Smart-IT eCommerce training

When you’re adding attributes for your products, there are two ways you can add them:

• Attributes can be defined globally, so they’re easy to update across the entire store, and available to be used on any product, or;
• Attributes can be defined individually, at the product level, and they will only exist for that single product.

Generally, it’s preferable to define attributes globally. Once global attributes are defined, they can be assigned to any products as needed. Global attributes make updates easier as well. Say your marketing team wants to start calling “Blue” products “Cerulean” instead. You just update the name once in the attributes page, and it’s updated everywhere that attribute was used.

Adding global attributes sets them up so they can be applied to any product in your store. To add an attribute globally:

• Navigate to Products > Attributes.
• In the “Add new attribute” form, Add a Name.
• Add a Slug; (optional); this is the URL-friendly version of the name.
• Enable Archives if desired.

If enabled, you can view a page with all products having any term of this attribute. For example, if you have this enabled, and “black” is one of the options under the “colour” attribute, you can add http://yourstore.com/color/black/ to your menu to only display items with the “black” attribute.

• Select a Default sort order. Choose between:
• “Name”, (sort alphabetically)
• “Name (numeric)”, (if the values are numbers)
  • If your terms are numbers – like shoe sizes for example – use this sorting order so numbers will be properly ordered.
• “Term ID” or;
• “Custom ordering” where you decide by dragging and dropping the terms in the list when configuring the terms (see below).
  • For variable products, the sorting order of the attributes affects the sorting order of the dropdown selector(s) on the product page.
• Select Add Attribute.

Now your attribute is created, you’ll need to add terms aka. the options or values

1. Once created, the attribute is added in the table on the right, but without values.
2. Select “Configure terms” to add attribute values in the “Edit Attribute” page.
3. On the “Edit Attribute” page, Fill the form with your attribute’s option’s details:
4. Name – The name for this term.
5. Slug (optional) – a URL-friendly version of the name, if you don’t enter one, a slug will be automatically generated based on the name you enter.
6. Description – A description of the value. This isn’t displayed prominently by default, but some themes may show it.
7. Next click Add New {Attribute name}, “Attribute name” automatically takes the name you gave the attribute when creating it. (e.g. “Add New Colour”)
8. Add as many values as you wish. If you selected “Custom ordering” for the attribute’s sort order, reordering your values can be done here.

After your attributes are created and their terms defined, you can add the created attributes to your products:

• Go to: Products > Add Product (or edit an existing one).
• Select the Attributes tab in the Product data metabox.
• From the “Add Existing” dropdown menu, select the attribute you’ve previously created. For example, Colour.
• After adding the attribute to the product, add the relevant values for the attribute:
• You can select existing terms/values one by one by clicking in the. “Values” area.
• Click “Select all” to load all existing values for this attribute to the product at once.
• You can also use the “Create value” button to add new values to the global attribute. These new values will be saved for global reuse.

Note:

When adding attribute values to a product using the “Select all” button, they will be added in their sort order. See above for details on the sort order options. The order values are added to the product here is the order they will be displayed on the front end of the site.

If you’ll only be using an attribute for one product, you can create and add it to that specific product from the “Attributes” tab on the “Edit Product” page. This would only be ideal if you have a product with unique variations. Attributes created on the product page are not available for global use.

To add a custom attribute to a single product:

1. Go to: Product > Add Product.
2. Select the Attributes tab in the Product data meta box.
3. Click the “Add New” button, a new empty attribute will be added below.
4. Give the attribute a name, and add values in the available box. Use the “pipe” symbol to separate values. |

In this way you can quickly add one-off attributes to products that have special characteristics.

Add custom attributes using the “Add New” button. These will only be added to this product, and will not be available for reuse on other products

Adding a variable product is similar to adding a simple product, but with a few more details to consider.

To add a new variable product:

• Navigate to “Products” in WP-Admin (the site’s admin area).
• Click Add New Product at the top of the page.
• Enter the product name.
• Choose “Variable Product” from the “Product data” dropdown menu.
• Click on the “Attributes” tab on the left-hand side under the Product data dropdown.
• Add either a global/existing attribute or create a new one (specific to the product):

Adding a Global Attribute:

• If you’ve already created global attributes, select the one you want to use from the “add existing” dropdown menu at the top of the settings.
• Select the variations/values you’d like to use from that attribute. You can add them all by clicking the “Select All” button below the values box or you can select specific ones you want to use by clicking on the “Select Values” box and selecting them one by one.

Adding a new Attribute:

• Click the “Add New” button at the top of the settings.
• Add a name for your attribute (examples: size)
• Add the values (variations) you need. Separate each variation/value with | (i.e.: Medium | Large | XL | XXL)
• Click “Save Attributes”.
• Click on the Variations tab on the left.
• Click either:
• Generate variations to add all possible variations from all attributes values/variations.
• Add manually to specify which variables will be available for the product.
• Click on each variation to expand to its product menu.
• Enter product information: Price, stock status, weight, dimensions, shipping class, and description. Add Linked Products if needed. Repeat for all variations.
• Optional: Use the “Bulk Actions” dropdown at the top of the “Variations” menu to set product information for all variations at once.
• Click Save changes at the bottom of the variations menu.

Click “Publish” in the top right of the screen to publish the product.

Each variation can have the following properties:

• Image – Click the placeholder to add an image. See below

Recommended Resolution is 800 x 800 for Products.

• SKU – Enter the SKU or leave blank. Note: If you set an SKU at the product level but leave it blank at the variation level, SKU will default to product level SKU.
• GTIN, UPC, EAN, or ISBN – Enter a barcode or any other identifier unique to this product. This can help you list this product on other channels or marketplaces. This only accepts numbers and hyphens. Note: If you set a GTIN at the product level but leave it blank at the variation level, GTIN will default to the product level GTIN.
• Enabled – Enable or disable the variation.
• Regular Price (required) – Set the price for this variation. Variations without prices don’t show in your store.
• Sale Price (optional) – Set a price for this variation when on sale.
• Weight – Weight for the variation, leave this blank to use the main product’s weight.
• Dimensions – Height, width and length for the variation, leave this blank to use the main product’s dimensions.

Sorting Attributes and Variations for Variable Products

You can sort attributes and attribute values of variable products to change their display in the shop’s front end. In the admin view, you can also sort product variations for ease of management. The following sections cover how to sort and organize the various details of your variable products

Reordering Attributes and values (variations) for the Customer View:

You can reorder both attributes and their values (variations) for the customer or storefront view from the “Attributes” tab. Here is how to do it:

Reorder Attributes

In the customer’s view, the selection fields of a variable product display in the same order as you sort them in the admin area. To sort your product’s attributes:

• Click on the “Attributes” tab.
• Drag and drop the attributes into a preferred order.
• Click “Save Attributes” at the bottom of the settings window.
• Click “Publish” or “Update” in the top right of the screen to finish.

Reorder values (variations) of Custom Attributes (Product Specific):

When using custom attributes on a variable product, the values will appear in the product dropdown on the storefront in the same order that you enter them in the “values” field.

To reorder values of custom attributes:

• Click on the “Attributes” tab.
• Click “Edit” to expand the attribute containing the values that you want to reorder.
• Remove/Delete the values in the attribute.
• Re-enter the values in the order they should appear on the front end.
• Click “Save Attributes” at the bottom of the settings window.
• Click “Publish” or “Update” in the top right of the screen to finish.

Reorder values(variations) of Global Attributes:

Similar to custom attributes, global attribute values appear in the same order on the product page as they do in the “Values” field of the product’s data. When created global attributes assign a defined sorting order, which determines how they populate in the “Values” field.

To change the default sort order of a global attribute:

• Navigate to Products > Attributes.
• Click the “Edit” link for the attribute you’d like to change.
• Select a new default sort order.

To reorder values of an attribute that has the “Custom Ordering” Default sort order:

• Navigate to Products > Attributes
• Click the “Configure Terms” link for the attribute you’d like to change
• Drag and drop the values/options in the order they should appear on the store’s front end.
• Changes save automatically.

Note: The product page utilizes the manually sorted order only if the attribute’s default sort order is set to “Custom Ordering.”