Once you have installed WooCommerce, configured it and made the previous settings, it’s time to create products, because you won’t sell anything if you don’t have them, it’s clear, isn’t it?
It’s time, finally! to start adding products so that our store can start selling.
We will start creating a simple product, the first obvious choice, and the basis for any other type of product, so we will go through all the possible settings.
We’ll go to the Products -> Add new menu, which opens a somewhat special WordPress editor window, with custom fields, added by WooCommerce, tailored to product creation.
Its elements are as follows:
WooCommerce product title and long product description
There are no secrets. We will have the standard fields of the WordPress Classic editor. Of course you can add images, video, whatever you want.
WooCommerce Product Short Description
WooCommerce also adds an abbreviated editor where to write down the short description of the product, a kind of excerpt, which is the one that will be initially displayed in the store next to the product image and its price, so it is important to focus the shot and define well this field, having to contain the main sales arguments and the necessary description for the buyer.
WooCommerce product categories
Here will appear the categories previously defined to organize our products. We can also add them on the fly. Its operation is the same as the categories of the entries.
It is important to organize products correctly by categories because one of the basic visualizations of WooCommerce is by categories and even subcategories of products.
WooCommerce product tags
Another type of taxonomy that we can associate to our products are tags, which in this case provide additional information about the product, such as special features, the brand, etc.
Their use is the same as that of entry tags.
Product image
A fundamental element is to define the main image of the product, since it will be the visual element that will be displayed on the front page of our store, in the navigation by product categories and also as the main image on the product page.
It must be a good quality image that shows the best of our product.
The size can be whatever you want, as WordPress themes prepared for WooCommerce resize this image to fit the product page, but it is always interesting that customers can see the image in a larger size in a popup window when clicking, a feature included by default in WooCommerce.
Product gallery
It is also important to add more pictures to the product gallery, which will be displayed under the main one. These images are used to offer different angles of the product, details or even possible variations of the product such as colors.
Product information
Although all sections of a product creation page are important, without the product information you have nothing more than text and a few pretty pictures. This is where we will actually offer something to buy so it is important to specify it correctly.
In this information box you will find the following sections:
WooCommerce product types
First and foremost, it is vital to define the type of product.
- Simple: The product is sold separately and has no attributes that vary its price.
- Variable: The product is sold separately and has attributes that are used for price variations.
- Grouped: The product is the basis (parent) for a series of products (children).
- External / Affiliate: The product is supplied directly from the manufacturer, the store acts as an affiliate site based on percentage or fixed amount agreed.
In addition the products can be marked as Virtual (not subject to shipping or download, for example services such as courses or access to services, events and others) or Downloadable (not physical goods but documents or files that can be downloaded, such as ebooks, software, music, etc.).
WooCommerce product settings
There are a lot of WooCommerce product settings, so let’s go through them all shall we?
- General:
- Regular price: The retail price of the product in the store.
- Discounted price (optional): The offer price of the product, if applicable.
- Sale Price Dates (optional): Dates between which the product is discounted if you have offered a discounted price.
- Tax Status: Whether or not the price is subject to tax.
- Tax Class: The tax applicable to the product from those you have defined in the WooCommerce settings.
- Inventory:
- SKU: The unique code that identifies the product in your inventory, whether generated by you or by a warehouse or accounting application.
- Management stock: Whether the product is subject to inventory limitation or not.
- Stock quantity: How many units of the product are available for sale.
- Allow backorders: You can choose whether customers will be able to order out-of-stock products, either by warning them about it or not.
- Low stock threshold: When the stock reaches that amount it will notify you through email.
- Sold individually: If the product is only sold as a single order, without being able to group it to other products, you must check this box.
- Shipping:
- Weight, dimensions and shipping type (previously defined as we saw) of the product.
- Linked products:
- Up-sales: Allows you to offer additional products that you want to promote on the current product page.
- Cross-sales: When accessing the cart, the customer is offered to add other similar or promotional products.
- Grouping: In case of being a grouped product you can specify to which package (pack) it belongs.
- Attributes:
- These are the possible attributes or options of the product, such as if it is available in different colors or sizes, without affecting the price of the product.
- Advanced: Here we can write some annotation (visible) about the product, as well as define the order with respect to other products and, very important, if the users will be able to leave comments (reviews) to the product or not.
Inventory Shipping Linked products Attributes Advanced
Publish your WooCommerce product
Once all the texts, options, information, categories, labels, image and product gallery have been defined, we must save the changes and the product can be published, showing everything organized and ready to sell.
If you have done all the previous steps you should already be able to sell your first product, at least from the payment gateways (online and offline) included by default in WooCommerce.
