Child pages
  • Adding Products and Product Categories

Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

...

Tip

When adding your first product, you should first start with a clear plan:

  • Which category does it fit in? You should define beforehand your whole store hierarchy, with categories and sub-categories clearly set.
  • Who is its manufacturer? If you make it yourself, create your own manufacturer.
  • Who is your supplier for this product? If you make it yourself, create your own supplier.
  • Do you have the description, features, images and other details available? The more your customer know, they quicker they'll be able to make a decision.

You can start adding products with minimal information and edit them at will, but before launching your shop, you should at least have this information written down.

Creating a Category

Products are always grouped into categoriesCategories are essential, as they enable you to group equivalent products. This helps customers find their way through the variety of your products, and narrow down their search when looking for a specific type of product. They also make it easy for the customers to find and compare them (thanks to PrestaShop product comparison feature).

You should create a new category from the moment you have at least two products with equivalent features. Products in a category should be comparable, if not interchangeable. Keep this idea in mind when adding new products and creating new categories.

Tip

When creating a product category, you should focus on one thing: the products of in this category must be comparable. This is not only useful for your customers, but it is also a necessity for PrestaShop's product comparison feature.

...

In the "tags" field, add some terms and keywords that will help your customers easily find what they are looking for.

Tip
titleDifferences with PrestaShop 1.4

PrestaShop 1.4 enabled you to indicate the product manufacturer right on this page. In version 1.5, this setting is to be found in the "Associations" tab on the left. Same for the "Default category" field, the categories associations, and the "Accessories" field.

Version 1.4 also enabled you to indicate the size and weight of the final package. In version 1.5, these settings is to be found in the "Shipping" tab on the left.

The "Location" field of version 1.4" can be found in the optional "Warehouses" tab on the left, which is only available if you have enabled Advanced Stock Management ("Preferences" tab, "Products" page, "Products stock" section).

Finally, the "Accessories" field can be found in the Associations tab on the left.

The "accessories" field gives you the option of choosing relevant products to associate with this product. To suggest a product to your customers, type in the first letters of the product in question, select it, and then click on the green button to the right of the field.

...

A checkbox at the bottom enables you to update the settings for all products. If the checkbox remains unchecked, then your settings changes only apply to the current product.

...

Optimizing your product's search engine position (SEO)

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.

To access this information click on the sentence below:

Image Removed

...

Tip

"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, open the "SEO" tab on the left. The following fields appear:

These fields allow enable you to directly optimize your catalog's visibility on search engines.

  • Meta title. The This is the most important field, as the title that will appear on the search engines when a request is made by a customerall search engines. Be very factual: you must convince the search engine user to click your link, not one from another site. Make sure the title is unique to this product within your site.
    • Good example: "Levi's 501® Original Jeans - Tidal Blue - Original Fit"
    • Bad example: "Item #02769869B bestseller"
  • Meta description. A presentation of the product in just a few linescouple lines (less then 155 characters), intended to capture a customer's interest. This will appear in search results.Meta keywords. Keywords that you must define in order to have your site referenced by search engines. results for some search engines, depending on the search request: some search engine might choose to display the searched keywords directly in the context of the page content. Make sure the description is unique to this product within your site.
  • Meta keywords. You can enter several of them, separated by commas, as well as expressions, which must be indicated in quotation marks. For instance: trousers, denims, "blue jeans", jeans.
  • Friendly URL. Enables This is another extremely important field. It enables you to rewrite the web addresses of your categories products as you wish. For example, instead of having an address such as
    http://www.myprestashop.com/category.php?id_category=3
    you can have:
    http://www.myprestashop.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.
    The "Generate" button makes it easy to produce a proper friendly URL based on the product name. Once generated, you can edit the URL produced if necessary.
Warning

Friendly URLs will only work if URL rewriting is enabled. You can do this in "SEO & URLs" preference page, in its "Set up URLs" section.

You will find more information on the "SEO & URLs" preference page in the "Understanding the Preferences" chapter of this guide.

Managing the Product's Associations

Creating associations for your product means pairing it with other content in your database:

  • Product categories.
  • Other products (accessories).
  • Manufacturer.

Product categories

The "Associated 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, "telephone" 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.
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 at the start of this chapter

The "Default category" section 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.

Tip
titleFeatured List

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.

Accessories

The "Accessories" field gives you the option of choosing relevant products to associate with this product. To suggest a product to your customers, type in the first letters of the product in question 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 trashcan icon to delete the product.

Tip

Accessories addition/removal is not automatically saved! Do not forget to click on the "Save" button.

Manufacturer

A product can only be associated with one manufacturer. Choose one in the dropdown menu, or create a new manufacturer if it is needed (but do save your current product before clicking the "Create a new manufacturer" button.

Manufacturer creation is explained in the chapter named "A Look Inside the Catalog".

Configuring the Product Image

The "Image" tab on the left is for including photos on your product page.

Image Added

To add one or more images to your product:

  1. Click the "Upload an image" button and then select a photo from your computer to upload. The upload starts automatically.
    The maximal size for an image file is 128 kb (13,1072 bytes). This size can be changed in the "Images" preference page, "Product images" section.
  2. Uploaded images appear in a table below the button. If you want this uploaded image to be used as the default/cover image and appear automatically on the product page of your shop, click on the red button.

Once you have uploaded several images, you can modify the image order by drag-and-dropping each table row when the mouse cursor changes to a "movable" cursor.

Calculating Shipping Cost: size, weight, carrier

Shipping costs are not be neglected: they can easily double the final cost of an order, and you should be very upfront about them.

The "Shipping" tab on the left enables you to give some precious details about your product's package:

  • 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. Once PrestaShop (or the customer) has selected a carrier, the final price will appear to the customer.
  • Additional shipping costs. This can prove very useful to you, for instance for product that are particularly tricky to package, or really heavy.
  • Carriers. You can choose to have the current product only be shipped by one specific carrier. You can even choose two or three: press the Shift key while clicking on a carrier name to add it to the selection.

Adding Product Combinations

You will often sell the same product under different versions: same overall name, but the might differ by their color, their capacity, their screen size, and other attributes. Most of the times, these attributes come together: you could have the red version of the product available with either 1 Gb capacity, or 2 Gb. This is why PrestaShop calls these combinations: your stock of product can be made of several variations of one product, which in effect are simply its attributes combined in specific ways.

How they are combined is up to you, and PrestaShop gives you two ways to achieve this.

Manual method

Adding different variations to your product takes a few steps. Before proceeding, you must already have created the necessary groups of attributes and the attributes themselves. Once this is done, click on 4th tab, named "Combinations", and a creation form will appear.

Image Added

  • From the drop-down menu choose a group of attributes, such as "Colors" for example
  • Choose the attribute that you would like to include, for example "blue"
  • Click on "Add" and it will appear in the selector
  • If the attribute has an impact on the product's price, go to the "Impact on price" drop-down menu and choose "Increase" or "Reduction". Text fields appear with the menu's row, for you to indicate said change
  • If the attribute impacts the weight, the process is identical.
  • Next, fill out the different fields such as reference, quantity, etc.

Image Added

  • Upload a new image or choose a previously uploaded photo from the drop-down menu

If you would like to make this the default combination (attribute + product), check the box labeled "make the default combination for this product".
Finally, click on "Add this Combination" in order to save it. It will appear in the attributes list.

Image Added

Tip

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.

Clicking the "Product combinations generator" will take you to the complete form.

Image Added

Image Added

Info

A warning window might appear, saying "Are you sure you want to delete entered product information?" This means your product already had some combinations created. If you agree to this, this will delete the already existing combinations. Be careful!

On the right side of this page are your groups of attributes. Select the varieties by clicking on their name. If you'd like to select several of them at the same time, hold the Ctrl key while clicking. Then click on "Add".
For example, in our example, you can select the attributes "Blue", "Green" and "32 Go".

Once the varieties have been selected, insert the quantity of each product in the "Quantity" field at the top. Be careful, it needs to be the same for every combination. For instance, 200 products in each combination = 2 colors * 1 disk size * 200 = 400 products in all.
You may add a reference if it serves your administrative needs.
Click the "Generate" button, and tables will appear below for each combination, enabling you to edit their possible specific prices.

Finally, the combination generator helps you save some time when you have numerous attributes to assemble, such as sizes and materials. It automatically creates all of the possible combinations, which will then appear under the product's "Combinations" tab.

If you do not want to have generated combinations, you can delete or modify them.

At this point, you have finished adding your product, and it is available in your shop! If you chose to start the specific price at 1 unit, the discount is immediately visible on the product's page.

...

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.

Image Removed

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 feature sub-categories of "brand" (Apple, Samsung, Nokia, etc.) and as well as "characteristics" (smart-phone, flip-phone, etc.).

Tip

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.

Configuring

...

Product

...

The second tab, "2. Images", is for including photos on your product page.

Image Removed

  • To add one or more images to your product click the "Browse" button and then select a photo from your computer to upload.
  • Write a file name in the "Caption" field once you have uploaded the image.
    This is the name that search engines will use to reference your product. You must thus give it a name that corresponds to the product description. This way, your product will appear with ease in search engine results.
  • Check the box that says "Cover" if you want this uploaded image to be used as the default image, and appear automatically on the product page of your shop.

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 "cover image" column.

Configuring Product Attributes

You can add multiple attributes to your products. An attribute is a product variation. For example, the same product can have multiple different color or size options. In PrestaShop, these are known as "Attributes."

...

Choose the HTML color or upload a photo from your computer (if you are displaying textures instead of colors, for instance). The HTML color will then be replaced by the photo of the texture.

Adding Product Combinations

Manual method

Adding different variations to your product takes a few steps. Before proceeding, you must already have created the necessary groups of attributes and the attributes themselves. Once this is done, click on 4th tab, named "Combinations", and a creation form will appear.

Image Removed

  • From the drop-down menu choose a group of attributes, such as "Colors" for example
  • Choose the attribute that you would like to include, for example "blue"
  • Click on "Add" and it will appear in the selector
  • If the attribute has an impact on the product's price, go to the "Impact on price" drop-down menu and choose "Increase" or "Reduction". Text fields appear with the menu's row, for you to indicate said change
  • If the attribute impacts the weight, the process is identical.
  • Next, fill out the different fields such as reference, quantity, etc.

Image Removed

  • Upload a new image or choose a previously uploaded photo from the drop-down menu

If you would like to make this the default combination (attribute + product), check the box labeled "make the default combination for this product".
Finally, click on "Add this Combination" in order to save it. It will appear in the attributes list.

Image Removed

Tip

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.

Clicking the "Product combinations generator" will take you to the complete form.

Image Removed

Image Removed

Info

A warning window might appear, saying "Are you sure you want to delete entered product information?" This means your product already had some combinations created. If you agree to this, this will delete the already existing combinations. Be careful!

On the right side of this page are your groups of attributes. Select the varieties by clicking on their name. If you'd like to select several of them at the same time, hold the Ctrl key while clicking. Then click on "Add".
For example, in our example, you can select the attributes "Blue", "Green" and "32 Go".

Once the varieties have been selected, insert the quantity of each product in the "Quantity" field at the top. Be careful, it needs to be the same for every combination. For instance, 200 products in each combination = 2 colors * 1 disk size * 200 = 400 products in all.
You may add a reference if it serves your administrative needs.
Click the "Generate" button, and tables will appear below for each combination, enabling you to edit their possible specific prices.

Finally, the combination generator helps you save some time when you have numerous attributes to assemble, such as sizes and materials. It automatically creates all of the possible combinations, which will then appear under the product's "Combinations" tab.

If you do not want to have generated combinations, you can delete or modify them.

Configuring Product Features

...