Chapter 4: Managing Products

Adding and managing products is the core of any e-commerce store. WooCommerce provides robust tools to handle various product types, allowing you to showcase your offerings effectively. This section will guide you through adding different types of products and organizing your inventory.

Adding a simple product

A simple product is the most basic product type in WooCommerce, representing a physical item with no variations. Here's how to add one:

1. Navigate to Products > Add New: In your WordPress dashboard, hover over 'Products' and click on 'Add New'.
2. Enter Product Name: Provide a clear and descriptive name for your product in the title field.
3. Add Product Description: In the main content editor (Gutenberg block editor or Classic editor), write a detailed description of your product. This is where you can highlight its features, benefits, and any other relevant information.
4. Add Product Short Description: Below the main editor, you'll find the 'Product short description' box. This brief summary often appears next to the product image on single product pages and in product listings. Keep it concise and engaging.
5. Set Product Data: This is the most important section for configuring your product. It's a meta box usually located below the main product description. Ensure 'Simple product' is selected from the 'Product data' dropdown.
   • General Tab:
     • Regular price: Enter the standard price of your product.
     • Sale price: (Optional) If the product is on sale, enter the discounted price here. You can also schedule sale dates.
   • Inventory Tab:
     • SKU: (Optional but recommended) Enter a unique Stock Keeping Unit for your product. This helps with inventory management.
     • Manage stock?: Check this box to enable stock management for this product. You can then enter the 'Stock quantity'.
     • Allow backorders?: Choose whether to allow backorders, disallow them, or allow but notify the customer.
     • Low stock threshold: Set a number at which you'll be notified that stock is running low.
     • Sold individually: Enable this if you want to allow only one of this item to be bought in a single order.
   • Shipping Tab:
     • Weight: Enter the weight of the product. This is crucial for shipping calculations.
     • Dimensions: Enter the length, width, and height of the product. Also important for shipping.
     • Shipping class: (Optional) Assign a shipping class if you've set them up to apply specific shipping rates.
   • Linked Products Tab:
     • Upsells: Select products that you want to suggest to customers as a more expensive or higher-quality alternative.
     • Cross-sells: Select products that you want to suggest to customers as complementary items in the cart.
   • Attributes Tab: (For simple products, this is less common, but you can add custom product attributes here if needed, though they won't create variations).
   • Advanced Tab:
     • Purchase note: (Optional) A note sent to the customer after purchase.
     • Menu order: Set the order in which products appear.
     • Enable reviews: Allow or disallow customer reviews for this product.
6. Set Product Image: In the right sidebar, click 'Set product image' to upload or select the main image for your product. This image will be prominently displayed on your shop and product pages.
7. Add Product Gallery Images: (Optional) Click 'Add product gallery images' to add additional images that showcase your product from different angles or in use.
8. Assign Product Categories: In the right sidebar, select or create categories for your product. This helps customers navigate your store.
9. Add Product Tags: (Optional) Add relevant tags to further describe your product and improve searchability.
10. Publish: Once you've configured all the necessary details, click the 'Publish' button to make your product live on your store.

Adding variable products

Variable products allow you to offer a set of variations on a product, with control over prices, stock, image, and more for each variation. This is ideal for products like clothing (sizes, colors) or electronics (different specifications).

Here's how to create a variable product:

1. Create a New Product: Start by navigating to Products > Add New as you would for a simple product.
2. Enter Product Name and Description: Fill in the product name, long description, and short description.
3. Change Product Data Type: In the 'Product data' meta box, change the dropdown from 'Simple product' to 'Variable product'.
4. Add Attributes:
   • Go to the 'Attributes' tab within the 'Product data' box.
   • Click 'Add' to create a new attribute, or select an existing one from the dropdown (e.g., 'Color', 'Size').
   • Name: Enter the name of the attribute (e.g., "Color").
   • Values: Enter the different values for the attribute, separated by a vertical pipe | (e.g., "Red | Blue | Green").
   • Check the 'Used for variations' box. This is crucial for creating product variations.
   • Click 'Save attributes'.
5. Create Variations:
   • From the dropdown, select 'Create variations from all attributes' and click 'Go'. WooCommerce will automatically generate all possible combinations of your attributes.
   • Alternatively, you can manually add variations one by one.
6. Configure Each Variation: For each generated variation, expand it to configure its specific details:
   • Image: Upload a specific image for this variation.
   • SKU: (Optional) A unique SKU for this variation.
   • Enabled: Check this box to make the variation visible.
   • Regular Price: This is a mandatory field for variations. Enter the price for this specific variation.
   • Sale Price: (Optional) Set a sale price for this variation.
   • Stock management: Enable stock management at the variation level to track inventory for each specific variation.
   • Weight/Dimensions: Set specific weight and dimensions if they differ by variation.
   • Downloadable/Virtual: Mark if the variation is downloadable or virtual (see next section).
7. Save Changes: After configuring all variations, click 'Save changes' in the 'Variations' tab, and then 'Publish' or 'Update' the product.

Adding virtual and downloadable products (digital products)

WooCommerce makes it easy to sell non-physical products like e-books, software, music, or services. These are categorized as virtual and downloadable products.

1. Create a New Product: Start by adding a new product or editing an existing one.
2. Mark as Virtual: In the 'Product data' meta box, check the 'Virtual' checkbox. This will automatically remove the 'Shipping' tab, as virtual products don't require shipping.
3. Mark as Downloadable: If your product is a digital file, also check the 'Downloadable' checkbox. This will reveal the 'Downloadable files' section.
4. Add Downloadable Files:
   • Click 'Add file'.
   • Name: Enter a name for the download (e.g., "E-book PDF").
   • File URL: Click 'Choose file' to upload the digital file from your media library or enter the URL if it's hosted elsewhere.
   • Download limit: (Optional) Set how many times a customer can download the file.
   • Download expiry: (Optional) Set a number of days after which the download link expires.
5. Configure Product Data: Fill in the 'General' tab (Regular Price, Sale Price) and other relevant tabs as you would for a simple product. Inventory management can still be used for digital products if you have a limited number of licenses, for example.
6. Publish: Save your changes by clicking 'Publish' or 'Update'.

Managing product categories, tags, and attributes

Organizing your products with categories, tags, and attributes improves navigation for customers and helps with SEO.

• Product Categories:
  • Purpose: Broad groupings for your products (e.g., "Electronics", "Clothing", "Books"). A product can belong to multiple categories.
  • How to add: In the WordPress dashboard, go to Products > Categories. Here you can add new categories, set their names, slugs, descriptions, and assign parent categories to create a hierarchy. You can also assign a thumbnail image to each category.
• Product Tags:
  • Purpose: More specific keywords to describe your products (e.g., "eco-friendly", "waterproof", "vintage"). Similar to blog post tags.
  • How to add: Go to Products > Tags. Add new tags with names and slugs.
• Product Attributes:
  • Purpose: Define additional product properties that can be used for filtering or creating variations (e.g., "Color", "Size", "Material").
  • How to add: Go to Products > Attributes. Here you can create new attributes. Once created, you can add terms (values) for each attribute (e.g., for "Color", you might add "Red", "Blue", "Green"). These attributes can then be assigned to individual products and used to create variations.

Importing and exporting products

WooCommerce provides built-in tools to import and export product data, which is useful for bulk updates, migrating products between stores, or integrating with other systems.

• Exporting Products:
  1. Go to Products > All Products.
  2. Click the 'Export' button at the top.
  3. Select which columns to export, which product types, which categories, and whether to export custom meta. You can also choose to export all products or only specific ones.
  4. Click 'Generate CSV' to download a CSV file containing your product data.
• Importing Products:
  1. Go to Products > All Products.
  2. Click the 'Import' button at the top.
  3. Click 'Choose File' to upload your product CSV file.
  4. WooCommerce will guide you through a mapping process to match columns in your CSV to product fields. You can also choose to update existing products that match by SKU or ID.
  5. Run the importer. Review any errors or warnings after the import is complete.

These tools streamline the process of managing large product catalogs, saving you time and effort.