Filling in simple products properly

Module 3: Products · Reading time: 10 minutes

Learning objective: After this lesson you can fill in a simple product completely and honestly. You know what each field does for the customer, for search engines and for your records, and you know the pitfalls with prices and discounts.

Key concepts: simple product, grouped product, external product, regular price, sale price, SKU (item number), GTIN/EAN, short and long description, product image and gallery, categories and tags, weight and dimensions, lowest price of the last 30 days

Why a product page is more than a photo and a price

In a shop, a customer can pick up a teapot, try the lid and ask the seller a question. Online, all they have is your product page. That page therefore does three things at once:

1. It sells. The customer must quickly see what it is, what it costs and when it will arrive.
2. It informs, as the law requires. The "main characteristics" of a product are part of the information you must give before the purchase (lesson 5.1). A teapot without its capacity in litres is an incomplete product page.
3. It feeds other systems. From the same fields, WooCommerce takes the structured data for search engines (lesson 7.1), the Store API (lesson 2.4), the shipping costs (lesson 4.3) and your export files (lesson 3.4).

So an empty field isn't just untidy: it's also missing in all those other places.

The product types in brief

In lesson 1.2 you saw the product types. For this lesson the difference matters:

• Simple (simple): one product, one price, one stock level. The teapot "Kyoto 0.8 litre" from Theehuis Example.
• Grouped (grouped): a collection of separate simple products that you show together, for example a "Tea set" with a teapot, cups and a strainer, each of which the customer can choose separately. The group product itself has no price.
• External or affiliate (external/affiliate): a product page with a button to another shop. You don't sell anything; the order takes place elsewhere.
• Variable (variable): one product in variations, such as loose tea in 50, 100 and 250 grams. That's lesson 3.2.

Not sure whether to choose simple or variable? Ask yourself whether the customer sees it as one product with a choice. A teapot in three colours is variable; a teapot and a tea strainer are two products.

The fields that matter

Under Products > Add New you see the title and the long description at the top, and below them the Product data (Product data) box with tabs. The most important fields:

Title. The way the customer searches: "Kyoto cast-iron teapot 0.8 litre black", not "Art. 4411". The title goes into the page title, the link and the cart.

Regular price and sale price (Regular price, Sale price). Enter the price the way you chose in the VAT settings: including or excluding VAT (lesson 4.1). The sale price can have a start and end date. WooCommerce then shows the old price struck through.

SKU (item number). Your own code, unique per product, for example TP-KYOTO-08-ZW. You need it for import and export (lesson 3.4), for connections with a till system, wholesaler or accounting software, and to find the right product quickly when a customer has a question. WooCommerce refuses an SKU that already belongs to another product.

GTIN, UPC, EAN or ISBN (in the Inventory tab). This is the worldwide code printed on the packaging, usually a 13-digit EAN barcode. You don't make it up: the manufacturer or brand owner applies for it. If you sell branded products, copy the code from the packaging. Search engines and comparison sites use it to recognise products. WooCommerce puts a valid GTIN in the structured data (lesson 7.1).

The difference in one sentence: the SKU belongs to you, the GTIN belongs to the product.

Short description. With most themes this appears next to the photo and the price. Put the points people base their decision on here: capacity, material, whether it works on induction, delivery time. Five lines, not a story.

Long description. The story, the details, the care tips, the size chart. This is also where you write texts people search for ("how to descale a cast-iron teapot"). Don't copy a manufacturer's text that appears on a hundred other sites: it doesn't help the customer and a search engine sees it as duplicate content (lesson 7.1).

Images. One product image and a gallery. Use photos of the product itself, in the same aspect ratio (square, for example), so your shop page looks calm. Alt texts and file size work as in the WordPress course, lesson 4.4; we won't repeat that explanation here.

Categories and tags. A category is a department of your shop ("Teapots", "Green tea") and often also a landing page that gets found. Don't leave any product in the default category; in a fresh installation it's usually called "Uncategorized" (Uncategorized). Tags are loose characteristics ("gift", "organic"); use them sparingly.

Weight and dimensions (Shipping tab). Needed if you calculate shipping costs by weight or if your shipping plugin creates labels. Fill them in even if you have a flat rate now: you'll be glad they're there later.

Showing discounts honestly

A sale price looks like a simple field, but there's a rule behind it. Whenever you announce a price reduction, you must show the lowest price of the last 30 days as the previous price. This rule comes from a European amendment of 2019 (the Omnibus Directive) and applies in all EU countries; in Germany it's in § 11 PAngV, and in the Netherlands and Belgium the same EU rule has been incorporated into national law. Lesson 5.4 goes into it in more depth.

What does that mean in WooCommerce? The "Regular price" field is the price WooCommerce strikes through. If you temporarily reduced the price to € 39 last week and now set it from € 49 "to" € 42, the struck-through € 49 is not the lowest price of the last 30 days. WooCommerce doesn't keep that price history for you. You can track it yourself or use a plugin that does it.

Other pitfalls with prices:

• Price 0. A product with price 0 can be ordered for free. If you want to show a product but not sell it, leave the price empty: then it can't be bought.
• "From" prices for simple products where the real price only appears after a choice: use a variable product instead.
• Rounding: if you enter your prices excluding VAT, the price including VAT may come out at € 24.99 or € 25.01. Lesson 4.1 shows how to prevent that.

In practice: this is how it looks in WooCommerce

Theehuis Example fills in the teapot like this:

1. Products > Add New, title "Kyoto cast-iron teapot 0.8 litre black".
2. Long description with material, capacity, care and a size chart; short description with five points.
3. Product data: Simple product, regular price € 49, no sale price.
4. Inventory tab (Inventory): SKU TP-KYOTO-08-ZW, the EAN from the packaging, stock management switched on (lesson 3.4).
5. Shipping tab (Shipping): weight 1.4 kg, dimensions.
6. On the right: category Teapots, product image and three gallery photos with alt text.
7. View Preview, then Publish.

Other themes show the fields in a different place, but the fields themselves are the same in every WooCommerce installation.

Summary

• A product page sells, informs as the law requires and feeds search engines, the Store API, shipping and export.
• Choose the right type: simple, grouped, external or variable.
• The SKU is your own unique code; the GTIN/EAN is the product's worldwide code and you don't make it up.
• Fill in the short and long description, images, a real category and the weight.
• With a discount, you show the lowest price of the last 30 days as the previous price; WooCommerce doesn't track it for you.

Quiz

Exercise

Exercise A3.1: Is your product complete? Enter the address of your shop and the slug or the full link of one simple product. The program looks up the product via the public Store API (/wp-json/wc/store/v1/products?slug=...) and then opens the product page, without cookies and without putting anything in the cart. It checks: is there an SKU; is there at least one image and does the first one have an alt text; are the short and the long description filled in (the long one at least 300 characters); is the product in a real category and not only in the default category; is the price greater than 0 and can the product be bought; does the product page return 200 without noindex. A missing SKU, alt text, description or category and a price of 0 are orange. Red means: product not found, no image, a product page that can't be reached or has noindex, or a product that isn't simple (variable products are covered in A3.2). If the product is on sale, you'll see the regular and the sale price for information, with a reference to the 30-day rule.

A question for yourself (not checked): which three questions do customers ask you most often about this product? Are the answers in the short description?

Further reading

• Free WordPress course 4.4: Media: images and alt text
• Free WordPress course 4.2: Pages, Posts, Categories and Tags
• Managing products (woocommerce.com): https://woocommerce.com/document/managing-products/
• § 11 PAngV, lowest price of the last 30 days (gesetze-im-internet.de, German): https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pangv_2022/__11.html