You can manage the products in your shop using the "Products" page, in the "Catalog" menu.
Sections in this chapter:
In PrestaShop 1.7, the product page is organized in tabs:
The first field to fill is the product name, which will appear in the search engine results and in your product sheet's URL by default. Next to the field you will find a language code, which enables you to choose the language into which you wish to edit or create the name.
You must give the product a name in at least the default language before you can save it. You won't be able to save until it has a name Make sure to translate each field in every language that your shop supports. In order to do that, click on the language selector next to the product type field, and choose the language in which you wish to edit the product name. |
This second is an essential one: indicate whether the product is a pack (a combination of at least two existing products), a virtual product (downloadable file, service, etc.), or simply a classic, mail-sent product. For now, we will only explore the standard product with no combinations, and deal with products with combinations, packs and virtual products in their own sections of this chapter.
You might have activated several languages in your shop, to sell in more countries. If you wish to engage with your customers abroad, all your content (product description, captions, etc.) should be translated in these languages.
To translate your product content in another language, just select with which language you would like to work next to the type of product selector. The product page will update with the content available in the selected language. You can switch from one language to the other without having to save your work in-between. Just make sure you are editing the content in the right language.
By default the product page will display content in your shop's default language.
To add new languages to your shop, go to the International section. You can either add just a language in "Translations" or add a localization pack in "Localization". You will find more information in the international section of the documentation. |
At the bottom of each page, there are several actions possible:
Duplicate. Save the current product, then creates an exact copy of the current product and takes you to the new product page. This is very useful when you'd rather use the current product's data as a template for another new product, and not have to create every data of the new product by hand. For instance, two products might be very different, but could share the same associations, carriers or supplier settings.
If you need to create different versions of the same product, because of its variety of colors, capacity, size, etc., then you should create product combination for the current product rather than duplicating it X times. See the "Combinations" option in the "Basic settings" tab, which is explained in the "Creating a product with combinations" section of this chapter. |
The "Basic Settings" tab provides the main options required to create a basic product: in a few clicks you'll be able to create a new product. Fom there you can also browse the other tabs to add further details to your product.
The image section is on the top-left part of the "Basic settings" tab. You should upload all the images for this product, including all of its combinations (color, size, shape, etc.).
Drag and drop your images directly from your folder, or click on "select files" (or anywhere in the image section in fact) to search and open the folder containing your images. You can select as many images as necessary by keeping the Ctrl-key pressed while selecting files, or you can make your selection one by one. The default maximal size for an image file is set by PrestaShop according to your server's PHP settings. This size can be lowered in the "Images" preference page, "Product images" section.
The uploaded images appear as thumbnails. The first one will be your default/cover image for the product. That cover image will also appear automatically on the product page of your shop.
You can change which image is your cover image by clicking on the image's thumbnail: the settings for this given image will appear. There you can check or uncheck "Cover image" to define whether the image should be the cover or not.
When you click on "Zoom" the image will appear in its real format, in case you want to have a closer look at it.
Each image can have a caption: use it to briefly describe the image (and the product). If you have several languages, don't forget to translate it!
Once you have uploaded all your product images, you can modify their order by drag-and-dropping each image. You can also add more images by clicking on the "+" icon, or dropping it.
Describing your product well is essential, both for the customer (the more information, the better) and search engines (it will help your shop appear in more search requests).
At the bottom of the screen, the two description fields each serve different purposes:
Below the product descriptions, you can several options. The "Add a feature" option if for specifying your products' features (i.e. weight, material, country of origin, etc.).
When you create features and values (i.e. wool knit and micro-fiber materials), you assign them to the products when it is appropriate. This means that you do not have to fill out the features fields for each of your products but instead simply fill in the necessary values and apply them later.
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Be aware that contrary to the combinations, these values do not change, and are valid for the general product (meaning: all your combinations will share these same features).
Before adding a feature to a product, you must create it for general use in your shop. You should go to the "Attributes & Features" page of the "Catalog" menu for this.
Feature and feature value creation are explained in details in the dedicated section of the guide.
We will assume here that you have already set all your features and feature values.
When clicking on "Add a feature", a drop-down menu appears, listing all of your shop's features. Select which feature you want to add. Next, you can either assign one of the pre-defined values (as set when creating the feature) if there are any available, or set a value manually in the "Customized value" field.
If no value is available for a feature, the mention "No result found" appears.
If you choose to use a custom value, do not forget to set it for every language that your shop supports. Use the language code selector at the top of the page to change the language.
If there are pre-defined values available, they will appear in a dropdown list. Simply click it and choose the correct value.
Once you have set all the relevant features, save your changes to see them immediately applied in the front-page.
Remember: If a feature does not have any value assigned to it, it will not be taken into account for this product, and will not be visible on your shop.
The same way you can add a feature, you can add a brand. Click on "Add a brand" and choose a brand in the dropdown menu.
If the brand you want isn't available in the drop-down menu, go to the "Brands & Suppliers" page to create a new brand.
A product can only be associated with one brand.
The "Add a related product" field gives you the option of choosing relevant products to associate with this product, to suggest them to your customers when they visit the product's page (if the theme supports it). Click on "Add a related product", type in the first letters of product and select it. The product is then added at the bottom of the field.
You can associate a product with as many other products as you deem necessary. Click on the trash icon to delete the product association.
An association goes one way only: the associated product will not feature an association to the current product in its setting page.
Accessories addition/removal is not automatically saved! Do not forget to click on the "Save" button. |
You will often sell the same product under different versions: they share the same overall name, but they might differ by their color, their capacity, their screen size, and other attributes. Most of the time, these attributes come together: you could have the red version of the product available with either 1 Gb capacity or 2 Gb, or with 12'' screen or a 15'' screen. This is why PrestaShop calls these versions "combinations": your stock of products can be made of several variations of a single product, which in effect are simply its attributes combined in specific ways.
If you need combinations for your product, select "Product with combinations". The "Quantities" tab of the product page will be renamed "Combinations" and will allow you to create your various combinations.
You cannot create combinations if you do not already have product attributes properly set in PrestaShop. Attributes creation is done in the "Attributes & Features" page from the "Catalog" menu, and is explained in details in this dedicated chapter of the documentation. |
Indicate how many products are available for sale.
This option will not be displayed if you're creating a product with combinations: quantities for combinations are managed in the "Combinations" tab.
More quantity options are available in the "Quantity tab".
Define how much you want to sell this product.
More pricing options are available in the "Pricing" tab. Whether you change your price in the "Basic Settings" or "Pricing" tab is just the same, as the tabs are synchronized.
Tax rules can be managed in the "International" menu, "Taxes" page.
The "Categories" section enables you to select in which category the product should appear. You can select more than one, but keep in mind that it is better for the customer if the category only contains equivalent and comparable products. Therefore, you should prevent from selecting root categories, and prefer child categories.
For instance, the "telephone" category can feature sub-categories of "brands" (Apple, Samsung, Nokia, etc.) and as well as "characteristics" (smart-phone, flip-phone, etc.). It is up to you to indicate the category most useful to your customers.
To associate a category to your product, you can either use the search bar, or expand the category list and select the one you want to associate.
Using the search bar. Type in the first letters of product and the bar will display all the matching categories and the path to access it. Choose your category and click on it. It will be shown in the "Associated categories" section.
Using the category list. By clicking on "Expand", you will see the category tree and from there you can select the categories you want to associate.
The "main category" selector is useful when an article is filed under several categories. It serves mainly to clarify which category to use in case your customer arrives at your site from a search engine, since the name of the category will appear in the product's URL.
Checking the "Home" box enables you to highlight the product on your shop's homepage, provided your theme supports it. To remove a product from the Featured list, simply uncheck the "Home" box. |
Creating a new category
If you feel you need to add a category, save the current state of your product before clicking the "Create new category" button. Category creation is explained in another section of this guide.
Click on "Create a category" : the category options will appear. Fill in the name of the category and select the parent category. By clicking on create, the new category will be created and it will automatically associated with your product.
Don't forget to go to the "Categories" page later to fill in the details for this new category. To read more about categories, go to the related section of the documentation.
A new category will not automatically appear in your shop's menu. To display it, you should edit the menu with the "Main menu" module (when using the default theme), or any custom module you may have to manage the menu. |
At this point, you are done with the essential information for a basic product page. You can save it and have it immediately available for sale on your shop!
But keep reading, as there are many more details you can add to your product to make it more attractive to customers.
Quantities
Product quantities are managed in a single tab. PrestaShop will use this to determine when a product is soon out-of-stock or unavailable anymore.
For a standard product you only have two fields:
The way it works is quite easy: the page presents you with a table of all the combinations for the current product (if there are no combinations, the table simply has a single row). It is up to you to set the initial stock for all the combinations.
For more information on product combinations, read the dedicated section at the end of the page.
Packs and virtual product have different stock settings, you will find all you need at the end of this chapter. |
The "Behavior when out of stock" option enables you to set PrestaShop behavior when the product is out of stock:
You can also configure the general settings applied to all of your products: the default option is to deny orders, but this can be modified under the "Products Settings" in the "Shop Parameters section" ("Allow ordering of out-of-stock products" option), which is fully explained in the "Understanding the Preferences" chapter of this guide.
The "Shipping" tab enables you to give some precious details about your product's package. It isn't available in the case of a virtual product.
Package dimension (width, height, depth & weight). You should strive to fill each field, because knowing the exact size and weight of a package is not only useful to you, but PrestaShop can also direct specific sizes/weights to specific carriers automatically, based on these settings. The order's final price will appear to the customer once PrestaShop (or the customer) has selected a carrier.
These values use the default weight, volume, distance and dimension units, as set in the "Localization" page of the "Localization" menu.
These values do not have to be integers. If your products weight less than 1 lbs, you can simply use a period (.) to indicate the fractions:
The pricing tab makes it possible to refine your pricing strategy, either by using alternative prices (price per unit), or by creating some price rules specific to the product.
The price of your product before taxes.
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You can fill out the "Price - tax included" field and choose the tax rate to apply, and the field will automatically calculate the pre-tax retail price. The opposite operation is also available.
Enter the price you paid for the product (how much it cost you to acquire or manufacture the product), it will allow you to compare it to your selling price in order to easily calculate your profit.
The cost price should be lower than your retail price.
Specific prices: Managing Quantity Discounts
You can change the total price of the product depending on the quantity of products your customer buys, the user group, the country, etc. This is done with the "Specific prices" section of the "Pricing" tab. Click on the "Add a specific price" button to reveal the creation form:
This is a very easy way to create a discount price for this product (and all its combinations).
Once you have chosen your values click on "Apply": the summary of your discount settings appears below. The discount will be immediately visible on the store.
If you wish to delete a value, click on the trashcan icon in the table.
If you want to build more complex discounts, go read about the "Discounts" menu in the "Managing Discounts" chapter of this guide.
A customer might fit into multiple prices or discount rules, even when you have set detailed prices and quantity discounts, with custom groups and shops (if in a multistore context). PrestaShop therefore uses a set of priorities in order to apply a single price rule to such customers. You might want the user group to be more important than the currency, for instance.
You can change PrestaShop default settings using the "Priority Management" section.
The default order of importance is:
A checkbox at the bottom enables you to update the settings for all products. If the checkbox remains unchecked, then your changes only apply to the current product.
To improve your product listing as well as increase your store's visibility we suggest that you carefully fill out the various SEO fields: meta titles, meta descriptions, and keywords and friendly URLs.
"SEO" itself stands for "Search Engine Optimization. Read more on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization Get to know the best SEO practices for e-commerce! Download and read PrestaShop's free "Complete Guide to SEO": http://www.prestashop.com/en/white-paper-seo |
To access the product's SEO information, go to the "SEO" tab.
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The fields in this page enable you to directly optimize your catalog's visibility on search engines.
Friendly URLs will only work if URL rewriting is enabled. You can do this in "SEO & URLs" preference page (in the "Traffic" menu), in its "Set up URLs" section. You will find more information on the "SEO & URLs" preference page in the "Traffic" chapter of this guide. |
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You can further choose to have the product available through different channels:
Options. A couple of specific options.
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Condition. Not all shops sell new product. This option enables you to indicate the condition of the product:
PrestaShop makes it possible for your customers to customize the product that they will buy.
Example: You are a jewelry retailer and your customers have the possibility to engrave their jewelry with a text or an image. Your customers can submit the text and/or the image when they place their order.
The advantage of this function is that it offers your customers a personal service, which they will without a doubt appreciate!
Let's look at how to configure this function. Click on "Add a customization field" to indicate what type of context (file and/or text) can be personalized.
Once you have added the needed number for each field, click "Save and stay". The page will reload and display as many text fields as necessary. Fill every one of them with the appropriate public label: this will be an indicator for the customer, so be very specific about what you expect.
For instance, if you allow images for a book cover, you could use the following:
Same for text: if customers can engrave words to a product, you could use the following:
Removing fields. If in the end you added too many fields, simply change the number of needed fields for each of the two types and click "Save and stay". The page will reload with the right number of fields, with the first ones preserved.
Once all the label fields have been filled, do not forget to save your changes.
Once a product has customizable properties set, its front-end product page has a new tab, next to the "More info" tab: "Product customization".
The customer must choose the file(s) and/or add some text and save them before they add the product in the cart.
The custom image(s) and text(s) will appear in the final cart.
The rest of the purchase process is the same as usual.
Once the order has been validated by the customer, the merchant gets a notification of the order in the back office.
He can then check on the order, which will indicate the image(s) and the text(s) in the list of products, for each product. The merchant then simply has to download the image(s) (simply by clicking on the image in the order) or copy/paste the text and use that in its customization tool.
The rest of the order and delivery process is the same as usual.
PrestaShop enables you to make some files available to your customers before their purchase.
For example, let's say you sell electronics, and you would like to urge your customers to read a document on how a product works. You can upload a document for that purpose.
You could also simply have the product's PDF manual directly available for download right on the product page.
Adding an attachment is really quick:
Now the "Download" tab will appear on the product's page (if the theme supports it), and your customers can download the file(s) that you just uploaded.
If you need to remove an attachment, select it in the "Attachments for this product" selector and click on the "Remove" button. The file will be moved to the "Available attachments" selector if you need to set it back online later on.
You can view all of your store's attached files, add some more and remove some, by going to the "Attachments" page under the "Catalog" menu. This also makes it possible to use the attachments that you already uploaded for other files: if you need to apply the associated one file with many products, you will thus only have to upload it once.
Indicating the product's supplier is not really important to your customers (very much less so than its brand in any case), but it may turn out to be an essential part of your own internal management, not the least when managing your stock: you simply need to know who you bought the product from. The supplier of the current product is to be set from the "Suppliers" tab on the left.
You cannot use this feature if you do not already have at least one supplier registered in your shop. Suppliers are created from the "Brands & Suppliers" page, under the "Catalog" menu.
The complete supplier registration process is explained in details in the current chapter of this guide.
Associating the current product with one or more suppliers is really easy: simply check the box corresponding to the supplier, and save your changes.
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There are many more product-related options in the "Products" page from the "Preferences" menu:
You should really check that these global settings are set as you wish. |
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Your shop may feature (partly or exclusively) virtual products – that is, products that are not shipped, but rather downloaded: entertainment tickets, e-books/PDF files, real-life services...
PrestaShop makes it easy for you to create a virtual product
The process to do this is similar to the one for creating a simple product:
The tabs on the left change:
The new tab only features one option at first: it asks if the virtual product you are creating has a file attached (i.e., if your customer will pay to download something).
When you click "Yes", PrestaShop opens a new form within the tab, from which you can upload the file you intend to sell:
File. Click the "Browse" button to find the file on your hard drive. As soon as you have selected a file, the upload begins.
The maximum file-upload size setting depends on your server's settings, and cannot be increased from PrestaShop. If you have access to your server's
If you do not have access to the |
You should compress your file in zip format, in order to avoid the browser misinterpreting If you are selling a high resolution image, uploading it using this form does not prevent you from uploading its thumbnail in the "Images" tab on the left. |
Once you are done with the "Virtual Product" tab, you can edit all the other available tabs as if you would for a regular product.
You may wish to sell a pack of products made of several items. I.e.: a computer start-up pack composed of the computer itself, a monitor, and a printer. PrestaShop makes it easy for you to create a "pack" product and add other products from your catalog to this pack.
Packs enable you to simplify preparing orders. They also allow customers to take advantage of special prices and offers.
You cannot currently add combinations or virtual products to a pack. |
You cannot add an existing pack within a new pack, or import the content of an existing pack into a new pack. |
The process to create a pack is similar to the one for creating a regular product:
This will change two things:
In "Basic settings" you can choose which products are part of the pack
In "Quantities" you can select how stocks should be handled.
You can add as many products as you would like to the pack.
You can remove a product from the pack simply by clicking the trashcan icon next to it.
When you are creating a pack of products, PrestaShop needs to know how to handle the stock. You must choose one of the following options:
Once you are done with the "Pack" tab, you can edit the content of all the other available tabs as if you would for a regular product.