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The product page is your best opportunity to showcase the value of your products to your customers. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to add a product to your store and how to make changes to the photos, variance and pricing. Let’s set up your product page together. Start on the Shopify admin. Click “Products” then click “Add product.” There are two pillars of an effective product page: trust and value.
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Throughout this lesson, I’ll show you how to convey each element on your product page to optimize for sales. First, start by adding the title of the product. You want to clearly state what the product is. Next, write a product description.
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When you’re writing your title and description, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. In the product description you should convey the features and benefits of your product. Since a customer can’t really try your product before they buy, you want to help them understand how the product will address a problem or challenge they have. Use bullet points to make the copy scan-able, and be sure to use spell check.
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One of the key elements of writing a good product description is including keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases that a potential customer will enter into a search engine to find a product like yours. This is a fundamental aspect of search engine optimization or SEO.
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I’ve included a link to our SEO course so you can optimize your business’s search engine rankings for yourself. Other opportunities to build trust on your product page include: displaying customer reviews, embedding customer photos, and offering a money-back guarantee.
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At the end of the course, I’m going to introduce you to the Shopify app store. In the app store, you can find amazing add-on features that can help take your online store to the next level. Next, click “Upload image.” Your product photography is a key element of your product page.
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It helps you convey trust and quality and helps the customer imagine owning your product. Product and collection images need to have a file size smaller than 20 megabytes to be added to Shopify. I recommend using a compression tool to compress any images being added to the site, to keep the quality high but reduce the size In the resources section below, I share a link to a compression tool.
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Chances are your images will be just fine. But if they’re too large I’ve included some details below on how to compress the file so they can be uploaded to Shopify. The first image for each product is known as the featured image. The featured image may be shown on collection pages, the cart page, the checkout page, and your home page.
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Make sure you pick an image that clearly displays the product. Once you add an image edit the “alt text.” Alt text helps visually impaired internet users by describing what’s in the image. This alt text is also used by search engines to understand what’s in the photo so it can appear in image searches.
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Keep your alt text brief and descriptive. 125 characters or less is recommended. Now you need to add a price. This is what your customers pay at checkout. You can also display both the original price and the reduced price if you’re having a sale. The cost per item allows you to track the cost of goods that you’re selling.
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If you’re on the Shopify plan or higher, you’re also able to produce reports to analyze your profit margins. Click “Charge taxes on the product” if the product is taxable. We’ll talk more about taxes in a later video. Under the Inventory section you’ll see the option to add a stock keeping unit, also known as a SKU. SKUs help you organize your inventory and fulfill orders.
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If you’re new to SKUs you get to make up your own format that makes sense to you. As a business owner myself I can definitely tell you that these help in the long run. You also have the option for barcodes. Again, if you’re just getting started and only selling online you won’t have to worry about this yet.
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The “Inventory” setting allows Shopify to track your inventory for you. Next, enter the number of products you have in stock. If your products are spread across multiple locations you can add a location and separate inventory for each place. If you’re just starting out this might not apply to you yet though it’s something to keep in mind for the future.
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For now you might just have everything at your home address. That’s how most people start out. If you want to add a location you can do that in the Settings section of the admin as you continue down the page, you’ll arrive at the Shipping section.
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Indicate if it’s a physical product that needs to be shipped. If you’re selling digital goods or services that don’t need to be shipped through the mail then leave this unchecked. If you don’t fill in these details today you’re not going to lose out on a sale. Your shipping settings for each product help calculate shipping rates at checkout and label prices during fulfillment by understanding the size and weight of the package and the distance it’s traveling.
5:08
Shipping costs are something you will pay as an e-commerce business owner. It’s up to you whether these costs get added to your customers final bill or if you pay for the shipping costs yourself. I can tell you that one of the most enticing offers customers go for when shopping is free shipping.
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It’s almost expected these days. You can consider including the shipping cost in your overall price rather than adding these extra fees during the checkout process. We’ll talk about shipping strategies in more detail later on in this course. So if you have those product details now add them in.
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You can add the product’s country of origin as well as the harmonized system tariff code. This is used by Customs to ensure the correct tariffs are applied to international orders. This speeds up the customs process. Under fulfillment service, select the type of service you’ll be using to ship. Fulfillment, if you’re not familiar, refers to the process of picking your products and packing them up to be sent to your customer.
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It’s literally fulfilling your order. So, if you’re doing it yourself, you’ll select “Manual.” As you build out your online store and maybe start working with production and fulfillment partners, you’ll notice other options for fulfillment that you can select. Next, if your product has different options like size or color, you can create variance in this section in the options value field.
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Enter the different variants available. Separating them by a comma. I might be selling the same tea in loose leaf or bagged and in a variety of tin sizes. These are all variants of the same product. You’ll need to enter the product inventory for each variant just like you did earlier.
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As you move further down the page, the search engine listing preview is a preview of how your product will show up on search engines. This is part of your on-site SEO strategy. On-site SEO is when you optimize elements on your website in order to improve the search engine ranking and visibility.
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Remember how we talked about writing your title and description in a clear and concise way? This is an editable preview that lets you customize what search engine see so that it’s different from what your visitors see. Click “Edit website SEO” to make changes to the preview if you’d like.
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By default, the copy is a duplication of the product title and description you already wrote, so it’ll be in a good place. If we scroll up, back at the top you’ll see the product availability. Click “Manage” and the list of your active sales channels will appear. A sales channel gives you new opportunities to sell and promote your product.
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It represents different marketplaces where you can sell your products. Think of your sales channels as a method of reaching your customers where they already are and already spend their time. When you first start your store, your online store is your first sales channel. You’ll learn more about activating new sales channels later in this course.
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Just under that is your “Organization” section. As your product inventory grows, you’ll need an easier way to manage products in bulk and gather them into groups. This will help you stay organized and it’ll help your customers navigate your online store. It’s not absolutely necessary to add the details in now but like shipping details the more you add in over time the more accurate and easy it will be to manage your business.
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When you’re done creating your product, click “Save.” You can see the product you added to your store by selecting “View product.” You can continue adding more products now or you can come back and add more later even after your store is launched. If you have any questions about adding a product reach out to our amazing customer support team at any time at help.shopify.com.
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In the next lesson, I’ll show you how to create a collection.