I’ve been busy over at Bombshell Bay working on designing and producing a new range for our next collection. Launching a new range is a beast of a job and we need to make sure all of the details are totally triple checked before hitting publish. Here’s how we load products and launch them for sale on the online store

 

 

PART 1- GATHER YOUR ASSETS

 

Create a spreadsheet with the following information. Include all of the following

 

SKU- Also known as a stock keeping unit. This is a code you can use to identify your products. I like to create the SKU when designing the products so I can use this from the beginning of the product’s lifespan. I also use this as a reference with the manufacturer to keep things simple. 1 SKU= no mistakes when ordering and re ordering.

 

Product Name- No brainer. Give the product a name. I like to think of a name that works for the customer but is also great for SEO.

 

Product Description/ Category- I break it down to Tops, Bottoms, One Pieces etc.

 

Product Colour/ Print- Do you have more than one option? If so, list here.

 

Price- No brainer. How much will you be selling the product for?

 

Inventory- broken down by size/colour or whatever system you are using

 

Once you have all of the relevant information in the spreadsheet you can start working on the next steps.

 

 

PART 2- WRITING DETAILED PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS THAT SELL!

 

Use the spreadsheet to work your way through creating copy for the products.

 

In A NEW Google Doc start working on creating Product Descriptions using COPY THAT SELLS ( I like to tell the customer why they need the products and how they function etc)

 

Ideally you will write 100 or so words that informs your customer on what the product is and how it works etc. I like to use the “brand voice/ tone” here. Some of the information is recurring across the products so I’ll use a list of dot points under a heading such as

BUY THIS IF YOU do ABOUT THIS PRODUCT

 

In this document Will list all of products from the spreadsheet and start working through them. Sometimes the words come easily and other times writing copy is like extracting teeth so i’ll write for as long as i can and come back to it later if needed.

 

 

PART 3- IMAGES

 

After the images have been sent over from the Photographer i’ll start arranging them into folders based on the following Taxonomy

 

NEW RANGE NAME

TOPS > STYLE> PRINT

BOTTOMS > STYLE> PRINT

ONE PIECES > STYLE> PRINT

And so on and so forth. Creating files that are easy to locate makes it so much easier when it comes to product loading and also for then you need to share with bloggers and media etc.

 

Bulk upload your images to the Media Library on your website from the dropbox folder.

 

 

PART 4- PRODUCT LOADING

 

So you have all of the product assets perfectly organised and everything is ready to go.

Product loading can take a long time depending on how many products you have in your range but having everything at your fingertips will save you from having a melt down if your hosting company can’t cope with you uploading so many new product and images to your woocommerce store.

 

THIS IS HOW I LOAD PRODUCTS INTO WOOCOMMERCE

 

I decide how I want my products to appear on the “SHOP” page. I like them to be arranged by category (ie “tops, bottoms and one pieces” so that’s the order I’ll upload them.

 

PRO TIP- SAVE TIME PRODUCT LOADING WITH MY FAVOURITE TIP

 

Create your First product in Woocommerce from scratch.

Enter all of the info from your spreadsheet and also your product description from the google docs. Attach the feature image and also any other images from the media library.

 

Save the product as a DRAFT (DON’T PUBLISH JUST YET)

Preview the product to make sure you are happy with the layout/images and product information.

 

Return back to your PRODUCTS page in Woocommerce (the Products page is just under the Woocommerce menu.

 

You will see your newly created product there and when you hover under the products you will see an option that says DUPLICATE.

 

This is the secret weapon I was talking about. This will make an EXACT copy of the product you just created which saves a heap of time (based on the process that I’m uploading products of the same category and price so it cuts down on data entry for several fields)

 

After you have duplicated the product, go into the duplicate and edit the information including the images. Save as a DRAFT and repeat until all of the products in that category have been loaded.

 

Each product needs to have its own SKU, pricing and inventory attached to it so make sure you update this as you go.

 

Once all of the products have been loaded I like to go and schedule the products for release as per my schedule (sometimes I stagger product ranges)

So, that’s it. It takes time and planning to upload a product range to Woocommerce but done well, it can be easy and relatively quick and pain free.