Guide to Creating Products in WooCommerce

In just a few simple steps, you’ll learn how to add your products clearly and easily. We’ll also recommend a plugin at the end that will make updating prices in bulk much easier. Shall we begin?

First: if you aren’t logged in to your account, please log in and go to your WordPress Dashboard. You can normally access it at yoursite.com/wp-admin

We assume you already have WooCommerce installed. If not, you can download it free of charge now from Plugins → Add New, as shown in the screenshot below.

After a brief "survey" performed by the component to geolocate and customize the installation, we can see that two new items have appeared in our Dashboard toolbar: WooCommerce and Products. As mentioned earlier, this guide will focus on Products.

Create our first category

The first recommended step is to create categories for our Products. For example: cakes, cookies, loaf cakes, cupcakes, etc. To do this, we’ll select the Categories option.

In the window that opens, we can see several fields and a couple of options. By completing this information, we’ll create our first Category, which is necessary for subsequently organizing our products by category.

Next, a description of each field:

1. Name: this is where we enter the name of our Category; for example, “cakes”.

2. The Slug is the category’s internal name in the database. As a general rule, it will be the same as the category itself, so we shouldn’t enter anything here. If we leave it blank, Woo will understand that we want the “slug” to be the same as the category name (that is, ”cakes”).

3. Parent category allows us to specify whether the Category we’re creating is a main Product group (the default) or a Subcategory (for example, “vegan cakes”). If we had created the “Cakes” category, this screen would also allow us to create a Subcategory. For example, having previously created the Cakes category, if we are now creating “vegan cakes”, we can select “cakes” as the Parent category.

4. Here we’ll enter a Description of the category; this is what our users will see when they visit the main “cakes” category. NOTE: not all WordPress themes display this text to users.

5. Display type allows us to decide what is shown on the Category page (e.g., mysite.com/cakes). "Standard" uses the value defined by the theme. "Subcategories" displays only the subcategories (e.g., “chocolate cakes”, “cream cakes”, etc.). "Products" displays only the products belonging to the category. “Both" displays both subcategories and main products. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll leave the default option selected.

6. Through the Thumbnail, WooCommerce allows us to specify a generic image for the entire Category. This is optional and, once again, not all themes display this image. Nevertheless, we recommend adding one as a precaution. NOTE: it is always a good idea for all images uploaded to the site, both category and product images, to have the same dimensions. For example, 700 pixels wide by 625 pixels high is a recommended size. If you work with a photographer who takes pictures of your products, you can ask them to always provide the images in this size. Another option is to use a bitmap image editor (for photos) such as PhotoShop or LightRoom, although there are also very easy-to-use and powerful online tools, such as https://resizeimage.net/

7. The Add new category button will allow us to complete its creation.

For this guide, we created the “cakes” category, and we can see it here as follows:

If we forgot something, don’t like an aspect of it, or want to make a change, we can hover the mouse pointer over the category, and a series of options will automatically appear:

The Edit option will take us back to the screen shown in the screenshot above, where we can change any field, including the Category image (if we uploaded one).

On the other hand, note that the Delete option allows us to remove the Category entirely, for cases in which a product line has been discontinued. If we had already added Products to the Category we deleted, they will remain "orphaned" under the default Category, called "Uncategorized".

Adding our first product in WooCommerce

Now that we’ve created at least one Category, it’s time to add a product to it. We’ll go to Products → Add New, as shown in the screenshot below. Note that numbered items are displayed, and their descriptions are provided below.

The indicated fields, detailed below:

1. Product name: in this field, we’ll enter the name of our product. Example: “Black Forest Cake”. This is not only the name that identifies our Product, but also the name our users will see (so it should be clear and concise).

2. Product Description field: this generous field is where we describe everything relevant to our product: features, ingredients, handling precautions, and any other pertinent details. At Duplika, we’ve created a special article about selling more and better through Online Stores. One of its most important sections focuses on getting the most out of the Product Description field.

3. Product Categories: here we’ll select the correct Category for our Product (e.g., “cakes”). NOTE: WooCommerce allows us to select more than one Category, because there may be cases in which the product we’re creating could belong to two or more classes. Generally, this is unlikely to be necessary.

4. Product Tags: "tags" or Labels are very useful when we want to relate a product to others that share one or more characteristics. In our example, we could tag products by ingredient. E.g.: “dulce de leche”, “chocolate”, “lemon”... Tags are entered separated by commas. Alternatively, we can enter a Tag, press ENTER, and then continue with others. Every time we press ENTER, the tag is not only assigned to the product we’re editing, but the Tag is also created in the WooCommerce database (if it hasn’t already been created). In practical terms, this means that in the future, when we add new Products and begin typing a Tag, WOO will autocomplete its name if it was created previously (for example, we begin typing “dul” and the “dulce de leche” option will appear so that we can select it without having to type the entire term).

5. Short Product Description: in this field, we’ll write a brief, specific excerpt about the product. However, for certain types of products, some Stores use it to provide buyers with information that differs from, but complements, the long description. E.g.: sizes, weights, measurements, voltages, packaging type, warranties, certificates, number of pieces, and much more.

6. Product Image: by clicking the Set product image link, we can upload the main photograph of the Product we’re adding. Once again, we recommend using a consistent size for all our product photos whenever possible.

7. Product Gallery: by clicking the Add image to product gallery link, we can upload one or more photographs of our product, creating a clickable photo gallery, which is common on online marketplaces such as MercadoLibre (useful for showing different perspectives, an ingredient, or any image that complements our product).

The time has come to set a price for our product. Let’s now focus on this section of the new Product creation screen:

1. Regular price: here we’ll simply enter the value of our product. 2. Sale price: optionally, we can enter a sale price. For example, if we want to offer our users a discount for a special occasion (Easter, Valentine’s Day, Christmas), this is the field to use. One advantage is that we don’t affect the standard regular price and can activate or deactivate the discount without having to set the Sale price to zero. 3. Note that the numbered link 3, Schedule allows us to define a time period during which this sale price will be valid. Clicking it will open two new fields:

Simply enter the “From” and “To” dates, and WOO will be scheduled to apply the discount during that specific period.

The Inventory tab allows us to manage matters related to our stock.

1. Inventory status: in the drop-down options, we can select whether the Product is available or temporarily out of stock (this is information the user will see when visiting the Product page). Additional note: SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) refers to a unique internal identification code that we can enter if we want to assign our own numerical reference to each stocked product.

Finally, as shown in the screenshot below, the Shipping tab optionally allows us to enter the product’s weight and the dimensions of its box.

Although there are more complex options for certain e-shops and special types of Products, we won’t go into those details for the purposes of this easy guide. Let’s focus instead on the upper-right box:

1. Preview: by clicking this button, we can preview the product in a pop-up window. We can do this as many times as necessary to improve the presentation of our Product and its information. This button does not publish the product.

2. Publish: once we’re satisfied with the information entered, we’ll click the “Publish” button to make our new item available for sale online. From then on, it will be visible on our site to any visitor or potential buyer.

With these instructions, we can consider our easy guide complete so that you can start publishing your products right away. However, before we finish, we want to recommend a plugin that will make your life easier: BEAR, *Bulk Editor And Product Manager*. This component enables bulk editing of absolutely every WooCommerce field: Attributes, Categories, Tags, Custom Taxonomies, Meta Fields, etc. It is so powerful and makes things so much easier that we decided to include it in this guide.

Bulk editing and importing

If we need to bulk-import products into our store, we can use WooCommerce’s native features. After creating our first product, we can use the "Export" button to obtain a .CSV file in the format we need to complete, add all the products we need, and then use the "Import" function.

If you’re looking for tools for bulk editing, below we share some useful plugins.

WP All Import / Export Pro + WooCommerce Advanced Bulk Edit

The solution we recommend for more complex cases, and that we include in our WooCommerce maintenance service, is WP All Import / Export Pro + WooCommerce Advanced Bulk Edit.