Guide to Creating Products in WooCommerce

In just a few short steps, you’ll learn how to upload 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. Access is usually located at yoursite.com/wp-admin

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

After a brief "survey" performed by the component to geolocate and configure 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.

Creating our first category

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

In the window that has opened, 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.

Below is 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; generally, it will be the same as the category itself, so we should not enter anything there. 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 are creating is a main Product group (which it will be by 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 enter the main “cakes” category. NOTE: not all WordPress themes display this text to users.

5. Display type lets us decide what is shown on the Category page (e.g., mysite.com/cakes). "Default" uses the value set by the theme. "Subcategories" will display only the subcategories (e.g., “chocolate cakes”, “cream cakes”, etc.). "Products" will display only the products belonging to the category. “Both” will display 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, in this case we recommend adding one as a precaution. NOTE: it is always best 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 we work with a photographer who takes photos of our products, we can ask them to always provide the material in this size. Another option is to use a bitmap (photo) editing program 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’ll move 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; there 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 completely, for cases in which a product line has been discontinued. If we had already added Products to the Category we deleted, they will become "orphaned" under the default Category, called "Uncategorized".

Adding our first product in WooCommerce

Now that we have 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 shown, 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”. Not only is this the name that identifies our Product, but it is also what 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 have prepared a special article on selling more and better through Online Stores. One of its most important sections focuses on making the most 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 specify more than one Category because there may be cases in which the product we are creating belongs to two or more classes. Generally, this will not be necessary.

4. Product Tags: "tags" or Labels are very useful when we want to associate a product with others that share one or more characteristics. In the example we have been using, 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. Each time we press ENTER, the tag is not only assigned to the product we are editing, but the Tag is also created in the WooCommerce database (if it has not already been created). In practical terms, this means that in the future, when we enter new Products and start typing a Tag, WOO will autocomplete its name if it has already been created (for example, we start typing “dul” and the option “dulce de leche” 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 some types of products, certain Stores use it to present buyers with information that is different from but complementary to 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 are entering. Once again, we recommend keeping all product photos at the same size whenever possible.

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

It’s time to set the 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 an offer 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 Sale price to zero.
3. Note that the numbered link labeled 3, Schedule, allows us to set a 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 specified 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 (information the user will see when visiting the Product presentation 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 dimensions in 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 simple 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 are satisfied with the information entered, we’ll click the “Publish” button to put our new item online for sale. From then on, it will be visible on our site to any visitor or potential buyer.

With these instructions, we can consider our simple guide complete, allowing you to 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 all WooCommerce fields: Attributes, Categories, Tags, Custom Taxonomies, Meta Fields, etc. It is so powerful and makes life so much easier that we decided to include it in this guide.

Bulk editing and importing

If we need to import products in bulk to our store, we can use WooCommerce’s native functions. 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 we are looking for tools to perform bulk edits, 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.