How to add a product to an online store

The product page is the best opportunity to show your customers the value of your product. In this tutorial, you will learn how to add a product to your store with photos, options, and prices.

Let’s set up your product page together. Start in your Shopify admin panel. Click “Products,” then click “Add product”.

There are two pillars of an effective product page: trust and value. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to convey each of these pillars on your product page to optimize sales.

First, start by adding the product title. You want to clearly state what the product is. Next, write the product description. When you write the title and description, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. In the product description, you want to convey the features and benefits of your product. Since the customer can’t try your product before buying, you want to help them understand how the product will solve the problem or challenge they’re facing. Use bullet points to improve readability, and be sure to check your spelling.

One of the key elements of a good product description is to include keywords. Keywords are words and phrases that a potential customer might type into a search engine to find a product like yours. This is a fundamental aspect of search engine optimization, or SEO. I have included a link to our SEO course below this video so you can optimize your site for search engines.

Other ways to build trust on your product page include: displaying customer reviews, embedding customer photos, and offering a money-back guarantee.

At the end of the course, I will introduce you to the Shopify app store. The app store is where you can find some amazing additional functionality that will help you take your online store to the next level.

Next, click “Upload image.” Your product photo is a key element of your product page. It helps you convey trust and quality, and it also allows the buyer to imagine that they already own your product. To be able to add product and collection images to Shopify , the image file must be less than 20 megabytes in size.

I recommend using a compression tool to optimize any images you add to your site to keep the quality high but the size small. I’ve shared a link to a compression service in the resources section below. Your images are probably already under 20 megabytes. But if they’re too big, you can compress the files so they can be uploaded to Shopify.

The first image for each product is called the main image. The main image can appear on collection pages, the cart page, the checkout page, and your home page. Make sure you choose an image that clearly displays the product as your main image.

After adding an image, edit the “alt text.” Alt text helps visually impaired internet users understand what’s in the image. Alt text is also scanned by search engines to determine what’s in the photo. This will help it show up more relevantly in image searches. Keep the alt text short and informative. It’s recommended to use no more than 125 characters.

Now you need to add the price. This is what your customers will pay on the checkout page. You can display the original price or the reduced price if you have a sale. The Cost per item field allows you to track the purchase price of the items you sell. If you are on a Shopify plan or higher, you can use this field to create reports to analyze your profits.

Check “Charge taxes on this product” if the product is taxable. We will talk more about taxes in later lessons. Under “Inventory” you will see the option to add a stock keeping unit, also known as a SKU. SKU will help you organize your inventory and process orders faster. If you are new to SKU, you can create your own format that makes sense to you. As a business owner, I can definitely tell you that SKU helps in the long run.

You also have the option to use barcodes. Again, if you’re just starting out and only selling online, you won’t need this yet. The “Inventory” field allows Shopify to track your inventory for you. Enter the number of items you have in stock here. If you have your products spread across multiple warehouses, you can add a location and separate inventory for each warehouse. If you’re just starting out, this may be overkill for you, although it’s something to keep in mind for the future. For now, all of your products may be stored at home. This is how most people start out.

If you want to add a warehouse location, you can do so in the Settings section of the admin panel. Below the page, in the Shipping section, specify whether your product is physical. If you sell digital products or services that do not need to be shipped by mail, do not check this box. If you do not fill in this information right away, you will not lose anything.

Shipping settings for each product will help calculate the cost of their delivery to the buyer when placing an order. To do this, the system needs to know the size, weight of the parcel and the distance to the buyer. The shipping cost is what you have to pay for delivery as a sender. You decide whether these costs will be included in the final bill of your customers or you will pay the shipping cost yourself.

I can tell you that one of the most tempting offers that shoppers agree to when they shop is free shipping. It's almost expected these days. Consider including shipping costs in the total price of the item, rather than adding them separately on the checkout page. We'll talk about shipping strategies in more detail later in this course.

So, if you have the dimensions and weight of the product, add them. You can add the country of origin of the product, as well as the tariff code of the unified system. This code is used by customs to apply the correct customs tariffs to international orders. This speeds up the customs process.

Under “Fulfillment service”, select the type of service you’ll be using for shipping. Fulfillment, if you’re not familiar with it, refers to the process of picking up your items, packing them, and shipping them to your customer. Literally, processing your order.

So, if you do it yourself, choose "Manual". As you grow your online business, you may start working with manufacturing and fulfillment partners. Then you can choose other order processing options offered by your partners.

If your product has different properties, such as size or color, you can list them in the next section. Enter the available product variations, separating them with a comma. I can sell the same tea in loose leaf or bagged form and in different sized tins. These are all variations of the same product.

You need to enter the values ​​(price, inventory, SKU) for each variant as you did before. At the bottom of the page, you can see how search engines will display your product in search results. This is part of your on-site SEO strategy. SEO is the optimization of elements on a website to improve the ranking and visibility of pages in search engines.

Remember what we said about writing the title and description in a clear and concise manner? In this SEO section, you can customize what you want search engines to see if it’s different from what your visitors see. Click “Edit website SEO” to make changes. By default, the SEO field values ​​are a copy of the product title and description you’ve already written, so you don’t need to change them.

If you scroll up, you'll see a block at the very top called "Product availability". Click "Manage", and a list of your active sales channels will appear. Sales channels give you new opportunities to sell and promote your product. They are the different marketplaces where you can sell your products. Think of your sales channels as a way to reach your customers where they already are and spend their time. When you first launch your store, your online store will be your first sales channel. You'll learn more about activating new sales channels later in this course.

Just below this block is the “Organization” block. As your product range grows, you’ll want an easier way to manage your product sections and group them into groups. This will help your business stay organized and make it easier for your customers to navigate your online store. There’s no need to add this now. But, like shipping information, the more you add over time, the more precise and easier it will be to manage your business.

Once you’ve finished creating your product, click “Save”. You can see the product you’ve added to your store by clicking “View product”. You can continue adding products now or come back and add them later, even after your store has launched. If you have any questions about adding a product, please reach out to our amazing customer support team anytime at https://help.shopify.com. In the next tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a collection.