There are a number of ways to get your products into ShopSite. In this three part series, we’ll take a look at the various methods, including a few things to look out for when using each function.

Today we’ll start with the simplest method, using the web-based ShopSite backoffice to manually add products to your store.

The Products Menu

The easiest way to add a product to ShopSite is using the backoffice:
Products -> Add a Product

(In order to have all the options available, make sure you are in the “Advanced Editing” mode. Just click the button “Advanced Editing” if it’s visible.)

Add product screen (click image to enlarge)

Add Several Products at Once

To make the process more manageable when adding multiple products, simply click the “Add Several Products” button in the Products section. You will then be able to choose which fields you want to enter (Hold down the “Ctrl” key to select multiple fields from the dropdown), and how many products you want to create. This gives you a quick way to add many products from one page:

Add several products (click image to enlarge)

Copy a Product

One issue that comes up is you cannot define default settings when adding a new product. This can cause errors when adding a new product, and add extra time to product creation. To avoid this, you could create a default product with default settings, then use the “Copy Product” feature to copy this default item to a new item. This way your new products will be automatically setup with your desired default settings, templates, etc…

Copy Product (click image to enlarge)

PowerEdit is Powerful

If you quickly copy or add a number of products and need to make either mass or individual changes, the “PowerEdit” button can be quite handy. You can highlight multiple products in the dropdown box (hold down Ctrl to select multiple) and click the “PowerEdit” button.

Then select the fields you want to edit, and choose either “Individual” or “Global” depending on whether the changes are for each product separately or the same change applies to all products:

PowerEdit (click image to enlarge)

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The above methods are simple ways to add products in the ShopSite web-based interface. In part two of this series, we’ll take a look at using the database upload feature of ShopSite to add or edit products in your store.