The task of adding your products to your store will take up the bulk of your time unless you can find a way to automate the process somewhat. There are things that you can do to speed up the adding of products, such as importing your inventory using a CSV file, and we’ll get into that as well. The goal of this chapter is to make it as easy and painless as possible to get your items added into your store along with the proper information for shipping, pricing and categorization. This is going to be a step-by-step guide that will cover all aspects of adding products, since it is arguably the most important part of having an eCommerce website.
Exploring the Products Section
The first thing that we’ll do is a quick overview and exploration of the products section of your Shopify store. There are two basic parts that you need to be aware of. The first is the tutorial section, where you can learn through text instructions and screenshots, exactly how you can create your products, and the actual section where you add and edit your products, as well as do other related tasks.
The Help Section
In order to get to your tutorial section, you simply click on ‘Products’ from your admin page and then scroll down to click the link at the bottom that says ‘Learn more about products.’ This will take you to the visual tutorial that will teach you everything that you need to know. Let’s go through the tutorial section quickly so that you can understand where to get help when you need it. There are nineteen separate sections that pertain to products in the help section, which is actually part of the entire Shopify manual. Another way that you can access it, without having to go to the products page first, is to type in docs.shopify.com and then when the help section comes up, simply clicking on the ’manual’ link.From there you’ll be able to access the massive amount of help information that Shopify provides to you on everything from products to gift cards.
Introduction to Adding Products
So, what exactly are products? They are the items that are for sale in your store. You have specific products that have their own images and you may have a particular quantity as well. The adding or a product is a four-step process.
- Step One: Adding a product title, which works much in the same way as adding a WordPress post.
- Step Two: Adding images for that product. You can add more than one, but you’ll also have a primary product image.
- Step Three: Adding a product description. While the title should describe your product, the description will be what actually sells your product to the customer.
- Step Four: Create variations of your product. For example, you might have different sizes, different colors or other variants.
Adding Your First Product
In order to add your first product you are going to have to navigate back to the Shopify admin page, assuming you are within the help section. The easiest ways way to do is just to enter www.shopify.com in your address bar and then press enter. It will take you back to the admin page. From there, click on the products link on the sidebar and you will be able to add a new product.
First, click on ‘Product’ and then click on the large blue button that says ‘Add Product.’ This will take you a a entry page that looks very much like a WordPress ‘add new post’ page. You’ll need to completely the following information if you want to add your product to your store.
- Title: For example if you were starting a clothing store, this would be where you would put a specific style of tee shirt. For example: ‘plain tee-shirts.’ You don’t want to add additional information like size or color just yet.
- Next is your product description. This is where you’ll type in the information that will sell this item to a potential customer. For example:
“These 100% cotton T-shirts are comfortable and stylish, and make the perfect complement to slacks and a belt, to protect the skin from suspenders and go underneath dress shirts for formal occasions. “
- Next, you want to add your product images. You can add more than one image if you want, but you should try to be selective and only add images that are necessary to show a different aspect of your item – for example: a different color. Also, you can include image alternative text which will help both for SEO purposes and to describe the image if it won’t display for some reason.
- On the right sidebar at the top you’ll see the visibility, which is where you want the product to be seen (i.e. the main store) and the visible date, which is simply the date that you are lunching that product. This will probably be the same day you launch your store, but sometimes, people have a product coming out on a specific day.
- Next, you’ll fill in your organization information. This means that you’ll identify where in your organization tree this item fits. For example: If it is a t-shirt, it probably fits within the ‘shirts’ category. You’ll further identify it by creating a vendor. This is a useful tool not only for organizing your products, but also for keeping of which of your vendors this product belongs to so that you can order it again when it gets sold. If you are doing consignment this is also helpful.
- The last item on the sidebar is the collections search tool so that you can add it to item collections that will help your customers find items within specific collections and could help you make more sales by giving visitors something else to look at after they have checked out this item.
- At the bottom, you’ll decide on the price of the product and then choose a price to compare it to. This is simply a way for you to create a sales price, with the “Compare at” price being the original, regular price, and the selling price being what you are selling the item for “now,” That way, you can show a higher “original” price so that customers will think that the price has been slashed. You can also check the box that will tell the website to charge tax on that particular item, no matter what the location of the person buying it.
- You’ll set your inventory tracking numbers in the next two boxes. Your first will be your SKU or ‘Stock Keeping Unit’ and other will be your barcode, or in the case of a book, your International Standard Book Number (ISBN).
- In the next section, you’ll add in shipping weight using ounces, pounds, kilograms or grams and set up any international tariff codes that apply.
- Near the bottom ou’ll get to the most powerful part of the product listing – the variants. You choose the name of each variant, such as size, color, etc., and you’ll set a variant value for each of the variants that you create to apply to this particular product, which will then apply to similar products as well.
- The last part of the main product listing is the SEO preview, which will allow you to see the HTML title and description that you have created as well as set website SEO options if necessary.
Product Transfers
Another extremely powerful feature that the product listing or “Add Product” page includes is the ability to manage transfers. Transfers make it extremely easy to track and update your incoming inventory by letting Shipfy keep track for you. You set this up in your item listings by clicking the ‘edit’ link in the variants section. Go down to the inventory section and choose “Shopify tracks this product’s inventory” from the dropdown. After you have set the product to be tracked by Shopify you can create a transfer.
You do this by clicking the second option in the product sidebar (Products, Transfers, Inventory, etc.) You’ll record the incoming inventory from a supplier (note: this is not the brand or vendor information that we created earlier. This is where you actually purchase the product whereas vendor is more likt he brand of the item). Once you have arrived at the transfers page, click ‘Add Transfer’ and choose your supplier (or create a new one if necessary). You’ll also fill out the arrival date of your inventory transfer. Find the items that you are going to be receiving in that transfer order and take special care to get the quantities right because you can’t change them once the inventory date arrives. When you have entered in all of the products that you will be receiving in that particular delivery you simply save it.
Inventory Tracking, Collections & Gift Cards
Once you have inventory entered into your database, you will be able to view it and track it at a glance by clicking on the third option in the products section – inventory. You’ll be able to accept or reject items from a supplier once the date has arrived for the order to get there and you can also click on the fourth option on the list to view your collections including being able to see any collections that you have created and get a birds-eye view of that particular part of your store. You’ll also be able to set up gift cards for sale in that section as well which will give customers virtual gift cards to purchase.
