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Updated: 01/03/2020
( 23 minutes reading )
Now, since you have installed your application it is time to set up the catalog and all the products you would like to present for selling on your Online Store. In this tutorial, you are going to see that adding a new product in an easy job and you will be able to do so by just following the next few steps of this tutorial.
Once you login into the PrestaShop admin area, on the left vertical navigation menu look for the “Catalog” option. When you find it, click on it. A drop-down menu will appear with a lot of options, such as: “Products”, “Categories”, “Monitoring”, “Discounts” and so on.
To access the page where all of your products will be managed, please, click on the “Products” link.
When you click the “Products” option you will be redirected to a page called “Products”. There you will be provided with a list of all the sample products that PrestaShop creates for you with its default installation.
If you do not want any of these products existing on your Online Store you can simply click the “Select All” checkbox button and from the “Bulk Actions” drop-down to delete all of them.
After all the products are deleted a button saying “Add your first product” will appear on the page. You can either click that button or to click the “New Product” button, that is positioned on the top right side of the page.
Once you click it you will be redirected to a page where you can actually start adding products to your catalog.
If you have used PrestaShop 1.6 you will notice that that page is drastically different. So to start configuring your first product please start by “Enter your product name” into the field created for that.
The name of your product will be displayed on all product listings on your website.
The next thing that you might want to do is to upload a product image. To do that, Prestashop 1.7 provides for you a whole section which is located right under the “Basic Settings” tab. To upload images you can either drag and drop those or just click the “Select Files” icon so you can actually tell Prestashop 1.7 which images should be uploaded.
Please, bear in mind, that there is a recommended size for the dimensions of the images - 800 x 800 px and those have to be jpg, GIF or PNG file formats.
After the image uploads, it will be shown in the same section as a thumbnail.
Every product you are adding can be configured quite extensively and to ease that process Prestashop 1.7 bundles all the configurations in related groups which are presented in the form of tabs and are located right below the name of the product.
Now, let’s continue configuring the product. By default, the first tab with configurations is called “Basic settings”.
That tab contains some of the most basic settings about your product, such as “Summary”, “Description”, “Combinations”, “Brands” and so on.
To better understand how these different configurations are positioned on the product page, let’s review the following screenshot.
As you can see the product page is separated vertically on two main areas - the Product’s images and the Product’s details.
On the left of the page, you should see the product’s image. There you will find all the images you have uploaded for that product conveniently ordered in a small gallery.
On the right side of the page, you will see all the “Product’s Details” as we call it. In that area, you will find all the additional information that you are about to configure.
Now let’s continue! After uploading the images for your product, the next chapter of settings will be for the Summary and the Description of the product.
With the “Summary” your clients will get slightly idea what the product it about, while with the “Description” they will see more detailed information about the product they are interested in. You can see how both of these areas are displayed in the screenshot of the product page above.
Under the “Summary” and “Description” you will see the “Add a feature” button.
Features are small descriptors used for describing different product characteristics. For example "Color" or "Size". When you click on the "Add a feature" button you will see two dropdown menus appearing in the "Features" section located above the button.
The first drop-down menu is for choosing what predefined feature you would like to assign for this product. The second one is the actual value for the feature - for example, the feature "Color" can have a predefined value of "Red" or a Customized Value of "Light Red".
After you choose one of the options and fill in the rest you can easily click the “Add a feature” button again to continue adding new features about this product.
Next is the “Add a Brand” button. When you click it a small menu with all the brands will appear and you will be able to choose the actual brand for this particular product. This way the customer will feel more secure to purchase the product by seeing its brand as well.
Being a shop owner you are provided with the change to display block with “Related products” on each product page in your shop. A Related Product is intended to be an alternative product. For example, if you like creamy peanut butter, you might also consider chunky peanut butter. This is a great way to upsell the products in your inventory and deliver a full-service to your customers. Turning on Related Products functionality gives you an opportunity to show the large variety you have in your inventory and gives customers more purchasing options, without having to search your site. This is a win-win for everyone!
You can also decide if a block will appear and where it will not be visible. This module allows defining category from which product will display products and how many products module will show. An important feature of this module is that each product in your shop can have its own "related products" list. In that list, you can display products from the selected category. If you have products that are related to the one you are adding at the moment you can fill in the field for “Add a related product”. Each list of 'related products' can show different products based on the configuration you will use. You can, for example, create a list of products with:
You are also able to decide how and where the list of related products will appear.
After configuring the related products (if any) you should continue configuring the additional options for the product which are located in the Sidebar of the “Basic Settings” tab.
The first option available for configuration is called “Combinations”.
The “Combinations” are the different variations of a product, containing attributes like its size, weight, color or basically every feature that the product can have. If your product requires combinations then you can simply click the radio button “Product with combinations” and when you do that please do not miss the new tab that will appear right next to the “Basic settings” tab.
Now, let’s look at the “Combinations” tab. To be able to make different combinations of a product you first need to have “Attributes and Features” created. After done with that you can get back to the “Combinations” section and start adding combinations. Please, bear in mind that you can have different prices for the different combinations. The combinations are made based on the features you had created.
On the left side of the section you will see a field, where you can type in the combinations that you would like to make, and a “Generate” button next to it. Under the field, there will be a section where all the generated combinations will appear.
There is also another way to choose the attributes and features you want to combine. On the right side of the page, you will see small boxes with names on them. These are the features you had created. Inside of the boxes, you will see other options - which are the actual attributes.
Let’s say you choose to use the second option for creating combinations. For example, you have a T-shirt that is a white color and is available in all sizes. You should click on all the sizes shown in the “Size” box and then click on the white color from the “Color” box. You will see that all of them will appear on the field for typing in the combinations.
When you are done choosing the features you will make as combinations, please, click the “Generate” button.
Once you click it PrestaShop 1.7 will make for you all the available combinations with the features you chose.
Now, in the combinations that appear you can set either the same price or you can define different prices for each combination. There is also a section where you can type the quantity of the combined product.
Please, bear in mind, that PrestaShop creates for you all available combinations, but only from the features you chose, not from all. Now, on the other hand, if you choose all of the features. You had created before, then the Online Store will generate combinations from all.
After the “Combinations” section you will see the “Reference” one. This is where you type in the reference code for your product.
You can use the reference number to keep a track on the item. Special characters are also allowed to be typed in here, such as "-_#".
Next is the “Quantity” section in which you can only type in how many products should be available for sale.
The advanced settings about the “Quantity” you can find right under the field for the number of the available for sale products or in the very next tab, which is right next to the tab “Basic settings”.
The next section in that sidebar is the “Price” section and as the name suggest this is where you will enter the price for the product.
The net sale price for the product you will have to type in in the first field called “Tax excluded”. The “Tax included” field, on another hand, or known also as “The retail price” will automatically be calculated using the applied tax rate.
You can also set “Tax rule” by choosing a tax from the drop-down menu. Accessing the “Advanced settings in Pricing” section can be done by clicking the link under the “Tax rule” or by clicking the “Pricing” tab next to the “Basic settings” tab.
Once you are done with the “Pricing” section you have to set what “Categories” you want the product to be in.
You can choose the category from the drop-down menu and you can also select the “Home” category as well. But, please, bear in mind that if you select the “Home” category along with the others and if someone goes to the homepage of your Online Store all the products having the “Home” category selected, will be shown there as well.
Another thing related to the categories you are about to choose is how the URL for your product is being formed. The typical structure is as it follows:
https://www.TheDomainOfYourStore.com/category-name/product-name/
The category-name portion of the URL is the actual category which you choose from the Categories section. But what happens if you choose more than one category? Which category will be used in the URL of the product? - To answer that we will have to review another option called “Main category”. It is available as a small radio button next to every category in the “Categories” section. Since this is a radio button this means that you can have only one choice selected at a given time. Therefore the category that has the “Main Category” option selected will be the one used for the generation of the URL for the particular product.
Great! But what happens with the URL for all the other categories that the product is actually listed in? - It does not change! No matter how many categories the product is being listed in, its URL always will remain the same - with the Main Category that is selected. In other words the product will be listed in all the categories on the frontend of your Online Store, however, when you click on it (No matter from which category) the URL of the product will always be the same.
Considering this explanation, an of course for SEO purposes we strongly advise that the “Main Category” of the product remains unchanged once you configure it. The reason for that is very simple - Google (or any other search engine on that matter) keeps a list of the pages your website has. If you configure your product with one category in the beginning google will index the product page and will remember that your product has a specific URL. However, if you change the main category and the URL changes, Google will no longer be able to find the product on the URL that it has remembered.
Now, if you want to quickly be able to create a new category, all you have to do is to click the button “Create a new category”. When you click it a field for the name of the category and a drop-down menu for choosing the “Parent of the category” will appear. When you are ready with that, just click the “Create” button at the right bottom side of the page.
Please, bear in mind, this is actually a quick way to create a category. This means that many of the options that should be configured per category are missing here. To configure all the options for a category you will need to access the “Categories” page, to fill in the needed details, such as description, image and so on.
Ok, basically, these are all the settings on the “Basic Settings” tab.
Now, let’s move on to the next section called “Quantities”. To access the quantities configuration for a product please click on the “Quantities” tab which is typically located right next to the “Basic Settings” tab or at the same tabs group.
This is where you can add quantities again. They used to have an advanced feature where you can do an advanced stock module, but as you can see it is not available in PrestaShop 1.7.
The “Quantities” section has very few settings to manage. The first field is called “Quantity” and here is the place where you should input the total amount of stock for this product.
Next, is the “Minimum quantity for sale” field. This field is used when you would like to set a minimum quantity for sale for each product. A customer can only purchase this product if that minimum quantity is selected.
For instance, if the minimum is set to 3, then the customers will be able to purchase the product only if they take at least 3 in quantity of it. You can also set to 1 to disable this feature.
Next, is the “Low stock level” field. If you leave that empty you will disable that setting, but you can also type a number that will notify the customers when the product is getting low on stock.
If you want to be notified as well when the quantity goes to low in stock, then mark the checkbox right next to the “Low stock level” field - an email will be sent to you every time the quantity of the product reaches the low stock level or below that.
Now, when you want to configure that a product is out of stock to go to the next section called “Availability preferences”. By default, an option “Use default behavior (Deny orders)” will be marked.
You can either leave it like that or change the “Availability preferences” as you like. You can also do “Label when in stock”, “Label when out of stock” and the “Availability date”. With the availability date, you are basically saying to the customers that the product is out of stock, but it is going to come in in the next two weeks or so, for example.
Now, since you filled in all the necessary information about the quantities for the products, please, click the next tab - “Shipping”. That action will load another section for you where you will have to configure all the information about the shipping of the product.
First, you will have to put the Width, Height, Depth, and Weight of the product.
Depends on which country you are going to sell, you can change the default metrics either to centimeters and kilograms or to inches and pounds.
On the delivery time, you say approximately how long will it take for the product to arrive at the customer.
Please, bear in mind, that the display delivery time for a product is advised for merchants selling in Europe to comply with the local laws.
Do you have an additional shipping fee for the product? If yes, then fill the field with the shipping fee for the product.
Next, in that section is the “Available carriers”. By default, nothing will be marked there. If you have a certain carrier that will take care of the product, then mark the desired ones, but if you decide to leave the checkboxes empty, that will mean that all the carriers will be available for customers orders.
The next section, you will have to go through is the “Pricing” section. When you click the “Pricing” tab, which is right next to the “Shipping” tab, the advanced settings for the pricing will load for you.
In the “Pricing” section you can do pricing per unit. You have to fill in the base price in the field “Price per unit”, if your country's pricing laws or regulations require mandatory information about the base price of a unit, such as a price per kg, per liter, per meter.
The taxes for the product depend on If you are selling somewhere in the USA. There is also an option for no taxes for the product.
If you want to show the customer that a certain product is on sale, all you have to do it to mark the checkbox “Display the “On sale!” flag on the product page and on product listings.”
Next in this section is the “Cost price” field. The cost price is the price you paid for the product.
Do not include the tax. Please, bear in mind, that this price should be lower than the net sales price: the difference between the two will be your margin.
Under that, you have the “Specific prices” section. When you click the “Add a specific price” button a small section will load more settings for the specific prices. You can set specific prices for customers belonging to different groups, different countries, etc.
Different countries have different currencies, so you can either choose from a specific country and their currencies or just leave the “All currencies” and “All countries” drop-down menus by default. You can also choose if you want the price for the product to be the same for all the groups or to be different for the different groups such as, for example, the “Customers” group gets 10% off, or all the groups get regular price.
You also have the option to choose if all the customers will have that price or only certain ones. In the “Pricing” section you also are able to choose dates when the sale will start and end for the product.
Once you are done setting the “Specific price conditions” you can remove the “Initial price” and enter your own one that is for example the sale price for the product, or you can leave the “Initial price” marked but then give them let’s say 15% off in the “Apply a discount of” field.
Once you are done managing the settings in the “Specific price conditions” section, please click the “Apply” button, so that all the changes can be saved.
Sometimes one customer can fit into multiple price rules. Priorities allow you to define which rules apply first. You can set these priorities for all the products if you would like.
But this is a very rare occasion, so you do not have to worry about that. You might use it when you are doing pretty advanced stuff.
The next section is the SEO or Search Engine Optimization section. Thanks to the SEO you can improve your ranking and how your product page will appear in search engines results.
This is where you can add more of the “Meta Title”, your “Meta description” and also see your “Friendly URL” of the product.
The “Meta title” is the public title for the product page and for search engines. Leave blank to use the product name. The number of remaining characters is displayed to the left of the field.
When it comes to “Meta description”, that means that this description will appear in search engines. You need a single sentence, shorter than 160 characters (including spaces).
The “Friendly URL” is the human-readable URL, as generated from the product's name. You can change it if you want.
On the “Redirection page” when you are offline and publish your product and it still says offline, from the drop-down menu you can change the redirection to either permanently redirect to some other product or category, temporary change the redirection or to leave no redirection, which will give the 404 error “Not Found” page.
Now, once you are done with the SEO section, you go to the section “Options”, by clicking the “Options” tab on the top right next to the “SEO” tab.
The first option is called “Visibility”. This is where you want your product to appear - everywhere, the catalog only, the search only, nowhere.
The nowhere option is when you are doing an admin product only that only admins can see.
The checkbox “Web only (not sold in your retail store)” is information that the customer can find available only online. Tags facilitate the product search for customers using the search bar.
On the “Condition and References” section you can set if the product is new, used and so on and you also have the option to display the condition of the product on the product page. The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is used to identify books and other publications. The “EAN-13 or JAN barcode” is a type of product code specific to Europe and Japan, but is widely used internationally. It is a superset of the UPC code: all products marked with an EAN will be accepted in North America. And then the UPC code is a type of product code widely used in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and in other countries.
Now you can add some customizations if you want the customers to be able to personalize the product by entering some text or by providing custom image files.
You can also attach files that customers can download directly on the product page (instructions, manual, recipe, etc.).
When you are ready with all the settings about the product you are about to upload, please, click the “Save” button at the very bottom of the page.
That will instantly save all the changes you had made for your product.
Congratulations! In this tutorial, you learned where to find the products in the catalog, how to add new product and set all the changes you want that product to be uploaded with.
Simeon is an experienced System Administrator with over 10 years of experience in the Web Hosting field. He is recognized unanimously as the man behind every technical innovation or improvement that HostArmada introduces. Adaptable and responsible, he solves every technical issue that we or our clients throw at him. Every so often you will find him publishing technical content on our website.
Learn more about Prestashop 1.7 in the other tutorials that we have:
