Adding and Managing Products

Adding and Managing Products

Adding a product

Before adding your first product, let’s get familiar with how product categories, tags, and attributes work.

Product Categories

Product categories and tags work in much the same way as normal categories and tags you have when writing posts in WordPress. They can be created, edited, and selected at any time. This can be done when you first create a product or come back and edit it or the category/tag specifically.

Attributes

These can be added per product, or you can set up global attributes for the entire store to use (e.g., in layered navigation).

Product Types

With attributes and categories set up and stock management configured, we can begin adding products. When adding a product, the first thing to decide is what type of product it is.

  • Simple – covers the vast majority of any products you may sell. Simple products are shipped and have no options. For example, a book.

  • Grouped – a collection of related products that can be purchased individually and only consist of simple products. For example, a set of six drinking glasses.

  • Virtual – one that doesn’t require shipping. For example, a service. Enabling this disables all shipping-related fields such as shipping dimensions. A virtual product will also not trigger the shipping calculator in cart and checkout.

  • Downloadable – activates additional fields where you can provide a downloadable file. After a successful purchase, customers are given a downloadable file as a link in the order notification email. This is suitable, for example, for a digital album, PDF magazine, or photo.

  • External or Affiliate – one that you list and describe on your website but is sold elsewhere.

  • Variable – a product with variations, each of which may have a different SKU, price, stock option, etc. For example, a t-shirt available in different colors and/or sizes.

  • Other types are often added by extensions.

Adding a simple product

Adding a Simple product is similar to writing a post in WordPress.

  1. Go to WooCommerce > Products > Add Product.

  2. Enter a product Title and Description.

  3. Go to the Product Data panel, and select downloadable (digital) or virtual (service) if applicable.

Notes
Note: Virtual products don’t require shipping — an order with virtual products won’t calculate shipping costs.

Product data

The Product Data meta box is where the majority of important data is added for your products.

General section

  • Price

    • Regular Price – Item’s normal/regular price

    • Sale Price – Item’s discounted price that can then be scheduled for certain date ranges. The sale expires at 11:59pm of the specified end date

  • Tax

    • Tax status – Taxable / Shipping only / None

    • Tax class – Choose which tax class should be applied

Inventory section

The inventory section allows you to manage stock for the product individually and define whether to allow back orders and more. It enables you to sell products and allow customers to add them to the cart to buy.
Enable Stock Management must be selected in Products Inventory Settings; otherwise, only the ‘Stock status’ option is visible in the Product Data Inventory box.
Options when stock management at product level is disabled. You are responsible for updating the Stock Status.
Options when stock management at product level is enabled:

  • Enter the Stock Quantity, and WooCommerce auto-manages inventory and auto-updates Stock Status as Stock, Out of Stock or On Backorder.

  • Select whether to Allow Backorders.

  • Low stock threshold – Enter a number upon which you are notified.

  • Tick the Sold Individually box to limit the product to one per order.

Shipping section

  • Weight – Weight of the item.

  • Dimensions – Length, width and height for the item.

  • Shipping Class – Shipping classes are used by certain shipping methods to group similar products.

Linked Products section

Using up-sells and cross-sells, you can cross promote your products. They can be added by searching for a particular product and selecting the product from the dropdown list.
After adding, they are listed in the input field.

  • Up-sells are displayed on the product details page. These are products that you may wish to encourage users to upgrade, based on the product they are currently viewing.

  • Cross-sells are products that are displayed with the cart and related to the user’s cart contents.

  • Grouping – Used to make a product part of a grouped product.

Attributes section

On the Attributes tab, you can assign details to a product. You will see a select box containing global attribute sets you created.
Once you have chosen an attribute, click add and apply the terms attached to that attribute to the product. You can hide the attribute on the frontend by unticking the Visible checkbox.
Custom attributes can also be applied by choosing Custom product attribute. These are added at the product level and won’t be available in layered navigation or other products.

Advanced section

  • Purchase note – Enter an optional note to send the customer after they purchase the product.

  • Menu order – Custom ordering position for this item.

  • Enable Reviews – Enable/Disable customer reviews for this item.

Product short description

Add an excerpt. This typically appears next to product imagery on the listing page, and the long description appears in the Product Description tab.
Video embeds may be used, as of version 3.1x.

Taxonomies

On the right-hand side of the Add New Product panel, there are product categories in which you can place your product, similar to a standard WordPress post. You can also assign product tags in the same way.

Setting catalog visibility options and feature status

In the Publish panel, you can set Catalog Visibility for your product.

  • Shop and search – Visible everywhere

  • Shop only – Visible in shop pages and category pages, but not search results

  • Search only – Visible in search results, but not shop/category pages

  • Hidden – Only visible on the single product page

You can also set whether the product is promoted in product categories, up-sells, related products as a Featured Product.

Adding a grouped product

A grouped product is created much the same way as a Simple product. The only difference is you select Grouped from the Product Type dropdown.
To create your parent product:

  1. Go to: WooCommerce > Products > Add New

  2. Enter a Title for the Grouped product

  3. Scroll down to Product Data and select Grouped

  4. Publish

Then:

  • Create products and add them

  • Add existing child products

You can first create Simple products and add them later, or first create a Grouped product and add Simple products later.

Add products to the Group

  1. Go to: WooCommerce > Products > Add New

  2. Select the Grouped product you wish to add products to.

  3. Scroll down to Product Data > Linked Products

  4. Select Grouped Products, and search for the product

  5. Click the products you wish to add

  6. Update

  7. Drag and drop to reorder, then press Update

Adding a virtual product
When adding a Simple product, you can tick the Virtual checkbox in the product type panel.
With Variable products this checkbox is moved to each variation.
Enabling this disables all shipping-related fields. A virtual product will also not trigger the shipping calculator.

Adding a downloadable product

When adding a simple product, tick the Downloadable checkbox. This adds two fields:

  • File path — Path or URL to your downloadable file

  • Download limit – Limit on number of downloads. Leave blank for unlimited

You can also check Virtual if it’s not shippable.

Adding an external/affiliate product
Select External/Affiliate from the product type dropdown. This removes tabs like tax and inventory and inserts a product URL field. Users see a “Read More” button linking to this URL.

Adding a variable product

Variable products let you define variations of a single product with different SKU, price, or stock. See Variable Product guide for details.

Duplicating a product

To save time, you can duplicate a product.
Go to WooCommerce > Products and click Duplicate under the product name.

Deleting a product

To delete a product:

  1. Go to: WooCommerce > Products

  2. Find the product you wish to delete

  3. Hover under the name and click Trash

To mark a product as featured, go to: Products > Products and select the Star in the featured column. Or use Quick Edit and tick Featured.

Filter or sort products

Filtering products

Use the Filter function to count products, view by type, or stock status.

  1. Go to: WooCommerce > Products

  2. Select Category, Product Type, Stock Status, or any combination

  3. Click Filter

Sorting products

Sorting is done by dragging and dropping products.

  1. Go to: WooCommerce > Products

  2. Select Sorting

  3. Select filters if needed

  4. Click Filter

You can now drag and drop product order.

If products don’t sort correctly, update sorting via: Appearance > Customize > WooCommerce > Product Catalogue > Default product sorting.

Product ID

To find a WooCommerce Product ID:

  1. Go to Products

  2. Hover over the product

  3. The ID will be displayed

Allow backorders

Select whether to allow Backorders from the dropdown if managing stock on a product.

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