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 colours and/or sizes.
Adding a Simple Product
- Go to Products > Add Product.
- Enter a product Title and Description.
- Skip over Yoast SEO Premium for now, come back here once product data is all captured and follow the suggestions offered by this powerful built-in feature.
- Go to the Product Data panel, and select the product type, setting all relevant product information.
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 (VAT)
- 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 if you wish to set inventory levels for a particular product; otherwise, only the ‘Stock status’ option is visible in the Product Data Inventory box.
When stock management at product level is disabled, you need only set the Stock Status.
Options when Stock Management at product level is enabled.
- Enter the Stock Quantity, and OnShop 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, not used by default and can be ignored.
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:
Up-sells are displayed to the customer 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 current cart contents, suggesting useful additions to those items.
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 (e.g., platform). More at: Categories and Attributes.
Once you have chosen an attribute from the select box, click add and apply the terms attached to that attribute (e.g., Nintendo DS) to the product. You can hide the attribute on the frontend by leaving the Visible checkbox unticked.
Custom attributes can also be applied by choosing Custom product attribute from the select box. 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 from the full Description or a catchy short description. This typically appears next to product imagery on the listing page and in the Quick View. The long description appears in the Description tab on the main product page.
The editor is much like any word processor, you can adjust font sizes and colours, add images from the Media library etc using the toolbar.
Product Categories
On the right-hand side of the Add New Product panel, there are product categories in which you place your products to make customer navigation easier. You can also assign product tags in the same way, which helps when customers search your products and for SEO to add keywords to a product.
Product Images
Add a main product image and, optionally, a gallery of further images of the product.
Remember, Well-lit and nicely framed square images on a white background with minimum 600×600 pixels and maximum of 1200×1200 pixels with a resolution of 72dpi work best.
More at: Product Images and Galleries.
The Publish Panel
In the Publish panel, you can save your product as a draft, Publish the product to your store, Update an existing product and set Catalogue Visibility for your product.
- Shop and search – Visible everywhere, shop pages, category pages and search results.
- Shop only – Visible in shop pages and category pages, but not search results.
- Search only – Visible in search results, but not in the shop page or category pages.
- Hidden – Only visible on the single product page – not on any other pages.
You can also set whether the product is promoted in product categories, up-sells, related products as a Featured Product. For example, you could tick the Featured box on all bundles you sell.
Other ways to set as Featured are described in the below section: Mark a product as Featured.
Adding a Grouped Product
A grouped product is created in 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 select ‘Grouped’ from the Product Type dropdown.
Create the Grouped product
- Go to: Products > Add New.
- Enter a Title for the Grouped product, e.g., Back to School set
- Scroll down to Product Data and select Grouped from the dropdown. The price and several other fields disappear. This is normal because a Grouped Product is a collection of ‘child products’, which is where you add this information.
- Publish.
The Grouped product is still an empty group, you need to add products.
Having the choice to first create Simple products and add them to a Grouped product later; or first create a Grouped product and add Simple products later gives you flexibility to add Simple products to more than one Grouped product.
Add products to the Group
- Go to: Products > Add New.
- Edit the Grouped product you wish to add products to.
- Scroll down to Product Data and go to Linked Products.
- Select Grouped Products, and search for the product by typing
- Click the products you wish to add.
- Update
- You can drag and drop to reorder the Grouped Products. Once you press Update, the new order will be shown on the product page.
Adding a Virtual Product
When adding a Simple product, you can tick the Virtual checkbox box in the product type panel.
With Variable products this checkbox is moved to each variation.
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.
Adding a Downloadable Product
When adding a simple product, you can tick the Downloadable checkbox box in the product type panel. This adds two new fields:
- File path — Path or url to your downloadable file.
- Download limit – Limit on number of times the customer can download file. Left blank for unlimited downloads.
For maximum flexibility, downloadable products can also incur a shipping cost if, for example, you were offering both a packaged and a downloadable version of a product. You can simply uncheck the Virtual box to re-enable the Shipping options.
More at: Downloadable Products
Adding an External/Affiliate Product
Select ‘External/Affiliate’ from the product type dropdown. This removes unnecessary tabs, such as tax and inventory, and inserts a new product URL field. This is the destination where users can purchase the product. Rather than Add to Cart buttons, they see a Read More button directing them to this URL.
Adding a Variable Product
Variable products are arguably the most complex of product types. They let you define variations of a single product where each variation may have a different SKU, price or stock level.
See Variable Products for a guide on creating a product with variations.
Deleting a Product
To delete a product:
Go to: Products.
Find the product you wish to delete.
Hover in the area under the Product name and click Trash.
Select with to redirect to a new/replacement product, or to serve a “content deleted” header to assist the search engines with SEO.
Featured Products
To mark a product as featured, go to: Products and select the Star in the featured column. Alternatively, select Quick Edit and then the Featured option.
Filtering Products
Use the Filter function to get a product count, view products by type, or see which products are On Backorder or Out of Stock.
- Go to: Products.
- Select a Category, Product Type and/or Stock Status, or any combination of the three.
- Click Filter.