beginners guide: how to upload products to WooCommerce

Quick guide to upload products in WooCommerce

Welcome to the easy WooCommerce tutorial

In very short steps you will learn to upload your products in a clear and simple way. In addition, in the end, we recommend a plugin that will make it much easier to update prices massively. Shall we start?

The first: If you are not logged into your account, please login to your account and go to your WordPress Dashboard. Access is normally located in the direction yoursite.com/wp-admin

We assume that you already have WooCommerce installed. If that is not the case, you can download it now for free since Plugins → Add New as indicated in the screenshot below.

After a brief "survey" carried out by the component to geolocate and theme the installation, we can verify that two new items have appeared in our Desktop toolbar: WooCommerce Y Products. In this guide we will deal with Products as we anticipate.

The recommended first step is create the Categories of our Products. For example: cakes, cookies, puddings, cup cakes, etc. For that, we are going to enter the Categories option.

In the window that has opened we can see some fields and a couple of options. Completing this information is that we will create the first of our Categories, necessary to, later, order our products by them.

then a description of each of the fields:

  1. Name: here we write the name of our Category; for example, “cakes”.
  2. The slug is the internal name of the category within the database; in general, it will be the same as the category itself, and therefore we should not write anything there. If we leave it empty, Woo will understand that we want the “slug” to be the same as the category name (ie “cakes”).
  3. parent category It allows us to specify if the Category that we are creating is a group of main Products (it will be like this by default) or a Subcategory (example: “vegan cakes”). If we had created the “Cake” category, then on this screen we are also allowed to create a Subcategory. 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 will enter a Descriptive text of the category; it will be the same one that our users will see when they enter the main category “cakes”. NOTE: Not all WordPress themes present this text to the user.
  5. Display Type allows us to decide what is displayed on the Category page (ex: mysite.com/cakes). “Standard” uses the default value for the theme. “Subcategories” will show only the subcategories (eg: “chocolate cakes”, “cream cakes”, etc.). "Products" will only show the products of the category. “Both” will show both subcategories and main products. For the purposes of this tutorial we will leave the default option.
  6. through the Miniature, WooCommerce allows us to specify a generic image for the entire Category. This is optional, and again, not all themes post this image. However, in this case we recommend it preventively. NOTE: It is always convenient that all the images that we upload to the site, both categories and products, have the same size. For example, 700 pixels wide by 625 pixels high is a recommended size. If we have a photographer who is in charge of capturing our products, we can request that they always give us the material in that size. Another option is to use a bitmap (photo) editing program such as PhotoShop or LightRoom, although there are also very easy and powerful tools online, such as https://resizeimage.net/
  7. The button Add new category It will allow us to terminate the creation of it.

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

If we have forgotten something, we do not like an aspect or we want to make a change, we will move with the mouse pointer over the category, and a series of options will appear automatically:

The option Edit It will return us to the screen that we have presented in the screenshot above; there we can change any field, including the Category image (if we have loaded one).

On the other hand, note that the option Erase It allows us to completely eliminate the Category, in cases where a product line has been discontinued. If we had already included Products in the Category that we deleted, they will be “orphaned” under the default Category, called “Uncategorized”.

Loading our first product in WooCommerce

Now that we've created (at least) one Category, it's time to load a product into it. We'll go to Products → Add new as shown in the screenshot below. Note that numbers are shown whose description we expand below.

The indicated fields, detailed below:

  1. Product name: in this field we will enter the name of our product. Example: “Black Forest Cake”. It is not only the name that will identify our Product, but also the one that our users will see (therefore, it must be clear and concise).
  2. Description Field Product information: this generous field is the place to describe everything relevant to our product. Characteristics, ingredients, handling precautions and any other pertinent details. At Duplika we have made a special note to sell more and better in Online Stores. One of the most important sections precisely squeezes the Product Description field to the fullest.
  3. Product Categories: here we will mark the correct Category of our Product (eg: “cakes”). NOTE: WooCommerce allows us to indicate more than one Category, because there could be a case where the product we are creating is likely to belong to two or more classes. In general, it is a case that will not be presented.
  4. Product Labels: the “tags” or Labels are very convenient for when we want to relate a product with those that share one or more characteristics. In the example case that we have been taking advantage of, we could label by ingredients. Eg: “dulce de leche”, “chocolate”, “lemon”… Labels are written separated by commas. Alternatively, we can type a Label, press ENTER, and then continue with others. Each time we press ENTER, not only is the label assigned to the product we are editing, but the Label is also created in the WooCommerce database (if it has not already been created before). This for practical purposes will be reflected in the fact that, in the future, when we enter new Products and start typing a Label, WOO will autocomplete its name if it has already been created previously (for example, we start typing “dul” and the option “dulce de leche” will be displayed so that we can check it without having to write everything).
  5. Short Product Description: in this field we will write a brief, punctual extract of the product. However, for some types of products, certain Stores use it to present the buyer with information that is different but complementary to the long description. Eg: sizes, weights, measurements, voltages, type of packaging, guarantees, certificates, number of pieces and a long etcetera.
  6. Product image: clicking on the link Set product image we will be able to load the main photograph of the Product that we are entering. Again, we recommend keeping all of our product photos to a single size, if possible.
  7. Product Gallery: clicking on the link Add image to product gallery we will be able to upload one or more photographs of our product, which will generate a clickable gallery of photographs, common in online sales sites such as MercadoLibre (useful to show different perspectives, some ingredient or any image that complements our product).

The time has come to put a price on our product. Let's now focus on this section of the New Product creation screen:

1. Normal price: here we will enter the value of our product, plain and simple.
two. Reduced price: Optionally, we can enter a value of offer. For example, if for a special date (Easter, Valentine's Day, Christmas) we want to offer a discount to our users, this is the indicated field to do so. One of the advantages is that we do not affect the standard regular price, and, in addition, we can activate or deactivate said discount without having to set Reduced Price to zero.
3. Note that the link numbered with 3, Schedule, will allow us to determine a window of time where this discounted price will be valid. Clicking will open two new fields:

It is enough to enter the dates "From" and "To" so that WOO is programmed to carry out the discount at that specific time.

The flap Inventory allows us to manage issues related to our stock.

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

Finally, and as we can see in the screenshot below, the flap Shipment allows us to optionally enter the weight and measurements of the product in its box.

Although there are more complex possibilities for certain e-shops and types of Special Products, for the purposes of this easy guide we will not delve into these details. So let's focus on the top right box:

  1. Preview: by clicking on this button we can preview the product in a pop-up window. We may do this as often as necessary to improve the presentation of our Product and its information. this button do not publish the product.
  2. Post: once we are satisfied with the data entered, we will click on the "Publish" button to leave our new item for sale online. From then on it will be seen on our site for any visitor and potential buyer.

After these instructions we can finish our easy guide so you can start publishing your products immediately. However, first we want recommend a plugin that will make your life easier: BEAR, Bulk Editor And Product Manager. This component allows batch editing of absolutely all WooCommerce fields: Attributes, Categories, Tags, Custom Taxonomies, Meta Fields, etc. It's so powerful and makes life so easy that we considered including it in this guide.

BEAR: Batch Editing and Product Management

The user guides are in video here.

BEAR is a complete, fast and very well designed plugin for facilitate the management of Products and all issues concerning a WooCommerce Store. In short, it saves us a lot of time while avoiding errors and duplication.

Among its multiple virtues, it allows us to choose in seconds which Product options we want to manage. This includes adding or removing visibility/access to each option via full customization within Work design, which makes this plugin an extremely simple tool but capable of managing everything at the same time.

Features

your version free in and of itself allows us bulk edit an impressive amount of fields.

  • Miniature
  • Title
  • Description
  • Product status
  • Normal price
  • Reduced price
  • SKUs
  • Inventory
  • Publication date
  • Categories
  • descriptive files
  • Directed sales products
  • Grouped products
  • Weight
  • Length
  • Width
  • Parent ID (for variations)
  • menu order
  • Product Attribute
  • Product meta fields
Note: we recommend first going to Table Configuration and uncheck all views we don't need. This will make the bulk editing section much more practical and clear later.

The PREMIUM version will let us batch edit the whole of existing fields in WooCommerce. We can learn more about its special features and buy it, if it is what we need, in the store of CodeCanyon. Note: Duplika has no relationship, commercial or otherwise, with the developers of this plugin. BEAR's recommendation only responds to our desire to inform and help WordPress/WooCommerce users with no other benefit than the satisfaction of our dear readers.

we can see in Spanish A list of typical questions and answers (FAQ) here.

We can test the plugin on your free version downloading it from our WordPress Dashboard (Plugins → Add New) or downloading it from here.

What we can expect from BEAR

As we can see, this plugin is as generous in its functionalities as it is effective. And a large audience that used to use a similar plugin has moved to this one for good. Frequently updated, BEAR: The WooCommerce Bulk Editor and Products Manager Professional already has more than 30,000 active installations.

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