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Adding Products and Product Categories

The foundation of a PrestaShop site is its catalog, which contains products and product categories. Building and improving your catalog is the main way you will make your website live in the eyes of the customer. This is where your shop becomes a reality, creating content, and thus giving value to your online shop.

As the heart of your shop, your catalog deserves a great deal of your attention. Adding products does not only mean adding an image and some text, and then validating your content. It means knowing your product by heart: price, weight, size, features, specifications, details, manufacturer, supplier and so much more. You should not start adding products to your Catalog without knowing exactly what you want to present to the customer, and thus need to have a set plan about your products and the way they will be displayed. This also means knowing your shop's front-office like the back of your hand in order to properly fill in the required fields.

The "Catalog" section can be accessed by opening the menu with the same name, which lists all the product-related pages. This is where you manage your catalog throughout your PrestaShop site.

The pages of this menu are sorted by order of their importance in the daily management of your shop: indeed, you are more likely to add/edit/deleted products than adding suppliers or image-maps.

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

Categories 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.

When creating a product category, you should focus on one thing: the products 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.

All the categories you will create are in fact sub-categories of "Home", the root category, which cannot be deleted.

You may choose to not create any category, and have all products grouped into a single global category, "Home". But then customers won't be able to compare products.

Categories are managed in the "Categories" page of the "Catalog" menu.

To create a category, click on the "Add new" button and fill out the form.

Make sure to fill each field in every language that your shop supports. In order to do that, click on the little flag next to the field, choose the flag of the language in which you wish to edit the text.

First of all, you must enter a set of general options:

  • Name. Give your category a name, then indicate if it is "displayed" (i.e., whether or not it will be available to your customers). For example, you may want to postpone displaying a new category to your customers because you have not quite completed it.
  • Parent Category. If you wish to create a subcategory belonging to a category other than the home page, choose the category under which it will appear.
  • Root Category. You might want to use this new category as the new root category, instead of "Home". If so, check the radio button that applies.
  • Description. You should fill this field, because not only will it be useful to you or your employees, but some themes might also make use of it, displaying it to your customers.
  • Image. Click on "Browse" to upload an image from your computer which will represent this your category.

Then, the form presents you with a few Search Engine Optimization (SEO) fields. This information will help you optimize the visibility of your catalog on search engines.

  • Meta title. The title that will appear on the search engines when a request is made by a customer
  • Meta description. A presentation of your site in just a few lines, 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. You can enter several of them, separated by commas, as well as expressions, which must be indicated in quotation marks.
  • 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.myshop.prestashop.com/category.php?id_category=3
    you can have:
    http://www.myshop.prestashop.com/123-name-of-the-category
    In this case, all you would need to do is indicate in the field marked "Friendly URL" the words that you wish to see appear instead of "name-of-the-category" separated by dashes.

Finally:

  • Group access. Restricts select categories and products to certain shoppers. To see these categories, your shoppers must belong to a user group. Check out the "Groups" page in the "Customers" tab for more information.

Once you have finished configuring your category, you must save it.

Managing and Adding Products in the Catalog

You can manage the products in your shop using the "Products" page, in the "Catalog" menu. You can see the existing products and few details, and add new products by clicking on "Add new". A form will appear, with several tabs in the left column.

In the following sections, we will explore these tabs one by one. We begin with the first tab in the form, which enables you to fill out the general information about your products.

The Product Page Global Buttons

When you create a new product, the product page feature a single button at the top: "Back to list". It simply takes you back to the list of product, without saving any change your have made in any of the tab from this page.

As soon as you give the product a name, two more buttons appear:

  • Save. This saves any change you have made to any of the data for the current product, and takes you back to the product list.
  • Save and stay. This saves any change you have made to any of the data for the current product, and keeps you on the current tab. This is particularly useful when you want to switch tabs without losing your changes to the current tab, or seeing your changes get applied immediately.

As soon as you save your product, using either the "Save" or the "Save and stay" button, more buttons appear:

  • Delete this product. Removes all the data for the current, including its images, combinations, features, etc.
  • Duplicate. Creates an exact copy of the current product. 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.
    Note: 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" tab on the left, which is explained in the "Adding Product Combinations" section of this chapter.
  • Preview. Displays the front-page page of your product. This is very handy, as it works even if the product is disabled ("Informations" tab).
  • Product sales. Redirects you to the "Product detail" page of the statistics dashboard ("Stats" tab), which gives you a graphic of both the visits to this product's page, and also its sales.

Filling out the Product Global Information

The first tab contains the essential information about the product.

The first line 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...), or simply a classic, mail-sent product. For now, we will only explore the first option of these three, and deal with packs and virtual products in their own sections of this chapter.

You begin with four text fields:

  • Name. The first thing to complete is the product name, which 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.

    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 – and many other tab require the product to be saved in order to be accessible.

  • Reference. This is your own internal reference. It might be a number, or its reference from the storage location or its supplier, or anything that makes it unique. Optional.
  • EAN13 or JAN. These are barcode numbers, which are used worldwide in order to identify products. You can use either a EAN13 or a JAN number.
  • UPC. A 12-digit barcode, more widely used in North America, UK, Australia and New-Zealand

On the right side are four options:

  • Status. If you do not want this product to be immediately available or visible to your customers, check the radio button that says "Disabled".
  • Visibility. You can further choose to have the product available through different channels:
    • Everywhere. Customers can get to the product by browsing the catalog, search for the product's name, or directly using its URL.
    • Catalog. Customers can get to the product by browsing the catalog or directly using its URL.
    • Search. Customers can get to the product by searching for its name or directly using its URL.
    • Nowhere. Customers can only get to the product using its URL. They won't find it by browsing through the catalog nor by search for it's name. This is great for creating private products, that only a few trusted visitors can access, even temporarily (you can change this setting at any time).
  • Options. A couple of specific options.
    • available for order. If you uncheck this box, customers will not be able to add this product to their cart. This makes it more like a single-product Catalog mode (in comparison with the "Catalog mode" preference).
    • show price. If the "available for order" option above is unchecked, you can either choose to display the product's price nevertheless (even though visitors won't be able to buy it), or choose to not display it.
    • online only (not sold in store). If your business does have brick-and-mortar stores, this option will prove invaluable when a product is only sold online, not in store – this prevents customers from checking a product price online, then come to your store hoping to by it directly, and thus avoid shipping cost.
  • Condition. Not all shop sell new product. This option enables you to indicate the condition of the product:
    • New. The product is brand new, sealed in its original packaging.
    • Used. The product has been sold at least once before, and probably used by someone else (second hand). It should come in its original packaging, which might be closed with tape.
    • Refurbished. The product has been returned for various reasons ("scratches, dents or other forms of cosmetic damage which do not affect the performance of the unit"). Read more on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refurbishment_%28electronics%29

Now that these details are set in stone, you can adding a description for your product.
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).

These two fields are here to fill out your product's description.
The first field enables you to write a short description that will appear in search engines and in the category description for your product. This field is limited to 400 characters.
In the second field, you can write a full description of your product, which will appear directly on the product page. The text editor offers a wide range of options for creating visually attractive descriptions (font, size, text color, etc.).
While the second field has no limits, there is such thing as too much content: strive to provide the essential information in a compelling way, and your product should be good to go.

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

Differences 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).

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.

Once you have filled out all this information, save your work, after which you will be sent to your list of products. If you save by clicking on "Save and Stay" to continue working on your product's presentation.

Setting the Price of a Product

The pricing section can be quite intimidating, with fields influencing each other and taxes to take into account. This is all done in the "Prices" tab on the left.

Set the price that will appear in your store by following the instructions below:

  • Pre-tax wholesale price. Enables you to instantly know your wholesale, factory price, and thus compare it to your selling price in order to easily calculate your profit.
  • Pre-tax retail price. The price of your product before taxes.
  • Tax rule. The tax applicable to the product. Choose between the different rates.
    If you need to create new tax rates, click the "Create" button. Tax creation is done in the "Localization" tab, "Taxes" page; it is fully explained in the "Localization" chapter of this guide.
  • Retail Price with tax. Displays the price of the product with taxes included. You can edit the value, and it will automatically update the "Pre-tax retail price" field according to the tax rule that you chose.
  • Unit price. Enables you to conform to local legislations that require products to be displayed with their unit price.
    For instance, if you are selling a pack of 6 liters of soda, then you should fill this field with the price per liter, and indicate "L" in the dropdown menu. The description on the same line will update accordingly.
  • Display "on sale" icon on product page and text on product listing. Check that box to show that your product is on sale, both on the product page and in the text on the product listing. An "On sale" icon will appear under the product. You can modify this logo by changing the following file: themes/prestashop/img/onsale_fr.gif
  • Final retail price. This price, including the discount taken, will update as you type.

You can fill out the "retail price with tax" 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.

Managing Quantity Discounts

You can changes the total price of a sale depending on the quantity of products your customer buys, the user group, the country, etc. This is done using the "Specific prices" option of the "Prices" tab.

Click "Add a New specific price", and a form appears.

  • For. This enables you to be very specific about the various groups to which this price applies, including currencies, countries and even your custom customer groups (which we'll discuss in a later chapter).
  • Customer.
  • Available from. Here you can define a range of dates between which the price is active using the second row. Clicking each selector will open a calendar, simplifying the process.
  • Starting at [] unit. Contains the value from which the discount should be applied. Default is "1", which means any quantity.

  • Product price (tax excl.). This is where you can set an arbitrary price, independent of calculations and previous prices. Keep this field at "0" to use the default price.
  • Apply a discount of. The discount that will be applied once the quantity is selected. Use the selector to set the type of discount (either a specific amount in the default currency, or a percentage of the default price).

Once you have chosen your values click on "Save and stay": the summary of your discount model appears below. If you wish to delete a value, click on the trashcan icon in the table.

Managing Price Priority

Even when setting detailed prices and quantity discounts, with custom groups and shops (when in a multishop context), one customer might fit into multiple prices or discount rules. PrestaShop therefore uses a set of priorities in order to apply one price rule to such customers.

You can change PrestaShop default settings using the "Priority Management" section: You might want the user group to be more important than the currency, for instance.

The default order of importance is:

  1. Shop (when in a multishop context)
  2. Currency
  3. Country
  4. Group

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.

"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 enable you to directly optimize your catalog's visibility on search engines.

  • Meta title. This is the most important field, as the title that will appear on all 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 couple lines (less then 155 characters), intended to capture a customer's interest. This will appear in 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. This is another extremely important field. It enables you to rewrite the web addresses of your 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.

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.

Featured 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.

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 next chapter, "A Look Inside the Catalog".

Configuring the Product Image

The "Images" tab on the left is for including photos on your product page. You should upload all the images for this product, including all the available variations of this product (color, size, shape...).

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 they 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, or with 12'' screen or a 15'' screen. This is why PrestaShop calls these versions "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.

You cannot create combinations if you do not already have product attributes properly set in PrestaShop.

Attributes creation is done in "Attributes and Values" page from the "Catalog" menu, and is explained in details in the next chapter, "A Look Inside the Catalog".

Manual method

This method helps you create combinations one after the other, so it is to be reserved to either products with few combinations, or products with very specific combinations that can't be created reliably using the automatic method (see next section).

Adding a new variation to your product takes just a few steps.

  1. Click on the "New Combination" button, in the top right of the page. A form will appear:
  2. Attribute-value pair.
    1. From the drop-down menu choose a group of attributes, such as "Color" for example
    2. Choose the attribute value that you would like to include, for example "Blue".
    3. Click on the "Add" button and it will appear in the selector.
      You can add as many attribute-value pairs as necessary to one combination.
      You can only add one pair per type of attribute to one combination: it is impossible to have both "Color: Blue" and "Color: Red" in your pairs; if this is necessary, you will have to create new attributes, for instance "Primary color" and "Secondary color".
      You can delete an attribute-value pair by selecting it and clicking on the "Delete" button.
  3. Reference, EAN13 & UPC.
    • If necessary, indicate the combination's reference, EAN13 and/or UPC numbers into each field, as if you were creating a brand new product in PrestaShop. These numbers may be used by your warehouse or your carrier, so make sure to fill these fields, they are often essential to your business.
  4. Impact on original product. If the combination is supposed to have an impact on the product's price/weight/unit price, choose the appropriate dropdown menu, select "Increase" or "Reduction" depending on the context, and fill the field that appears with the value of that impact.
    • Wholesale price. This field is useful is the default price of the product changes simply by
  5. Minimum quantity. You might prefer this combination to only be sold in bulk. Use this field set the number of items to be sold in bulk.
  6. Available date. If this is a temporary or promotional product combination, you can indicate the date at which this product should not be available for sale anymore.
  7. Images. The images that are linked to the whole product (as uploaded using the form in the "Images" tab on the left) are displayed. Check the box for the images that best represent this combinations.
  8. Default. Check this box if you want the current combination to actually be the main product.

When you have set all of the combination's details, save your product changes using the "Save and stay" button. Your combination will appear in the attributes list at the bottom of the screen.

Automatic method

If you have too many different products or varieties you can use the "Product Combinations Generator." This tool allows you to automatically generate all of the variations and possibilities.

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

A warning window might appear, saying "You will lose all unsaved modifications, do you want to proceed?" This means your product already had some combinations created. If you agree to this, this will delete the combinations that have not yet been saved. Be careful, and always save your work before using the generator!

On the right side of this page are your groups of attributes and their values. Select the varieties by clicking on their name. If your combination combines more than one attribute, 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.

Either way, any discount appears at the bottom of the product's page.

Creating a Pack of Products

You may wish to sell a pack of products composed of several items. I.e.: a computer start-up pack composed of the computer itself, a monitor, and a printer.

You can create a pack and add other products from your catalog to this pack. To do this, check "Pack". A simple form will appear, with a button. Start typing in the text field to filter through your existing products, and choose a product to add to the pack. Select it, choose the quantity, and click on the green button to validate your choice.

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.

Packs allow the site administrator to simplify preparing orders. They also allow customers to take advantage of special prices and offers.

Creating a Downloadable Product

Check the box "Is this a downloadable product?" if you sell downloadable goods, such as mp3s or PDF documents. A form will appear:

  • 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 field, 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.

Product Availability

This section enables you to manage the availability of your products.

  • Initial stock. Represents the number of products available. If at this point you have already organized your products attributes and variations (i.e. colors, sizes, etc.), this field will combine all of the quantities of these variations.
  • Minimum quantity. The minimum number of item that the customer can buy. If set to 1, there is no minimum quantity.
  • Additional shipping cost. Enables you to add a per-product shipping cost to the final order.
  • Displayed text when in-stock. Enables you to display a message to your visitors when your product is in stock. It reassures them that your shop can immediately send them the product by showing, for example, the words "Item available."
  • On the contrary, if the item is not in stock, you can choose whether to allow orders or not using the "When out of stock" selector.
    If you do allow orders, then you can display a message to your visitors using the "Displayed text when allowed to be back-ordered" field.

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.

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."

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.

To add a choice to the group of attributes that you just created, you must create a specific variation.
Select the attribute group then click on "Add attribute" and fill out the form that appears.

Fill out the value for your variation, then select the appropriate group from the drop-down menu.

To have a better understanding of this notion, an Attributes Group can be Color or Weight whereas the attributes themselves can be the colors green, yellow, or brown, or weights of 4 pounds, 8 pounds, or 16 pounds.

Select the attribute that you want to modify, and a form will appear.

Click on the "edit" icon on the left of the color you want to edit, and a new form appears:

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.

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.

Creating 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.

Give a name to this news feature, and click "Save".

Adding a value

To add a value to the feature, either go back to the previous page, or go the "Features" sub-tab of the "Catalog" tab.

In either case, click on "Add a new feature value".

In the drop-down menu, choose the feature to which you would like to add a value, enter its contents, and click Save. For example, if you select the "Weight" feature as illustrated above, you can add feature values such as 1 lb, 2 lbs, 3 lbs, etc.

Assigning 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."

We have just created features as well as values for them. You can now return to the product of your choice, and add features and values.

If a feature does not have any value assigned to it, it will not be visible on your shop.

Entering 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.

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 request the text or the image when they place their order.

Let's look at how to configure this function. In the tab 6, "Customization", you can indicate what type of context (file or text) can be personalized.

  • Use "File Fields" to indicate the number of files that you are going to receive and want to display.
  • If your customer is sending you text, then modify the value in "Text Fields."

The number you write in these fields corresponds to how many of them will appear on the product page of your online store.

In our example, we are going to modify the two values by writing "1" in each of the fields. Once this is done, click "Update Settings." It will then look like this:

  • In Files Fields, indicate what type of file must be sent (i.e. "Image to engrave"). Click the box labeled "Required" if this element is necessary to validate the purchase
  • In Text Field, indicate what type of content must be filled out by your customer (i.e. "Text to engrave"). Click the box labeled "Required" if this element is necessary to validate the purchase.

Once this is done, click on "Save labels." You should now see it appear in the lower part of the screen.

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.

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.

First, click on the seventh tab for your product, "Attachments".

  • Fill out the name of your attachment.
  • Give it a quick description then click on "Browse" to select a file on your computer to upload.
  • Click on "Add a new attachment file".
  • The attachment is uploaded, and the page reloads, with the attachment appearing in the "Available attachments" selector.
  • Select your attachment and click "<< Add" to add to the current product.
  • Click "Update attachments". The message "Update successful" should appear at the top.

Now the "Download" tab will appear in your online store and your customers can download that file that you just saved.

You can view all of your store's attachments (and add more) by clicking the "Attachments" sub-tab, under the "Catalog" tab.

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