanced tab. Here you can set a custom note that will be sent to the customer after the purchase. You can also set the order of your item within the context of the other items. You can even enable reviews for your product!
Product Short Description
You will also notice an area to create a short description for your product, this will appear as an excerpt and should be as descriptive as possible so your customer knows what they are looking at before clicking.
Up Next
Creating a product is a pretty straight forward process with a lot of powerful options such as Upsells and Product Attributes. Next, we will take a closer look at the Settings for WooCommerce in order to fine tune our e-commerce experience a bit further.
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