How to add the product in Magento
What is an online store without products? In this tutorial I will show you how to add the product in Magento. Adding products using the Admin Panel may seem a little daunting at first. But once you have done it a few times it will become second nature.
If you have a handful of products (a few dozen) you can easily add your products one by one in the Admin Panel. However, if you have a large number of products (in the hundreds) you may want to add them in bulk. This tutorial will walk you through both methods if you want to add products yourself.
If you do go about adding products on your own, no matter which method you use you must first add a single product manually. Going to the Admin Panel, navigate to Catalog->Manage Products. Click ‘Add Product’ in the upper left corner. Select your attributes and the product type. If you do have attributes they should be created BEFORE starting to add products. There are many different types of products. For this tutorial we will add a ‘Simple Product’. Once you have selected your attributes and the product type click ‘continue’.
From this point on fill in the rest of the information section by section. The first section is ‘general’ questions for adding your new product in Magento. Magento asks questions like the Product Name, Product Description, an Optional Short Description, the SKU and so on. The most important things to make note of would be the ‘Weight’ if you are planning on using Weight Based Shipping. And the ‘Status’ if you do not want the product to show up yet. The ‘URL Key’ is for SEO purposes and the ‘Visibility’ is where the product will be seen in the store. For most products you want them to show up in the catalog AND a general product search.
After each page is completely filled in you can click ‘Save and Continue Edit’. The next section to add the product is the Prices page. Before working on this page please make sure to have your Tax Classes set up. You will need to select one for the product on this page. The rest of this section and the next section ‘Meta Information’ is very straight forward.
The section, ‘Images’, can be a little confusing. For each product you need to choose whether the image you upload should be the base, the small or the thumbnail image. You can also use one image for multiple purposes. Different sized images go in different pages like the search page, the category page and the product page. The ‘Recurring Profile’ section simply asks if this product will be charged on a timed basis (recurring profile) or a one time fee. Most products do not use recurring profiles.
Believe it or not, you can have custom designs on a per product basis. The ‘Design’ section of how to add the product in Magento will allow you select a custom design or create your own layout. The rest of the sections are all optional and straight forward except for the ‘Inventory’ page.
This section allows you to decide if you want to let Magento manage stock for the product you just added. It also allows you to pick a starting quantity. You can set custom messages for out of stock items and backorders. Vanilla Magento will not port your inventory to programs like QuickBooks, but there are modules you can purchase to keep the two in sync. This can be very useful if you are operating a brick and mortar store in addition to your online store.
Once you have learned how to manually add a product you can either manually enter the rest of your products or import the rest all at once. Your products are obviously the crux of your store so getting them correct is a must have.
If you have decided to import the rest of the products in bulk navigate to System->Import/Export and then Export. Here you can select the entity type of ‘Products’ and export them as a csv. You can then use that as a template for the column order and how to add the product in Magento as another row in your csv.
Once your csv contains all your products you can then import them back into Magento. Magento has a very good error messaging system if your import fails.
While this process is completely doable for the average store owner it is often nice to contact a service who knows what they are doing to add the product in Magento for you. They will also set up all your attributes and tax classes as well. If you feel this part of your Magento store is too difficult or just don’t have time to learn how to add the product in Magento you can always contact CyberSolutions USA LLC for professional help.
