Guide to Creating Products in WooCommerce

In just a few quick steps, you'll learn how to add your products clearly and easily. We'll also recommend a plugin at the end that will make bulk price updates much easier. Shall we get started?

First things first: if you aren't logged in to your account, please log in and go to your WordPress Dashboard. You can usually access it 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” conducted 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, this guide will focus on Products.

Creating our first category

The recommended first step is to create categories for our products. For example: cakes, cookies, puddings, cupcakes, etc. To do this, we'll go to the Categories option.

In the window that opens, we can see a few fields and a couple of options. By filling in this information, we'll create our first category, which we'll need later to organize our products.

Next, a description of each field:

1. Name: enter the name of our category here; 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 name, so we don't need to enter anything here. If we leave it blank, Woo will assume we want the slug to match the category name (that is, “cakes”).

3. Parent category lets us 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, we could also create a subcategory on this screen. For example, after creating the Cakes category, if we're now creating “vegan cakes”, we can select “cakes” as the parent category.

4. Here we'll enter a descriptive text for the category. This is what users will see when they visit the main “cakes” category. NOTE: Not all WordPress themes display this text to users.

5. Display type lets us choose what appears on the Category page (e.g., mysite.com/cakes). “Default” uses the value set by the theme. “Subcategories” displays only subcategories (e.g., “chocolate cakes”, “cream cakes”, etc.). “Products” displays only the products in the category. “Both” displays subcategories as well as main products. For the purposes of this guide, we'll leave the default option selected.

6. With the Thumbnail option, WooCommerce lets us specify a general image for the entire category. This is optional, and, again, not all themes display this image. However, we recommend adding one as a precaution. NOTE: It's always a good idea to use the same dimensions for all images uploaded to the site, both category and product images. For example, 700 pixels wide by 625 pixels high is a recommended size. If you have a photographer taking pictures of your products, you can ask them to always provide the images in those dimensions. 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 lets us finish creating the category.

For this guide, we've created the “cakes” category, which looks like this:

If we've forgotten something, don't like an aspect of it, or want to make a change, we'll hover the mouse pointer over the category, and several options will appear automatically:

The Edit option takes us back to the screen shown in the screenshot above, where we can change any field, including the category image (if we've uploaded one).

On the other hand, note that the Delete option lets us remove the category entirely, for cases where a product line has been discontinued. If we had already added products to the category we deleted, they'll become “orphaned” under the default category, called “Uncategorized”.

Adding our first product to 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 labels are shown; their descriptions are provided below.

The labeled fields are described below:

1. Product name: enter the name of our product in this field. Example: “Black Forest Cake”. This is not only the name that identifies our product, but also the name 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.

3. Product categories: select the correct category for our product here (e.g., “cakes”). NOTE: WooCommerce lets us select more than one category, since there may be cases where the product we're creating belongs to two or more classes. In general, this won't be the case.

4. Product tags: tags are very useful when we want to associate a product with others that share one or more characteristics. In our example, we could tag products by their ingredients, such as “dulce de leche”, “chocolate”, “lemon”, and so on. Separate tags with commas. Alternatively, we can enter a tag, press ENTER, and then add more. Each time we press ENTER, the tag is assigned to the product we're editing, and it's also added to 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 start typing a tag, WOO will autocomplete its name if it was created previously (for example, if we start typing “dul”, the “dulce de leche” option will appear so we can select it without having to type the whole thing).

5. Short product description: enter a brief, specific summary of the product in this field. However, for some types of products, certain stores use it to show the buyer different but complementary information to the long description. Examples include sizes, weights, dimensions, voltage, packaging type, warranties, certifications, number of pieces, and much more.

6. Product image: click the Set product image link to upload the main photo for the product we're adding. Again, we recommend using the same dimensions for all our product photos, if possible.

7. Product gallery: click the Add product gallery images link to upload one or more photos of our product. This creates a clickable photo gallery, commonly found on online shopping sites such as MercadoLibre (useful for showing different views, an ingredient, or any other image that complements our product).

Now it's time to set a price for our product. Let's focus on this section of the new Product creation screen:

1. Regular price: enter the price of our product here, quite simply.
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 the regular price remains unchanged, and we can also activate or deactivate the discount without having to set the sale price to zero.
3. Note that the link labeled 3, Schedule, lets us set a period during which this sale price will be in effect. Clicking it opens two new fields:

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

The Inventory tab lets us manage settings related to our stock.

1. Stock status: use the drop-down options to select whether the product is available or temporarily out of stock (this information will be visible to users on 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 reference number to each stocked product.

Lastly, as shown in the screenshot below, the Shipping tab optionally lets us enter the product's weight and the dimensions of its box.

Although there are more advanced options for certain e-shops and special types of products, we won't go into those details in this beginner's guide. Let's focus on the upper-right box:

1. Preview: click this button to preview the product in a pop-up window. We can do this as many times as needed to improve the way our product and its information are presented. This button does not publish the product.

2. Publish: once we're happy with the information we've entered, we'll click the “Publish” button to put our new item up for sale online. From then on, it will appear on our site for any visitor or potential buyer.

With these instructions, our quick guide is complete, and you can start publishing your products right away. However, first we'd like to recommend a plugin that will make your life easier: BEAR, *Bulk Editor And Product Manager*. This component lets you bulk edit absolutely every WooCommerce field: attributes, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, meta fields, etc. It's 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 import products into our store in bulk, we can use WooCommerce's built-in features. After creating our first product, use the “Export” button to get a .CSV file in the format we need to fill out. Add all the products we need, then use the “Import” function.

If you're looking for tools to make bulk edits, here are some useful plugins:

WP All Import / Export Pro + WooCommerce Advanced Bulk Edit

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