How to Add a Simple Product with WooCommerce Plugin

WooCommerce is a popular plugin to create an online store (eCommerce website) in WordPress. It provides a lot of essential features for an eCommerce website such as shopping cart, payment, shipping, promotion, customer registration, ... In this article, we’re learning how to add a simple product in WordPress with WooCommerce plugin.

To add a simple product with WooCommerce plugin, you can use two methods:

• Method 1: Add each product manually.
• Method 2: Add simple products in bulk with the Import feature (you need a CSV file).

Here we go!

Method 1: Add Each Product Manually

After installing and activating WooCommerce plugin, go to Product > Add New. The interface to add a new product will show up as follows:

To make it easier to understand, I sort the settings into two kinds here:

• Basic information: important information that you definitely should fill in.
• Other information: optional information, you can enter them or not, depending on your needs.

Basic Information

First, you need to enter basic information about the simple product such as name, description, image, price, and product type.

Name and Descriptions

The simple product name should be short and include primary keywords so that customers can find it easily.

As for the description, WooCommerce plugin has a long description and a short description.

The short description shows up next to the product name and image. Therefore, you should write it shortly and attractively such as “A beautiful beanie with an appealing logo”.

In the long description, you should describe more about the simple product such as where it comes from, its specifications, etc. For example: “The hat is made from Chinese cotton wool and woven manually by artisans”. There’s one trick is to use bullets when you need to list something. This will make the content look much more airy and easy to read.

Product Image and Product Gallery

The simple product should have at least one image that illustrates it. Besides, you should add some other product images from different angles (viewed from the left, right, from a distance, and images from customers) to the Product Gallery. This helps customers easily visualize the actual product, thereby gaining their trust.

Product Tags and Categories

Tag and Category are two useful tools that help you manage and organize products effectively. Using tags and categories properly makes it easier for customers to specify what your eCommerce website is selling. Besides, they can look for their desired products more easily and quickly.

To add a new category, just click the Add new category button in the Product categories section:

As for tags, it’s easier. You just need to enter the tag name then click the Enter button or click Add.

Product Type

There are four product types in WooCommerce plugin that are:

• Simple product
• Group product
• External/Affiliate product
• Variable product

However, in this article, we just add a simple product.

Product Price

To add the product price, go to Product data and choose the General tab. There’re two main entries that you should care about:

• Regular price
• Sale price

To set up the sale time, click Schedule on the right of the Sale price entry.

For example, I set up the sale time as follows:

Other Information (Not Required)

Note: You can click the (?) button on the right of each section to read the documentation of WooCommerce plugin.

Depending on the product and the store, the eCommerce website owners need to fill in different attributes and data for the simple product in the Product data section. This section consists of 6 main tabs as follows:

General Tab

In the General tab, in addition to adding the product price, you can set up two more sections:

• Tax status: there are three default tax status that are Taxable, None, and Shipping only.
• Tax class: choose how WooCommerce calculates the tax of the product. I will explain more in the next article.

Inventory Tab

There are 4 sections in the Inventory tab:

• SKU: the product code.
• Manage stock?
• Stock status: there are three default status that are In stock, Out of stock, and On backorder.
• Sold individually: each customer is only able to buy one product in this type for each order.

Shipping Tab

There are 3 sections in the Shipping tab:

• Weight (kg)
• Dimension (length x width x height)
• Shipping class: choose the product class (fragile, bulky, …) to apply different methods of shipping. I will explain more in the next article.

Linked Products Tab

• Upsells: suggest a similar product that has other sizes, colors, … for the customer.
• Cross-sells: suggest another relevant product. For example, if you sell books, you can suggest that customers buy bookmarks.

Attributes Tab

This tab is about creating a variable product. To get more details, refer to this article.

Advanced Tab

There are 3 sections in the Advanced tab:

• Purchase note: send a note to the customer when he / she finishes the order.
• Menu order: the priority of the product in the cart. The smaller the number, the higher the priority.
• Enable review

In addition to creating each product manually, you can add simple products in bulk with the Import feature by the second method.

Method 2: Add Simple Products in Bulk with the Import Feature

To add simple products in bulk with the Import feature, you need a CSV file first. This CSV file contains some fields of products such as name, description, price, SKU, etc. You can export this CSV file from another eCommerce website or create one manually with Excel (choose the CSV format in the Save as section of Excel).

You can download the example CSV file here.

Let’s see how we do it:

First, go to Products > All Products > Import.

On the next screen, upload your CSV file and then click Continue:

In the Column mapping section, choose the fields you want to import:

After that, scroll to the bottom and click Run the importer:

After finishing, you can click View products to see new products:

These are two products that we’ve imported:

After adding simple products, we need to set up their display on the website so that they look more gorgeous.

Customize the Simple Product Display on the Website

In this section, we’re going to set up the display of the product page and the store so that they look more beautiful, professional, and convenient for customers.

Customize the Product Page Display

There are many eCommerce themes on the market. These themes help you display the simple products beautifully. Moreover, some themes choose the product page as the homepage or add the product page to the menu by default. This can help customers see your product page right after they land on your site.

However, not every theme displays like that. Thus, I’ll show you how to add the product page to the menu and choose the product page as the homepage manually!

Add the Product Page to the Menu

We have an article that explains how to add / remove a section on the menu page, you can refer to it here.

Choose the Product Page as the Homepage

First, click Customizer on the Admin menu bar:

On the left sidebar, choose Homepage settings:

After that, choose A static page in the Your homepage displays section, choose Shop in the Homepage section and then click Publish.

Tada! We’ve finished choosing the homepage as the product page:

Next, I’ll introduce you to some interesting settings in the Customizer section to make the eCommerce website more beautiful.

Customize the Store Display (Not Required)

Still in the Customizer, go to WooCommerce:

In the WooCommerce section, there are small sections as follows (see the image):

Now I will explain briefly about the use of each section:

• Store Notice:

This section allows you to show a notification on the top of the page as below:

• Product Catalog:

In the Product Catalog section, you can add a sidebar, customize how the product page displays / manages the products, customize the number of products in a row, and the number of rows on a page.

• Product Images:

In the Product Images section, you can edit the length and the aspect ratio of the product image so that it looks more beautiful and balanced.

• Check out:

In this section, you can customize the checkout form by adding / removing sections such as the company name, phone number, location. Also, you can display the Privacy policy and Term and Conditions pages.

• Optimization: Enable this section by default unless you’re using WooCommerce blocks.

As you can see, WooCommerce plugin allows users to customize the store display flexibly. Depending on the characteristics, needs, and taste of each person, you can edit this section in different ways.

Last Words

We hope that you’ve learned how to add a simple product with WooCommerce plugin after 15 minutes of reading. In the upcoming article, we’re going to learn about how to create an online store, so don’t miss it!

In addition, some products may have some information that WooCommerce doesn’t support. That time, you can use custom fields with Meta Box plugin to add this information, get more details here.