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Adding Products and Product Categories
The "Catalog" section is accessible by clicking on the tab with the same name. This is where you manage all of your products throughout your PrestaShop e-commerce solution.
The first page under the “Catalog” tab looks like this
In the “Categories” section via the “Add a new subcategory” function you can create different product classifications. This arranges your articles, and helps your customers easily find what they are looking for. All of the categories are subcategories of the welcome page.
Create a Category
To create a category, fill out this form:
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First of all give your category a name then determine if it is “displayed ” or in other words if it will be accessible to your customers or not. For example, you may want to postpone showing a new category to your customers because you have not quite completed it. If you are creating a subcategory belonging to a category other than the welcome page, choose the category under which it will appear in the drop-down menu “Parent Category.” Click on “Browse” to upload an image from your computer, in order to illustrate your category.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Fields
This information will help you optimize the visibility of your catalog on search engines.
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Once you have finished configuring your categories you can save them while staying on the same page by clicking on the button “Save” or saving and coming back to the previous category by clicking on “Save and Back to Parent Category".
Note: Each of the fields has a flag located to its right, indicating that it can be configured in several languages. For more information on this feature, please see the language management feature.
Managing and Adding Products in the Catalog
At the bottom of the catalog page, under “Products in this category” you can manage the products in your store. See the screen shot below. Once you have created your category, you will be able to add products by clicking on "Add a new product form with several tabs will appear We will ex plain it step by step.
We begin with the first tab in the form, which enables you to fill out the general information about your products.
Fill out the general product information
The first thing to complete is the product information. This is the name that will appear in the search results. Next to the field you will find a flag, which enables you to choose the language into which you wish to edit or create the name.
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Finally, add the weight in order to calculate the shipping cost of your customer’s orders
Create a Pack of Products
You wish to sell a pack of products composed of several items. Example: a computer start-up pack, composed of a CPU, a monitor, and a printer.
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Tip: Packs allow the site administrator to simplify preparing orders. They also allow customers to take advantage of special prices and offers.
Create a Downloadable Product
Check the box “Is this a downloadable product?” if you sell downloadable goods, such as mp3s or PDF documents. A form appears:
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- Choose the file that you’re making available to your customers by clicking “Upload a File” then find and select it on your computer.
- Filename. Choose a name for your file.
- Number of downloads. Indicate how many times this file can be downloaded after a customer purchases it.
- Expiration Date. Indicate the date after which the file will no longer be available for sale. When filling out this file, remember to write in the date as YYYY-MM-DD.
- Number of Days. Once your customer has bought the file from your store, you can limit the number of days he has until he can download his file. You must fill out this field in order to save your product.
Setting the Price of a Product
Set the price that will appear in your store by following the instructions below.
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Note: You can fill out the field “retail price with tax” and choose the rate of tax to apply and the field will automatically calculate the pre-tax retail price. The opposite operation is also available.
Product Availability
This section enables you to manage the availability of your products.
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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 “Preferences” or “Products” tabs, discussed further in the Product Configuration section.
Default Category and Catalog Display
The default category will be used when an article is filed under several categories.
This serves mainly to clarify which category to use in case your customer arrives at your site from a search engine. The name of the category will appear in the product’s URL. For instance, "telephone" can appear under the category of "brand" (Apple, Samsung, Nokia, etc.) and also under the category of "characteristic" (smartphone, flip-phone, etc.).
Listing Your 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.
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- “Meta title” is the title that will appear on the search engines when a request is made by a customer
- “Meta description” is a presentation of the product in just a few lines, intended to capture a customer’s interest. It will appear in search results
- “Meta keywords” are keywords that you must define in order to have your site referenced by search engines. You can enter several of them, separated by commas, as well as expressions, which must be indicated in quotation marks.
- The “Friendly URL” enables you to rewrite the addresses of your categories as you wish. For example, instead of having an address such as
http://www.mystore.com/category.php?id_category=3
you can have:
http://www.mystore.com/123-name-of-the-category .
In this case, all you would need to do is indicate in the “Friendly URL” field the words that you wish to see appear instead of “name-of-the-category” separated by dashes.
Adding a Product Description
There are two boxes dedicated to filling out a description. The first box enables you to write a short description that will appear in search engines. This field is limited to 400 characters. In the second box, you can write a full description of your product, which will appear directly on your online store. The text editor offers a wide range of options for creating visually attractive descriptions (font, size, text color, etc.).
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Once you have filled out all this information save your work by clicking on “Save,” after which you will be sent to your catalog’s home page or by clicking on “Save and Stay” to continue working on your product’s presentation When you have saved your work with “save and stay”, some new options will be displayed such as the follwing tabs: “3 Combinations”, “4 Features”, “5 Customization”, “6 Discounts”, “7 Attachments.”
Configuring the Product Image
The second tab, "2 Images", is for including photos on your product page.
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Once you have uploaded several images, you can choose to modify the image order by clicking on the arrows in the “position” column and define a different cover image by clicking on the icons under the column “cover image” (see bottom of the screenshot).
Configuring Product Attributes
You can add multiple attributes to your products. An attribute is a product variation. For example, the same product can have a different color or a different size. In PrestaShop, we call that a color or size attribute.
To access this feature you must click on the “Attributes and Groups” tab under "Catalog".
Managing attributes and varieties
To add a group of attributes, or in other words to add a group of variation possibilities (colors, capacity material, etc.), click on “Add attributes group”, fill out the form that appears and save.
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Choose the HTML color or upload a photo from your computer (if you’re displaying textures instead of colors, for example). The HTML colors will then be replaced by the photo of the texture.
Managing Quantity Discounts
You have the possibility to use a system that changes the total price of a sale depending on the quantity of products your customer buys. For this option, click on tab number 3 of the product file, and the “Prices” table will appear.
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Adding Product Combinations
Manual method
Adding different variations to your product takes a few steps. Before proceeding, you must have already created the necessary groups of attributes and the attributes themselves. Once this is done, click on tab number 4 “Combinations ” and the following form will appear
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*Note: In this example, an attribute has been associated: color. If you wish to add several attributes, you just need to add one attribute and then a second attribute. When you click “Add”, the two attributes will be added. *
Advanced method
If you have too many different products or varieties you can use the “Product Combinations Generator.” This function allows you to automatically generate all of the variations and possibilities.
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If you don’t want to have generated combinations, you can delete or modify them.
Configuring Product Features
The fifth tab, named "Features" is where you specify 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. However, be aware that contrary to the combinations, these values do not change, and are valid for the general product.
Create a feature
To create a feature as well as its values click on the tab under Catalog that is labeled “Features”. Click on “Add a Feature” for example, to add the types of headphones provided with a music player.
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Give a name to this news feature, and click "Save".
Create a value
To add a value to the feature, either go back to the previous page, or go the the "Features" sub-ab of the "Catalog" tab.
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In the drop-down menu, choose the feature to which you would like to add a value, enter its contents, and click Save.
Assign a value and feature to a product
Finally, go back to the “Features” tab for your product (not the Catalog/Features sub-tab!) and choose the feature you want to add from the drop-down menu. Click on “update features.”
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If a feature does not have any value assigned to it, then it will not appear in the store.
Enter a Customized Value
If you want to indicate a value that has not been configured beforehand, you can add it directly in the “Customized” field
Managing Customization
Your PrestaShop online store software offers your customers the chance to customize the product that they will buy.
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The advantage of this function is that it offers your customers a personal service, which they will without a doubt appreciate!
Managing Attachments
PrestaShop enables you to make some files available to your customers before their purchase.
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