How to Add Products to Your Free e-Commerce Site

Hello and welcome to this video brought to you by Aliarts Website Marketing. This tutorial is a step by step guide to adding new products categories and to your new eCommerce website.

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Can’t watch video? Here is a transcript of the audio.

First of all, let’s add new a new category to your sidebar menu, in anticipation of the product you are about to add. We add categories so customers can quickly find what they need within your store, by browsing the menu in your sidebar, or within a page. Let me know if you would like your menu set up in the sidebar, or within a page and I will set this up for you.

Once a category is added, you are then able to start adding products to that category. For the purposes of this demo, we are setting up a mock baby products website. We are going to add a teddies category, to advertise along with our dummies range.

To begin, click on the categories link in the menu to bring up your Category Manager. Click on the NewCategory tab to bring up your Category Editor.

Now, as I go very indepth into optimising your website for the search engines in the add new pages and posts tutorials, I won’t go into it yet again. I’m assuming you have seen these tutorials, and have had a go at adding new content, and optimising your pages already. As the eCommerce pages and categories work very much in the same way as your content pages and categories, you optimise your products in exactly the same way to be found in the search engines.

So go ahead and start by adding a very meaningful title for your category. Add a nice, meaningful description, including all your lovely keywords for this category, just as we do for the pages and posts. This will help immensely with getting your products found in the search engines.

Next option you have is to add a category image. Now a word of warning here, all images upload at their full size, which means if you add huge images, the pages which contain the thumbnail of the image will be extremely slow to load, and you will use up your 250mb space limit on your hosting in no time flat.

If you have no graphics program installed, or even if you do, it makes life that easy, I strongly suggest you download a utility called Image Resizer. It is made by windows, and it will quickly and easily resize your images before you upload them.

Click on the add new image button, and navigate to where your product images are stored on your computer. As you can see here in this folder of images, once the utility is installed, you simply right click on the image you wish to resize, choose resize image, and select the lowest file size. It resizes and renames the images by tacking (small) at the end of the filename. This quality is ample for the gallery, and ends up around 20k. You could upload thousands of these product images and never have a problem with pages loading, or running out of space. You can also do this in advance by resizing all your product images before you start.

For a complete tutorial, on how to download and install the image resizer, a grand total of around 3 minutes of your time, please click on the link in the tutorial menu titled resize images. You will be glad you did and you will be surprised how much you use it for images to send in your email and use online.

Finally in the categories, we have the product templates and menus. These appear when you tick Product Details Template and the Variations here in the menu.

These last two options are quite complicated, and probably beyond the scope of what you require from the cart. These options are quite likely to simply cause confusion, so we won’t go into them here. If you request options within your cart that require the use of these we are most likely to simply recognise your needs, and set them up when we are installing the cart. We will then go over your individual needs with you, giving you details of what’s required here if neccessary. So for now, leave these options unticked.

All you need to pay attention to here, is where you nest your category. You can either make it a parent category, such as Teddies, and then you can list all your Teddies under that parent category. Like home made teddies, green teddies etc. For this example, we have just nested ours under Baby Products. You can make these menus as simple or complex as you wish.

Click Save Category to continue.

Now we can get on to adding a product or two to your online store. Select the products link to be taken to the products manager. To enter a new product into the system, click New Product, and you will be taken to the product editor.

For those who have already seen the add new pages and posts tutorials, and have even added new pages to their websites, this will all be starting to look very familiar. That’s because the products are all added into individual pages, and share a lot of the same characteristics.

So go ahead and start by adding a very meaningful title for your product. Make sure it describes it well and uses good keywords, including brand names and anything else you think your potential buyers may search.

Here’s one I prepared earlier. Your title appears here and in the title bar of your website, also (as mentioned in previous videos), this is the title that will appear in the search engine listings. This is what will work as your headline, advertising your product to potential customers. Try to be descriptive as possible, putting as much thought as you would into any marketing headline you write.

For example, when one of our potential customers searches ‘free website design,’ this is the title they see in the listings.

Next you have your textarea where you can write your description of your product. Again, try to use your keywords once or twice in here as well.

In the next textarea, you have space to write a summary of the product to grab the attention of the customer. This appears before the description like a subheading, and gets the buyer excited about your product. Take some time to put your best work into selling your product in this box.

Another thing to consider when writing your summary is this is what will appear in the search engine results. Underneath your headline in the search engine results is your description, which in the case of this shopping cart software is entered into the summary here. Be aware that this summary is ultimately what will make your buyers click in to view your product, so do your best to make it count.

Next up is your details and specifications area where you can add more information about your product in the form of a list. As you can see here, I’ve listed the weight, which you add here, then add the details in the textarea below. Click add product detail again, add your new specification, then the details in the textarea that appears below, and so on.

Next you are able to add your product images. Be sure to resize all your images just like you did with the categories before you upload the image for your product. I can’t stress enough how important this is, so please do see the tutorial for the image resizer and install this before you enter your first product.

Next up we have the Price & Delivery window. First in line is the price which can be entered below. You can choose for this item not to be taxed, or if left unchecked, GST will automatically be added at the checkout.

Second we have the sale price option, where you can enter a sale price for the item. The original price will appear with a strikethrough, and the sale price will appear below, together with the percentage of savings on the original price.

Next we have the shipping option. We would have discussed your options of what you wish to have setup for shipping in the backend, but if you wish to have free shipping on an item you can simply leave this box unchecked. Then when the product is added to the cart, a notification the items has free shipping will appear.

Lastly here we have our inventory option. You can add how many items you have in stock here, and also your stock keeping unit for your records.

Up here in the sidebar menu, we have some final settings to enter before we can go live. Here in the settngs menu, you are able to choose whether or not this product is a Variation, which are Selectable product options. This is something we would have set up earlier, so if you don’t know what this means, leave it unticked.

Next you can tick if you would like the product to appear in your featured products section. As you can see here our example product is appearing at the top in our Featured Products section, also, it’s On Sale, also, it’s a Bestsellers, and it’s a New Product. The top two here are settings you control, the bestsellers depend on sales and the new products are those that are recently added.

Next up are your tags. This is where you can enter descriptive keywords that will appear to the search engines. Enter a few meaningful product keywords here.

Finally, you have your categories menu, where you are able to choose where in the browse menu your product will appear. It is best to have entered your categories first, but for now, if you forget, you can always add the category here by clicking add, typing in your category, choosing if you would like it to be within the parent category, in this case we do want it to be under baby stuff, and click add. Tick all categories you wish it to appear in.

Now you have your product safely entered, you can choose where you want to go next from the dropdown menu. You can either continue editing this product, go back to the products manager, even edit the next product you have stored, quite handy if you are adding information to all your products. Then click Save Product. Head over to your store and your new product should have arrived safe and sound.

Once your first product is added, the category will then show up here within the browse menu at your website.

So there you have it. How to add new products to your online store. Once again, if any of this is unclear, or you need to go through it with me, please feel free to let me know on any of the numbers at www.FreeWebsiteDesign.co.nz, or Aliarts.co.nz.

Thanks again, and I’m looking forward to seeing you in the next video in the series.