So you’ve got the basics of your WooCommerce store up and running. Great! But what next? How do you start adding your products to the site and getting them out into the world?
This post will give you all the information you need to get the ball rolling.
Types of products in WooCommerce
There are four types of products that you can add in WooCommerce: simple products, variable products, grouped products, and external/affiliate products.
Simple products: These products have one stock keeping unit (SKU — a unique code that is assigned to every product) and there are no variations/options. An example of a simple product is spoon that only comes in one size/shape.
Variable products: These products have different variations/options which could mean there are different SKUs or prices depending on the specific product. An example of a variable product is a travel mug that comes in different sizes and colours.
Grouped products: Grouped products consist of related products that customers can buy individually or as a group. Grouped products can only consist of simple products, not variable products.
External/affiliate products: These products are ones listed on your website but not sold by you – they are sold elsewhere.
Getting started
Although the processes for adding different kinds of products will vary slightly, you will always need to add the following information, no matter the product type:
– Title
– Full description
– Product categories and tags
– Product image
– Product gallery
– Product short description
Now onto the specifics!
Adding simple products
- Click on the General tab and fill out the blanks. You will have to input SKU, regular price, and sale price. If you’d like, you can schedule the sale prices so that they appear on a particular day
- Next, click on the inventory tab
- If you have products that can sell out, select the “enable stock management at product level” button. This will track how many products you still have in stock and you can choose if the “out of stock” message appears on your front-facing website or not
- Click on the shipping tab and enter the height/width, weight, and shipping class of your product
- Enable linked products by clicking on the linked products tab and inputting similar products. This allows customers to see similar products to the ones they are interested in purchasing to increase your sales even further
- In the advanced tab, you can disable customer reviews for a product. You can also enable a purchase note that will be sent to customers after they buy one of your products
Adding variable products
- Follow steps 1 to 5 in the simple products instructions above
- Here is where the differences start. Click on the attributes tag. Attributes are characteristics like size and colour
- Click on the attribute you want to configure from the drop-down menu (for example, press size), then click add
- Then select the sizes/colours you would like available for the product and save your changes so they appear on the front-facing part of the website
- Next, click on the variations tab to configure the product information for all the variables you added
- Click the “add variation” button and fill in all the required data for the product
- You can set up a purchase note in the advanced tab
Adding grouped products
- To set up grouped products, first, you’ll need to establish a parent products and child products within that category
- Select the “group” product type from the drop-down menu and fill in the information (description, categories, tags, images, etc.)
- For child products, create a new product, and fill in the title, description, price, other necessary product info, and product type (simple)
- Next, click on the “Linked Products” tab and select the parent product from the “grouping” drop-down menu. Your products should now be linked
Adding an external/affiliate product
- Choose the external/affiliate option from the “product data” drop-down menu
- Then add the SKU, the external link to the product, price, and the message you’d like to appear on the button that will take users to the external website
- Also fill in other necessary product information
