Setting up a shopify store is no easy task! From finding products you want to launch, creating them, setting up shipping options, digital delivery and more the process can quickly become overwhelming.
In this article I'm going to cover everything you need to know about setting up a product and product page on your shopify store.
The image below with numbers are reference points to highlight what each area is. I also create a video on this topic which you can watch here.
The first thing we will need to do is to get to the product creation page. This can be found when you login to your shopify dashboard and click on Products > Add Product
1) Title
Your title is the name of your product. This is important for SEO as it will be the title of not only the product but also the page. Choosing the name here can have a big impact on how you show up in search results so take a little time to do a bit of keyword research for your competitors names and search volume.
If you need help with this I highly recommend a plugin called keywords everywhere. I'm not an affiliate or sponsored by them it's just one of the lowest cost most effective tools I've ever used for keyword research.
2) Status
This is the status you want your product to be in. If you're still just starting to setup your shop with no traffic to it then putting this status to active is fine. Otherwise I recommend adding it in as draft so it doesn't show on the shop.
3) Publishing
This is where you select where you want your product to be shown. For example some market places might have restrictions which don't allow a certain type of product to be shown. By editing your sales channels you can pick and choose where those products are show.
A few examples of options here would be
- Online store - Your shopify store (your domain)
- Shop - The shopify app
- Point of sale - if you sell offline such as in your own shop or convention etc.
- Facebook/Instagram - if you have the sales channels for these marketplaces setup
- Tiktok
- Youtube
You also have Markets which are custom markets you want the product to show up. You can create new markets if you wish but by default you have United states and International. This allows you to sell your product only to people within the USA, International (all other countries) or both.
4) Description
This is the description of your product and it's also important to SEO focus this section of your product setup as well. This information will also be part of your search engine listing for the product. Give details about the product your customers would be looking for and sales it up a bit to further increase sales.
5) Media
It's recommended to add at least 5 pictures of our product (if it needs it some products might need less) you can also add in short videos here of about 10 seconds. If you run google ads google will pull these pictures and video to create ads and build content ads around your product which will help not only with SEO but also giving your listings some power behind them.
6) Product Organization
This section is broken down into a few parts which I'll explain a bit more in detail as we go over each.
- Type
- This is the area that explains a bit what your product is about.
- Vendor
- Is either your business name or the name of the vendor of the product. This allows you to organize products much easier if you have multiple vendors you're selling on your store.
- Collections
- By default you will only have home page but you can create other collections. Think of collections as categories. For example if your store sold Bike and Bike parts you would most likely create two collections bikes and bike parts which would allow you to only show bikes and not parts on your collection page.
- Tags
- These are mainly helpful for search so thing of tags people would be searching for that would match them up with the right product.
7) Category
This one is important so make sure to select the one that is most in line with the product you are listing. What will happen is it will then populate metadata. These metadata fields are things you will also want to put into place as they will greatly help with market place listings, search and overall information about your product.
8) Pricing
This is where you will set the price of your product. The price goes under Price and Compare-at price is used if the product normally sells for more. For example if we have a $100 product but we sell it for $49.95 we would add $49.95 into the price slot and $100 into the compare-at price. This will create a cross out feature of the price on the sales page which is often very helpful as a sales tactic.
Under this is also how you charge tax or not charge tax on the product.
9) Cost per item
This is used to calculate your profit margins and becomes very helpful as your company and sales grow. It gives you a more clear picture of expenses and profits.
Cost per item is how much it costs you dollar wise to product the product. Adding this in will then calculate the profit and margin for each sold product at that set price.
10) Theme template
This is your product template. By default you will only have one option here called default product. To create a new product page which you can then customize it will be found under Shopify > Online Store > Customize (black button) > Drop down at the top change from home page to product and create new template.
11) Inventory
If you have a limited supply of a product you can track the inventory here and show sold out when the inventory is no longer there or low if you're under a threshold you set.
12) SKU / UPC
This section you will for sure want to add in a sku number even if you don't use it currently in your own wearhouse. By adding in a sku number which can be any number you want ( I do recommend setting up some type of theme though like 0001, 0002 etc.) you can then have flows and other things within Shopify track and tag actions on the product.
The UPC section is only if your product has a UPC number or you have one registered.
13) Shipping
This is where you add the weight of the product which will be critical for calculating shipping rates when you print labels and also if you charge customers shipping fees.
14) Varieties
This allows you to add in customization to your products. Things such as sizes and colors which then allow customers to select and choose which they want quickly from that product page.
If you do set these up also note that each will need it's own UPC and SKU number to go with it.
15) Search Engine Listing
This gives you an overview of how your product is going to look on search engines. You can click on the pencil icon and update this including the link. If your product page has not been getting any traffic yet then you can change the link without redirecting the old.
There you have it, how to setup your product on your shopify store.