[intro] When you have completed this guide, you will have learned how to manually add Products to your Obodo shop. You will also understand all of the different functions within the Edit Product window, how to add Variants and Product Codes to Products. [/intro]

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The Edit Product window is something you’ll become very familiar with on the Obodo platform as you’re building your shop. It’s within this window you can manually add products, and edit their variants, images, product codes, metadata and lots of other useful stuff too.

Adding a new Product to your Obodo shop

1. To open the Edit Product window, log into your shop and click the Shop tab towards the top right of the screen:

2. This will take you to the homepage of your shop. You then need to click Add Product on the red bar towards your top right:

3. This will open the basic version of the Edit Product window. I say ‘basic’ because as you install more features on the Features page, this will provide more options within the Edit Product window. Presuming you have no features installed, your Edit Product window should look like this:

4. Down the left-hand side, the options will be ‘greyed out’ until you have completed the fields for the most basic details for your product, which are the price, the product description and the product title. As an example, I’m going to add a product to my shop:

Adding your Product Description

In the field provided, paste in the description for each product. If you are copying the product descriptions directly from your supplier’s spreadsheet, you should be able to do this without issue, however, if you are copying them from elsewhere, such as a Microsoft Word document or a website, ensure that you paste it into the NotePad application first (if you’re using a PC, run a search for Notepad, however, if you are on a Mac, use TextEditor). Using this method ensures that any code used to format the text elsewhere or third party coding is not carried onto your website, so you will not encounter any issues such as bullet points that don’t line up properly and text in different sizes and colours throughout the paragraphs. If you have not written Product Descriptions before, this Guide will be able to help you learn how to write impactful copy for each of your Products.

Adding Product Images

When these have been completed, you’ll then be able to click on Images & Photos, where you can upload your Product Images. These should be square in shape; the minimal size for product images is 500x500 pixels and the maximum size is 2000x2000 pixels, therefore we recommend 1024x1024 pixels square as an ideal size for your product images. Click here to read more about Producing your own Product Images. 

5. To upload your images from your computer, click the Images & Photos tab, and then click the pencil symbol on the bottom right of the first image. This will provide two options: Upload New and Choose Existing. Choose Existing will allow you to select a product image from the File Manager and assign it to your product.

6. However, as this is a completely new product, select Upload New and use the Open window to locate and select the images from your computer:

7. The first image - the most left-hand version- is your main product image, so you need to ensure that this is the best image to depict your product. When you have uploaded the main product image, you need to upload the additional product images to ensure customers can get a good look at your product. It’s a general rule of thumb that more images of a product encourage more sales, so customers can get a really good idea of the product before committing to buy.

Adding Product Variants

8. When the Product Images have been uploaded, click the Variants tab. Before you build the Variants onto your Product, it's a good idea to check how many Product Variants you have, using this Guide. Then click the Variants tab:

9. Click the Add Variant button:

10. We're going to create a basic drop-down Variant. Click Create Variant, next to 'Other':

[Remember]To create Variants with Colours, Variants with Patterns or Variants with sizes, click the relevant to link to see the appropriate Guide. If you plan on making a Product with lots of Variant choices and combinations, it's recommended that you follow the steps in this Guide before you begin, to ensure that your Product Pages load quickly for your Obodo shop customers. [/remember]

11. The system will then ask for the Variant Name. We’ll add Size first. Type the Variant Name into the field and click the green Save button:

12. The system will then prompt you to add the different Variant Choices - sizes - that are available. Add these beneath the Variant Choices header, clicking the green Add button for each until you have added all of your sizes. When you have provided all of the Variant Choices, click the green Save button:

13. Now I’ve added Variants, the Variants tab looks like this:

14. When you have completed this task, click the green Save button in the bottom right-hand corner to save your Product to your Obodo shop:

[tips]Please bear in mind that if you have a product with a lot of variants, this will change the way you have to display this product, as lots of variant choices can negatively affect the page loading time and therefore, the user experience for any potential customers visiting your site. If you’re not sure how to display your products with variants correctly, click here for our guide to Product Variants. [/tips]

The Advanced Edit Product window

As mentioned at the beginning of this Support Guide, the tabs that you can see within the Edit Product window vary according to any features installed on the Features tab within the back end of your site, as some of those features are specific to products and their settings. To install any of these features, click the Features tab, and then simply click and then install any you feel will be useful to you and your shop:

Recommended features:

Product Attributes

Product Attributes allow you to add more than a Product Code to a product; you can add a weight and Custom Attributes, which allow you to offer product filters within your categories where customers tick boxes for required sizes and colours, and all of the products that are available are listed for them. Highly recommended as this improves the user experience for your customers and makes finding specific products a lot easier for them. You can read more about the Product Attributes feature here.

Classifications

The Classifications tab allows you to set a specific classification for that Product, which makes it easier for search engines to identify and decide where that product should be displayed in search engine results. Whilst this is not necessary for shops that retail the same kind of product - such as greetings cards for example (as the feature will allow you to classify the shop as a whole) this tab is especially useful on websites that sell different kinds of products, such as clothing, shoes and accessories.

Custom Meta Data

Custom Meta Data, like Classifications, allows you to set the metadata for the shop as a whole, but within the Edit Product window, you can click this tab to add metadata for specific products. This, in turn, helps search engines quickly identify what the product is to decide where it should be visible within search results. Whilst you can set the metadata on each product, if you do not do this manually this feature will automatically select the Product Name and the first 140 characters from the Product Description to use instead.

Optional features:

Product Summary in Categories

Product Summary In Categories - often referred to as Short Descriptions - provides an extra Short Description field next to the existing Description field within the Edit Product window. You can add a Short Description to encourage visitors to click into a Product Page from a Category page. 

Promo Stickers

When installed, Promo Stickers allow you to add a small image - either a custom png file of your own or one from the vast collection created by our Design Team - to the corner of your main product images, which is visually very useful for highlighting a sale item or a current offer, especially when further supported by design images throughout your website. 

Related Products

The Related Products tab allows you to set what additional products are displayed when viewing a specific Product Page. For example, you may be selling a coat, and the main product image is of a model wearing the coat, but also wearing jeans, a jumper and boots that you sell too - you could then set the Related Products to the coat to be the jeans, the jumper and the boots. You’ll see this example on larger clothing websites where it’s often under the header ‘Shop The Look’ or similar. 

Where to open the Edit Product window

You can, of course, open the Edit Product window by clicking Add Product on the navigation bar on the Shop tab as we did at the beginning of this guide. To open the Edit Product window for an existing Product on your Shop, click the Edit Content button on the navigation bar, and then click the Edit Content button that appears next to the Product:

You can also open the Edit Product window within the Advanced Inventory Manager, by clicking the blue pencil symbol to the far right of each existing Product, or alternatively by clicking Add Product:

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[contact]If you need our help with your Obodo shop, contact our Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm on the weekends. If you have a non-account specific question ask the Obodo Team, join us in the Obodo Community on Facebook. [/contact]