Products

Getting Started with Products

Putting the products you want to sell in to your Volusion store couldn't be easier. We'll start by creating a simple product, using only the four required fields. Later we'll show you how to add more information like images, videos, sizes, colors and more. We'll also introduce other ways to make your products stand out.

To add a product:

1. From the Admin area, go to Inventory > Products.
2. Click Add.
3. Complete the Name, Code, Price and Weight fields.
4. Click Save.

Congratulations! You've created a product!

You can add as little or as much detail as you want, and what you add is up to you! Every store is different - different products, different ways of selling, and different presentation styles. For example, if you're selling shoes the information you provide will not be the same as someone selling remote controlled helicopters. But whatever you're selling, you'll need to start with the four fields entered above: Name, Code, Price and Weight.

Now that you've seen how easy it is to set up a product, let's take a deeper look at what you can do to get your products online and noticed!

 

Products in More Detail

• Creating a Product
• Display
  • Adding Images
  • Adding Videos
  • Adding Descriptive Content
  • Posting to Facebook and Twitter
  • Adding Swatches for Color/Texture Variations
  • Adding Related Products, Accessories, and Free Gifts
  • Different Types of Pricing and Costs
  • Setting Up Different Prices for Different Customers
  • Hiding Products
• Under the Hood
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Adding Shipping Information
  • Integrating with Google Merchant Center, Yahoo! Shopping Merchant Feed and QuickBooks
  • Creating Subscriptions and Recurring Products
  • Stock Status, Backorders and Reordering
  • Creating and Managing Child Products
  • Downloadable Products
  • Auto Drop Shipping

 

Creating a Product

Here are the fields in the Basic Product Info section of the Products page.

After these, we'll start looking at the other fields you can use to create great looking product pages!

Name	Give your product a concise, but informative name so customers and search engines can easily find it. For example: Men's Orange Plaid Shirt.
Code	The product code is unique so each product can be identified by the system. The code can contain letters, numbers, hyphens, underscores and periods.
Price	The price at which you normally sell this product. For sale prices, see the Different Types of Pricing and Costs section.
Weight	This value is used to calculate shipping rates for the product. For downloadable products, products that use the Fixed Shipping option or gift certificates, enter "0".
Description	Your product description helps shoppers decide if they want to purchase your product. Advanced users can use HTML to format the text, and add links and graphics.
Categories	This section lets you add or edit the categories in which your product is listed.  To create a new category, click the Create New Category link.  For further information, see the Categories Management user guide.
Options	Use options when a product is available in more than one variation. For example, a t-shirt may have an option category of "Size" with options of S, M and L. For further information see the Options user guide.

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Display

You can enhance your product pages by adding images, videos, descriptions and more, You can also alert you Facebook fans and Twitter followers about new products and new prices. 

Adding Images

One of the most important steps in setting up a product is adding product images. Customers want to see what they're buying!

You can upload multiple images: one to use as the main image, and others as alternate images. These images can show the product from different angles, show details, or show it being used or modeled.

To upload images for a product:

1. Scroll down to the Image Management section.
2. Click Add Image to display the Add Product Image pop-up.
3. Click Browse and navigate to your main image file.
4. Click Upload.
5. Repeat for any alternate images for this product. You can drag and drop these images to rearrange their order, or to make an alternate image the main image.

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Adding Videos

You can show videos uploaded to YouTube to show your products in action. On your storefronts, videos appear on the Description tab, beneath the text entered in to the Description field.

Note: The YouTube Management section is only displayed once you have saved your product.

To add a video to a product:

1. Scroll down to the YouTube Video Management section.
2. Click the Add Video Image button.

The Add Product Video window is opened. 

3. Enter the link to the video in the YouTube Video Link field. The link will look something like this: http://youtu.be/v-N72hWSeZ8.
4. Enter any text you want shown beneath this video in the Caption field.
5. Click Submit.
6. Scroll to the top of the page and click View Live Page to see what the video looks like on the product page.

 

If you have multiple videos, you can drag and drop them in to the order you want them displayed. To change a video, click Edit to open the Edit Product Video pop-up, where the link and caption can be edited. 

If you want to add videos hosted on sites other than YouTube, use the Media option in the Description field's HTML Editor instead.

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Posting to Facebook and Twitter

You can share a product with your Facebook fans and Twitter followers directly from a product page. .

1. Click the Share button.
2. The Share pop-up is displayed for this product, showing its URL in the message pop-up. .
3. If necessary, sign in to your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts.
4. Enter any additional comments in the message window.
5. Click Share. 

 

For further information, see Posting to Facebook and Twitter from Within Your Store.

 

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Adding Swatches for Color/Texture Variations

If you have a product that is available in a variety of colors or textures, you can show these variations as small swatch images to show customers what the product will look like. For example:

You can link these swatches to product images, so that when a customer clicks on a swatch, a corresponding, full-size product image is displayed.

Swatches can be used with the Inventory Control Grid or with Options. See Color Swatch Options for further information.

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Adding Related Products, Accessories, and Free Gifts

Sell more by promoting other products on your product pages! Product pages can display related products or accessories to encourage customers to make additional purchases.

Related Products

If you want to display other products in the same category on a product's page:

1. From the Admin area, go to Inventory > Products.
2. Click Settings.
3. Select Related Products and click Save.

 

Now five products from the same category will be randomly selected and displayed on the product page. 

If you want to specify which products are displayed, see How do I Specify Which Related Products are Displayed?

Product Accessories

You can display associated products such as spare parts or add-ons on a product page. Customers can add these to their order without leaving the product page. For information, see the Product Accessories article.

Free Gifts

Reward your customers by offering free gifts with products. See the Free Gift section of the Product Accessories article for more information.

Setting Up Bundles

Bundles let you increase cart spending while offering your customers more for their money! For example, you could offer a special discount when a customer buys a telephoto lens and carrying case together a camera. For more on bundles, see Creating Bundled Products.

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Adding Descriptive Content

Make you content easier to read by breaking it in to the appropriate sections and using the different fields available on the product page. Aside from the Description field already mentioned, these fields are found on the Product Description and Product Display tabs of the Advanced Settings section.

Fieldname	Location on Product page	Usage
Description*	Basic Product Info	The main product description.
Product Description Short*	Product Descriptions	A short description to appear in search results and on category pages. This description is not displayed on the Product page.
Features*	Product Descriptions	Displayed below the Description.
Technical Specs*	Product Descriptions	Text entered here will be displayed on a special Technical Specs tab.
Extended Information*	Product Descriptions	Text entered here will be displayed on a special Extended Information tab.
Product Description Above Price*	Product Descriptions	Text displayed above the price.
Photo Sub Text	Product Descriptions	Text displayed beneath the product image.
Price Sub Text	Product Display	Short text displayed after the active price. For example, "Our lowest price ever!"
Price Sub Text Short	Product Display	Short text after the List Price, if used. For example "Manufacturer's Recommended Retail Price."

* You can click on the HTML Editor link to access the Volusion Easy Editor and add formatting, images, links, etc to these fields. For more information, see Using the Easy Editor.

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Showing Different Prices and Costs

Price

The basic price for a product is the Price entered in the Basic Product Info section. This is displayed as Our Price.

List Price

You can enter a List Price on the Pricing tab in Advanced Settings. This is usually the Manufacturer's Recommended Retail Price and is used to show the savings on this product if purchased through your store.

Sale Price

You can also enter a Sale Price on the Pricing tab. Use this when you are selling the product at a lower price than your usual price.

If you select Add to Cart from the How to get Sale Price dropdown, the Sale Price will not be displayed, but a link titled Add to Cart for Lower Price will be shown instead. When the customer clicks this, the shopping cart will be displayed containing the product at the sale price.

If you select Email Better Price, a link titled Email Me a Better Price is displayed instead of the price. When a customer clicks the link, a window opens requesting the customer's email address. The customer will then receive an email containing a link. Clicking this link adds the product to their cart at the sale price.

You Save

When you display two or more prices, the customer's savings is displayed by default. This can be disabled for individual products by selecting Hide You Save on the Advanced Settings > Product Display tab, or for all products by deselecting Show You Save Amount in Settings.

Gift Wrap Cost

Give customers the choice of having a product giftwrapped by entering a cost in the Gift Wrap Cost field on the Pricing tab.  

The complete list of fields available on the Advanced Settings > Pricing tab can be found here.

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Setting up Different Prices for Different Customers

If you have customers for whom special discounts apply, you can assign a Pricing Discount Level on the Customer Management > Special Privileges tab.

You can then set product prices for these levels using the Discounted Price Level fields on the Pricing Levels tab. All prices entered are shown to customers, but the You Save amount and the actual price charged depends on that customer's Pricing Discount Level.

Similarly, you can set Discounted and Recurring Prices for individual products.

For more information, see the Creating Special Discount Prices for Customers and Products.

 

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Hiding Products

Hiding a Product

To hide a product so it will not be displayed in category views or search results, go to Advanced Settings > Product Display and select Hide Product.

The product can still be displayed by entering or linking to the page's URL directly:

http://myvolusionstore.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=code

replacing myvolusionstore.com with your store's URL and code with the actual product code.

Hiding a Product When Out of Stock

If you're using Stock Status to track your stock of a product, selecting Hide When Out of Stock on the Advanced Settings > Product Display tab will hide the product when it is out of stock. The product page will be displayed again once the product is back in stock, and Stock Status is 1 or higher.

Note that a product will only be hidden if customer places an order that reduces Stock Status to "0" or lower. Manually setting Stock Status to "0" or lower will not hide a product.

You should not select Hide When Out of Stock for child products. See Smart Match for information about hiding out of stock child products.

Seasonal Products

If you have products to be displayed for a specific period only, you can set either or both of the Display Begin Date and Display End Date fields on the Advanced Settings > Product Display tab. For example, you could use this to set up holiday products in advance.

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Under the Hood

This section introduces the product settings that control the advanced, behind the scenes aspects of ecommerce such as SEO, shipping and inventory control.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving your product page's visibility to search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Careful use of SEO on your product pages can raise your search engine rankings above your competitors!

Before you start entering SEO settings for your products, make sure you've enabled SEO Friendly URIs on the Marketing > SEO page. This will give your pages SEO-friendly names. If not enabled, pages will have names in the following format:

http:/www.myvolusionstore.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=ABC123

With SEO Friendly URIs enabled, static page names are created: Instead of the above, product pages will have unique names like:

http://www.myvolusionstore.com/mens_orange_plaid_shirt_p/ABC123.htm

For further information, see the SEO user guide.

The following fields are available for each product.

Product Name Short	Enter a short version of the product name - as short as you can make it while keeping it meaningful and unique. This is used to create the static URL for this page.
Photo Alt Text	This tag provides alternate text for product images. This text is displayed in most browsers when a visitor to the site moves the mouse over the product image. It is also referenced by search engines.
Meta Tag Title	A meta tag for a product name - this allows search engines to better index the product. The product name entered here is also displayed in the title bar of the browser window when viewing the product page.
Meta Tag Description	Similar to the Meta Tag Title field, this field lets you enter a short description of the product which can be easily indexed by search engines.
Meta Tag Keywords	This field allows you to enter key words for the product, such as brand and part number, that are indexed by search engines. These must be separated by commas.
Custom Metatags Override	HTML meta information can be entered in to this field to create custom meta tags. This overrides all meta tag information for a product. This field was designed for use by SEO firms and professional web designers. Volusion recommends against using this field unless you have professional knowledge of SEO techniques.

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Adding Shipping Information

The Shipping Details section lets you set up specific shipping requirements for each product. Here you can set:

• Whether the product is eligible for free shipping
• The Availability message
• Any Fixed Cost to be added to the calculated shipping
• Any warehouse information, if used
• If the product has to be shipped by itself
• Product dimensions, required for certain carriers

 

The fields in this section are described in Product Settings: Shipping Details.

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Integrating with Google Merchant Center, Yahoo! Shopping Merchant Feed, and QuickBooks

If you are using Google Merchant Center, the Yahoo! Shopping Merchant Feed or QuickBooks, you can set up information for these in the Advanced Settings > 3rd Party Integration fields. These fields are described in Product Settings: Third Party Integration.

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Creating Subscriptions and Recurring Products

If your product is a subscription or periodic service (such as a magazine subscription or an annual service contract), you need to use the Advanced Settings > Recurring Pricing tab to set up the recurring pricing information.

 

Recurring Pricing Text	Text that explains of the recurring pricing details.
Recurring Pricing	The normal price charged every recurring payment period.
Recurring Start Price	If applicable, the introductory price charged during the Recurring Start Duration.
Recurring How Often	The period, in months, the customer is to be billed. For example, enter "1" to bill the customer monthly, "6" to bill them every 6 months or "12" to bill them annually.
Recurring Start Duration	If there is a reduced price for an introductory period, enter the number of months this period lasts.
Recurring Duration	The number of months this subscription is for. Leave it blank or set to "0" to indicate an indefinite duration.

 

In addition to these settings, you can define an additional setup cost for recurring pricing by entering it in the Price field in the Basic Product Info section. When a product uses recurring pricing, the Price field will be renamed Setup Cost on the storefront.

Example

You sell a monthly magazine that normally costs $7.99. For the first 6 months, however, you charge an introductory price of $5.99 per issue.

To create a product that offers these pricing options, you should configure the following:

1. Create the initial product and set the Price field to "0".

 

In the Recurring Pricing section:

2. Enter "$5.99 for the first 6 months, $7.99 afterward." in the Recurring Pricing Text field.
3. Set Recurring Price to "7.99".
4. Set the Recurring Start Price to "5.99".
5. Set the Recurring How Often setting to "1".
6. Set the Recurring Start Duration to "6".
7. Leave the Recurring Duration field blank.

 

Once this is set up, customers purchasing this product will be billed $5.99 a month for the first 6 months. After that they will be charged $7.99 every month. Note that if you have a Recurring Start Price, this will be displayed on the product page. The Recurring Price and Recurring Start Duration are not shown, so you should make sure this information is displayed in the Recurring Pricing Text and Description fields.

More information on processing orders involving recurring pricing can be found in Recurring Billing.

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Stock, Backorders, and Reordering

As well as helping you sell your products, Volusion lets you take control of your inventory. Your Volusion store can track your stock, alert you when you're running low, and automatically create purchase orders when it's time to restock!

Stock Status

If you want to track the quantity of a product, enter the current quantity in the Stock Status field on the Advanced Settings > Stock tab. Now, when an order is placed for the product, the stock quantity will be reduced accordingly.

If the Stock Status for a product is active, you can also:

• Enter a Stock Low Qty Alarm quantity on the Advanced Settings > Stock tab, so the product will appear in the Low Inventory view of the Product table when stock falls below this level.
• Enter a Stock Re-Order quantity on the Advanced Settings > Stock tab, which will be used if you set up Vendor Rules (see below) to generate purchase orders when a product's stock level falls below the Stock Low Qty Alarm level.

Backorders

If you allow backorders, your customers can place orders for a product when it is out of stock. Orders can then be fulfilled when you get the product back in stock.

If you do not want customers to be able to order products when the product is out of stock, select Do Not Allow Backorders on the Advanced Settings > Stock tab.

If you want to give customers the option of receiving an email when an out of stock product is back in stock:

1. Select the Do Not Allow Backorders checkbox on the Advanced Settings > Stock tab.
2. Go to Marketing > In-Stock Requests.
3. Click on Settings.
4. Select Enable Back In Stock Requests.

 

Now when an out of stock product that does not permit backorders is displayed, the Add to Cart button is replaced by an Email Me When Back in Stock link.

For more information, see In Stock Requests.

Vendor Rules

A product can be configured with one or more vendor rules to automatically generate purchase orders to reorder products when stock falls below a certain level. Alternatively, if you are using drop-shipping, vendors can be configured to automatically send notices to 3rd party fulfillment centers when customers order their products.

Vendor rules are displayed in the Vendor Rules section beneath the Inventory Control Grid section.

For more information, see Vendors.

Queued for PO

The Queued for PO view shows products ready to be ordered from vendors. To be able to appear on this list, a product must have:

• Quantities in the Stock Status, Stock Low Qty Alarm, and Stock Re-order Qty fields
• One or more active vendor rules
• The Add To PO Now option on its Advanced Setting > Vendors tab selected

 

Now if this product's stock falls below the Stock Low Qty Alarm level, it will appear in the Queued for PO view.

In the Queued for PO view, you can click Generate All Purchase Orders to create purchase orders for the queued products, which you can then view and send. However, if you select the And Send Them Now option before clicking Generate All Purchase Orders, the POs will automatically be sent to the vendors.

Once a PO is generated for a product in the Queued for PO table, the product will be removed from the table.

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Creating and managing child products

The Inventory Control Grid

For inventory control purposes you may want to create child products rather than use options for a product that offers multiple variations. For example, if you are selling a dress that comes in 8 colors and 6 sizes, you could offer 48 child products, rather than one product with 48 variations. This lets you track the stock status of each variation, for example. Child products can also be managed from within the parent product's Inventory Control Grid.

To create child products, just select the Enable Options Inventory Control checkbox in the Basic Product Info section.

The child products will now be displayed in the Inventory Control Grid section beneath the Advanced Settings tabs.

The Inventory Control Grid lists the child products, the options they are created from, and the settings which can be modified from this page. The grid can be used to quickly update settings such as stock quantities for these child products. You can also delete any option combinations that are not available. For more information, see Using the Inventory Control Grid.

Using the Multi-Child Add to Cart Feature

The Multi-Child Add to Cart feature displays all child products created from a parent product using the Inventory Control Grid in a table on the storefront product page. This allows customers to select multiple products, and quantities of these products, and add them to their cart.

See Multi Child Add To Cart for instructions on using this feature.

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Downloadable Products

Downloadable products can be software, audio files, PDF documents, video files or images. Downloadable products are sold through Volusion just like regular products; however there are a few special settings you will have to update to make a product downloadable.

1. Within the downloadable product's settings, the Weight field must be set to "0".
2. Within the Shipping table, the shipping method Downloadable must be set to Active.
3. The actual file that customers will download must be attached to the product page. This can be done on the Advanced Settings > Misc tab. Use the Download File Name field to specify a file name, and upload and attach the file that customers will download.

 

There is additional information you should be aware of when using downloadable products:

• A downloadable product can only host one downloadable file. For every downloadable file you want to sell, you will need to create a separate product.
• Downloadable products have no maximum size limits to the files they host. However, do note that downloading a product will use part of the Volusion store account's monthly bandwidth allotment.
• Customers will be emailed a link to any downloadable product they have purchased. This link will be automatically sent to customers once their order's status is marked as Shipped.
• Customers will also be able to access downloadable products they have ordered by logging in to their personal store account and clicking on the My Downloads link.
• In order to provide security restrictions for downloadable products, customers will be required to register for a store account in order to purchase downloadable products.

 

Downloadable products often require a key to unlock or register them. For information on setting up and assigning Product Keys see the Product Key Distribution article.

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Auto Drop Shipping

You can sell and ship products through a 3rd party supplier as opposed to selling them directly to customers. In these cases, customers purchase products from your store and that purchase goes directly to a vendor, manufacturer or 3rd party to process the order.

To do this, you need to configure your store to automatically create a purchase order to send to the 3rd party whenever one of these products is purchased. For instructions, see Configuring Auto Drop Shipping.

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