Table of content

A Look inside the Catalog

The key to building your shop is adding products to its catalog, and while PrestaShop makes it easy to streamline that process as much as possible, you might still need a hand in getting the hang of it all. Indeed, there are many pages that you can fill in with a lot of data, and many forms to validate.

That is the purpose of this chapter: to take you through all the tabs that weren't explored in the previous chapter ("Adding Products and Product Categories"), explaining each form and detailing every field, so that you can get up to speed quickly with your shop, know what data you need in order to prove useful to the customers and in the end, sell more.

Throughout the product set up, we are going to tackle how to use several key tabs for your products.

Products

The "Products" page and its dozen of tabs per product are explained in details in the previous chapter, "Adding Products and Product Categories".

Categories

The "Categories" page is explained in details in the previous chapter, "Adding Products and Product Categories".

Monitoring

The "Monitoring" tab indicates the sections of your store to which you must pay the most attention in order to manage your store.

Four sections are shown:

• List of empty categories. Gives you the categories that do not have any products. You should either delete these empty categories, or fill them with at least one product. This prevents customers from finding themselves in an empty category in your shop.
• List of products with attributes and without available quantities for sale.
• List of products without attributes and without available quantities for sale. Gives you which products are no longer in stock. Take the necessary measures to restock them.
• List of disabled products. Gives you the products that have been disabled in the store and that aren't visible to your customers. Consider either enabling them (maybe after restocking them) or deleting them from your catalog.

The "Monitoring" page should be checked regularly in order to improve your catalog management.

Attributes and Values

Attributes are the basis of product combinations: you can only create variations of a product if its attributes change.

Attributes are configured on a per-product basis, from the "Product" page under the "Catalog" tab, but they must first be registered on your shop using the tool on the "Attributes and Values" page under the "Catalog" tab.

To add a type of attribute, or in other words, to add a group of variation possibilities (colors, capacity, material, etc.), click on "Add new Attributes". A new page appears.

Fill out the form:

• Name. The exact description of the attribute. This needs to be short but precise, so as to not confuse it with another attribute.
• Public name. The attribute name, as displayed to the customers on the product page. Since some attributes might have the same name for varying content, this field enables you to still present it correctly within the product's context, while being able to easily tell a product from another with a similar name but different meaning.
• Attribute type. Enables you to choose whether the product's page should display this attribute's values as a drop-down list, a radio button list, or a color picker.

Save your new attribute to return to the attributes list, then click on "Add new Values". Another page appears.

Fill out the form:

• Attribute type. From the dropdown list, select one of the available attributes.
• Value. Give a value to the attribute: "Red", "16 Gb", "1.21 gigawatts"...

The next attributes are only shown if the attribute is a color type.

• Color. If the value is a color, you can enter its value in HTML color code (i.e. "#79ff52" or "lightblue"), or use the color picker to precisely show the correct hue.
• Texture. If your product does not use a solid color but rather a textured one (i.e. tiger stripes), you can upload a small image file that will be displayed on the product's page. Note that this will replace the HTML color from the field above. Click on the "Save" button is order to start the upload.
• Current texture. Once you have uploaded a texture file, it is displayed in this section as a reminder.

You can add more values for the same attribute type by saving your changes with the "Save then add another value" button.

The main list eventually presents you with all your registered attributes. You can edit or delete each using the buttons on the right of the table, or display their values by clicking on the "+" icon, which opens a sub-table.
You can also set the attributes presentation order on the front-office either by clicking on the arrow icons, or by drag'n'dropping each row when the mouse cursor indicates you can.

Features

Features are a product's intrinsic characteristic: they do not change depending on a combination of attributes, and remain the same throughout the product's combinations.

Features are configured on a per-product basis, from the "Product" page under the "Catalog" tab, but they must first be registered on your shop using the tool on the "Features" page under the "Catalog" tab.

Click on "Add new feature". A very simple form appears. This is where you name the feature itself: for example, the types of headphones provided with a music player.

Give a name to this news feature, and save your new feature to return to the attributes list, then click on "Add new feature value". Another page appears.

Fill out the form:

• Feature. From the dropdown list, select one of the available features.
• Value. Give a value to the attribute: "5 lbs", "27 cm", "

You can add more values for the same feature type by saving your changes with the "Save and add another value" button.

The main list eventually presents you with all your registered features. You can edit or delete each using the buttons on the right of the table, or display their values by clicking on the "+" icon, which opens a sub-table.
You can also set the features presentation order on the front-office either by clicking on the arrow icons, or by drag'n'dropping each row when the mouse cursor indicates you can.

Manufacturers

Unless you make your products yourself, you should always have your products' manufacturers registered in PrestaShop.

By entering information about the manufacturers, your site's visitors can have rapid access to all of this manufacturer's products. This makes navigating around your site easier for them. In terms of visibility, filling out these fields will improve your position in search engines.

Click on "Add new", and a creation form appears.

Now fill out all of the fields:

• Name. Indicate the name of the manufacturer in order to simplify your visitor's searches.
• Short description. The description that will appear on the search engines when you make a request. Limited to a 100 characters.
• Description. Add a more complex description of your manufacturer and their activity and products.
  You can detail their specialties and promote the quality of their products. The manufacturer's description will be shown in your store among the others.
• Logo. Having a manufacturer logo is essential: it leads the customers eyes to trust your shop almost as much as they trust that manufacturer/brand.
• The SEO fields (Title, Meta description, and Meta Keywords): provide the same functionality as they do in the categories.
  • 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.
• Enable. You can disable a manufacturer, even temporarily. This will only remove it from the manufacturers list on your shop's front-end.

Save your changes in order to be taken back to the manufacturers list. From there, you can:

• click on a manufacturer's name or logo, and get all the product associated with it. If there are none, then you should work on a per-product basis, from the "Products" page under the "Catalog" tab, using each product's "Associations" tab on the left.
  The same result is achieved by clicking the view icon on the right.
• disable the manufacturer, by clicking on the green check icon. Once disabled, a red cross icon appears in its place: click to re-enable the manufacturer.
• edit/delete the manufacturer by clicking on the respective buttons on the right of the row.

Manufacturers Addresses

At the bottom of the "Manufacturers" page is an "Addresses" section. Each manufacturer can have its own address registered with PrestaShop. This serves mainly as a reminder for yourself: this way, you'll always have the contact address for a manufacturer available directly within PrestaShop.

Suppliers

Having suppliers registered is optional if you already have manufacturer who directly supply you with their products. It all depends on your needs, but if your product supplier is the same as the product manufacturer, then you should make sure to have both registered in your system, and associated with each product.

Just as for manufacturers, your site's visitors can have rapid access to all of supplier's products. This makes navigating around your site easier for them. In terms of visibility, filling out these fields will improve your position in search engines.

Click on "Add new", and a creation form appears.

Now fill out all of the fields:

• Name. Indicate the name of the supplier in order to simplify your visitor's searches.
• Short description. The description that will appear on the search engines when you make a request. Limited to a 100 characters.
• Description. Add a more complex description of your supplier and their activity and products.
  You can detail their specialties and promote the quality of their products. The supplier's description will be shown within your shop.
• Logo. Having a supplier logo is essential: it leads the customers eyes to trust your shop almost as much as they trust that supplier/brand.
• The address fields (Phone, Address, Postcode, City, Country).
• The SEO fields (Title, Meta description, and Meta Keywords). Provides the same functionality as they do in the categories.
  • 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.
• Enable. You can disable a supplier, even temporarily. This will only remove it from the suppliers list on your shop's front-end.

Save your changes in order to be taken back to the suppliers list. From there, you can:

• click on a supplier's name or logo, and get all the product associated with it. If there are none, then you should work on a per-product basis, from the "Products" page under the "Catalog" tab, using each product's "Associations" tab on the left.
  The same result is achieved by clicking the view icon on the right.
• disable the supplier, by clicking on the green check icon. Once disabled, a red cross icon appears in its place: click to re-enable the supplier.
• edit/delete the supplier by clicking on the respective buttons on the right of the row.

Image Mapping

Image Mapping assigns multiple clickable zones to an image so that different product pages can be opened by clicking on one single image. This feature makes your site very attractive by easing your customers' navigation. Let's take a look at how to configure this feature.

Create an image map

Click on the "Image Mapping" tab and you will arrive at a new page.

This page shows a list of pre-configured image maps. To create a new one, click on the "Add New" button. You will arrive at the creation screen.

• Enter a name for the image map in the "Name" field.
• Next, select the image that you want to represent the image map. Click on "Upload Image" to save it. The page will then reload, with the photo that you uploaded.

Setting up an Image Map

Now we are going to learn how to set up an image map.

Click on a corner of your image and drag your mouse over the image to highlight/cut out the part of the image you want to be clickable to the user.

Your selection will be clear and illuminated while the rest of the image will darken. Take good care to align the frame of your image with the zone onto which your customer can click.

Once this is done:

• Type the first few letters of the product associated with this image into the field just underneath the image.
  In our example, we would type "iPod" and several choices would appear. We would then choose "iPod Touch".
• Confirm your choice by clicking "OK". Your image map is now created.
• Repeat this process for all of the products that you wish to make accessible through your image.

If you have made a mistake on your clickable area, you can resize by grabbing its sides or corners.

If you wish to delete a clickable area, just select the area, and click the "Delete" button within the image.

Now you must assign your Image Map to a category. This is done by checking the boxes on the "Categories" table.

Once all of the modifications have been done, click on "Save Image Map(s)" in order to save all of your settings.

Done! Your image map is now available on your store, in the selected categories.

The clickable zones are visible thanks to the "+" icon. Hovering over the image with your mouse cursor, you can see a little window that presents the image's name, default image, short description, and price.

Tags

The PrestaShop Tags feature enables you to associate your products with keywords. Your customers can use the keywords to easily and quickly find the products they are looking for.

For instance, let's say customer wants to find an MP3 player in your boutique. In order to find the product corresponding to his search, there needs to be a tag to associate "MP3 player" with "iPod Nano".

You have two ways to set up this feature.

First solution: Create a Tag

You can associate several tags to your product directly in the "Tags" field from the moment you create a product. See the "Managing Your Catalog" chapter of this user-guide, in the "Adding a Product Description" section.

Second Solution: Creating and managing Tags

Once you have filled tags for all your products, you will get a very important list of tags. The best way to manage them is to go to the "Tags" sub-tab under the Catalog tab.

You will arrive at the list of all the tags used in your store in all languages.

Click on "Add New", and a creation page appears.

This interface allows you to add tags to one or many of your products.

• Fill out the name field.
• Indicate in what language the tag appears.
• Select the products from the right column to which you would like to apply the tag. Hold on the Ctrl key on your keyboard in order to select several tags at once.

In our case, we will take "Belkin Leather folio for iPod Nano" and "Shure SE210 Sound-Isolating Earphones" and then:

• Click "Add." The products will go from the right column to the left column.
• Click "Save" to save the settings.

Congratulations, you just added a tag to your product!

To add a tag corresponding to another language just repeat the operation, only this time, change the language.

Results

If your visitors search for the term "Accessories," they will find the "Belkin Leather Folio for iPod Nano" and the "Shure SE210 Sound-Isolating Earphones."

In more general terms, when your customers search by using terms that differ from the product itself, the results they will receive depend on the tags that you have associated with the products.

Attachments

This tab was explained step by step in the "Managing Your Catalog" chapter of this user-guide, in the "Managing Attachments" section.