In the previous blog post, I had shown how you can create basic e-commerce websites on your WordPress websites using WooCommerce. You also learned how to create the whole eCommerce setup without technical know-how or help from an eCommerce web developer.
In this post, I am sharing the process of adding products to your newly built online store.
Let’s start.
Adding product categories
First of all, we will need to create categories so that you can upload and assign the different products under each category.
In order to add categories, go over to Products and then Categories in your WordPress dashboard. Enter the name of your category, a slug for the URL (by default, WooCommerce will use the category name as a slug), a parent category (if you have a nested structure for categories), the description, display type, and an image (this image is used when inserting a category grid on pages).
Adding product tags
Tags are similar to the product categories with the difference that they can be used for grouping similar items that don’t fall into the same category. Tags, if done correctly can be very helpful to the customers to view their desired products on one page at the same time, tagging is good for SEO too because it helps search engines discover the product pages based on their defined tags.
The only key to defining the tags correctly is to use unique names for each tag and make sure that tag names are easily understandable by both users and search engines.
Adding Products
Once the product categories and tags have been defined, you are ready to upload the products on your e-commerce website.
Click Products > Add Product and then give your product a name, assign any categories or tags, and add your featured product image plus optional gallery images.
Now it’s time to enter the description of your product in the main text box. This will be displayed under the “Description” tab next to “Reviews” on the actual product page.
There is another text box to add a short description of your products to be shown alongside your product images. You may utilize this space to showcase salient features of your product. On the right side, you can see the ability to add product images along with the option to assign each product to its respective category.
Then comes Product Data which needs a bit of detailed explanation.
a) Simple Product
When you select the option “Simple Product “, you are required to key in just the product price (Regular Price & Sale Price)
b) Virtual/Downloadable
These options show up with a Simple Product interface only. The downloadable option allows you to sell products like files, ebooks, etc. which customers can pay for downloading however virtual products option allows you to sell virtual products like logos, web packages, etc.
when you select virtual products, the shipping tab disappears because you don’t need to ship virtual products.
c) External/Affiliate Product
If you don’t have your products but you want to sell affiliate products (eg. from Amazon etc.), you can choose this option and provide affiliate links for each of the products.
d) Variable Product
If your products are available in different variations for eg. size, colors, etc., you can choose this option.
You’re done. Isn’t it easy to add products to your online store using Woocommerce?
