To Create a Product Listing in Opencart 

Once you’ve installed Opencart and added all the product categories it’s time to start populating your eShop. As  an Opencart specialist, Arena DM know a thing or two about how to correctly input your products and so here I have written detailed instructions on how to go about adding your products.

By developing your own understanding of how Opencart uses the information that you input during product entry, you can help to maximise the return from your online business as much of Opencart’s inherent SEO potential comes from the product entry itself and so what you input and how it’s displayed will impact greatly on the levels of organic traffic that you may expect to receive from search engines like Google, Bing & Yahoo.

1)     Log on to your site’s Admin Panel

2)      From the CATALOG menu on the navigation bar at the top, select PRODUCTS

3)      This brings up the Admin Product List window. Now click the INSERT button located towards to top right of the screen

4)      Once the page loads you will see that you are on the Create Product Entry page. You will notice there are now lots of empty boxes into which you’ll input the product details. We’ll now go through each of the options, I have included a full description of what each of the empty boxes is for and how the information that you input will be used by Opencart.

5)      Product  Name                – This is the name of the product that is displayed to the front end user. This name should be consice and  make intuitive sense to a human, but also if possible this should contain words that we think our site visitors will be searching for because Opencart also uses the information inputted for category and product names, and inserts it as the Meta Page Title. This means that from an SEO perspective, it’s imperative that we try to work your primary keywords into the product & category labels

To illustrate this point, imagine that we owned a nursery selling plants of various descriptions. We could list our products by using a plant’s Latin name.  Latin names are commonly used by gardeners, but we’d expect a greater percentage of our potential customers online to be searching using the English version of the Latin words and so it would be a mistake not to use the English terms to label our Products.

6)      Meta Tag Description – The meta tag description has a dual purpose and it’s important to understand what function this tag performs before we can choose what to put into this field. The Meta description of a web page is not visible when a user directly views the page itself, instead it’s used by search engines to help them index the page content.

However, the meta description is visible when a user makes a search in a search engine. It’s the two or three lines of text that appear directly beneath the title of a page in the search engine’s results page. So while they are a number of technical factors to consider when writing a good meta description, one must remain mindful that this text should also make sense to a person and that what you enter in this field can be used to encourage a user to visit your site rather than the nine or more other sites listed on the search engine’s results page.

As some search engines will also use this text in no small way to rank your products page and to index it, it’s really important that we make sure we use some of our primary key phrases, and the earlier they appear in the text the better.  It’s also important to remember that the tag is also scored for relevancy to the page content, and that mean that the keywords and phrases that we use here should also appear in the main body of the page itself (in the product description STEP 8) and similarly, the earlier they appear in the text, the  better.

Ideally meta descriptions should use no more than 200 characters and not less than 80. Correct grammar is essential so do not capitalise words of insert multiple exclamation marks (example: …FREE!!!! or LOOK!!!…)  as this is viewed as being “spammy” and it is likely that you tag will be marked lower by the search engine as a result.

7)      Meta Tag Keywords – For the lay-person, keywords would be better thought of as key-phrases. When we search, we seldom do so using just a single word as it’s likely that the returned results will contain too broad a range of web pages with completely irrelevant listings, so we tend to search for 2, 3 or more words at a time.

Think if you were interesting in buying a second-hand car.  It’s unlikely that you would simply types the word “cars“.  We might expect to find better results if we searched for “local car sales” or “deals on used Fords” or something similar that would narrow down the results.

As with the meta tag description above the keywords will also be checked for relevancy to the page content and this means that ideally all the key phrases you list here should also appear somewhere in the main body of the page. The earlier they appear in the page the more weight they carry with the search engines, and so we should order them according to the popularity of each phrase.

What comes as a surprise to many people, is that keywords are not the be-all and end-all of SEO. In fact the algorithms used by search engines are becoming so complex that there are some web developers  that claim the keywords tag has become virtually obsolete.  I do not entirely share this opinion, and include the keywords tag in all of my work but it is true to say that the collective impact of other factors must not be overlooked and that an over reliance on the keywords tag can erroneous approach to SEO

There is no agreed upon standard format to work from when listing keywords and so I’ll simple show you how I do it, and what has produced good results with my own work.

I recommend keywords are inputted like this: [keyword/phrase][COMMA][SPACE] [keyword/phrase][COMMA][SPACE] [keyword/phrase][COMMA][SPACE]

ie: “Buy cheap cars, Shop for used cars, Deals on used Fords,”

IMPORTANT: Use no more than 20 keywords/key-phrases and try not to use the same single word more than 3 times through-out the whole tag.

By gaining an understanding  following these rules-of-thumb you should have an SEO friendly keyword tag that will perform well in the vast majority of instances

8)      Description – Information entered here will appear directly on the product listing and is visible to shoppers. There are a number of important factors to remember when creating your product description.

The description text will have a big impact how a search engine ranks your page, but don’t forget that this text is also likely to influence weather your site’s visitors choose to buy your product or continue shopping, perhaps elsewhere.

Be creative. A product entry does not need to be a bland list of facts and product specifications. By writing full and informative product descriptions, we not only inform and excite our customer’s interest but we also give the search engines plenty of meet to get their teeth into.  Avoid simply cutting and pasting text from other sources and remeber the golden rule of SEO; New & Unique Content

Remember that earlier we considered the tag-relevancy score when entering the Meta Tag Description and Meta Tag Keywords. It’s important to include into the description text, as many of the references we used in the META’s  as we can. The earlier in the page that a keyword appears the greater the weight that will be attached to that term.

I recommend that a Product description is not less than 200 words or so but the upper limit is dictated by the amount of information we expect a shopper to read. The trick here, is to strike a balance between effective SEO which will ensure that our site has plenty of traffic and the needs of the end user to quickly evaluate a product.

9) Product tags – Don’t confuse product tags with META tags they’re quite different and perform a different function entirely in Opencart.  The products tags appear towards the bottom of the products page as viewed by the visitors to your site.  They are displayed as links that when clicked make use of the internal search facility that comes with Opencart. All products that share a product tag will then be displayed to the user.

Again to use our imaginary cars sales as an example, if the car we are listing was painted red, we might reasonable assume that the user viewing  this product might particularly like red cars.  If we include the same “RED” product tag on other cars that are painted red, when the users clicks on the product tag link he/she will then be presented with all the red cars that we have for sale on our eShop.

You’ll need to give some though as to how to best use this feature to enable your site’s visitors to easily find similar products from across different product categories.

It’s true that there is some SEO milage to be gained by including certain product tags rather than others, but on the whole,  for the lay-user, I recommend that your focus should be user navigation and not SEO when deciding which product tags to use. In any event it’s not a good idea to try to include too many product tags as in extreme circumstances this can be counter productive to SEO.  So try and limit your use of product tags to no more than 5  for any given product listing.

Next, scroll up and click on the “DATA” tab which is located towards the top of the page.

10) Model – The model field is required by Opencart to keep track of individual products listing and must be unique for each listing in your Opencart eshop.  If you like you can chose to use a textual entry/name of some sort but in some instances there may be some advantages to using the manufacture’s model or serial number.

Consider for example that recently I needed to buy a replacement speaker for my laptop.  Because I knew exactly what I was looking for just not where to find it, I searched for the manufactures part and model numbers of the product that I needed.  Sure enough I was quickly presented with a list of pages that contained exactly and only the product that I needed. Had these companies not included the manufactures part and serial number in their pages, they would have missed out on the chance to secure my £7.95 purchase.

Depending on the type of business that you are using Opencart for, it may be that this is a good approach to adopt when you’re entering your product listings.

11) SKU, UPC, EAN, JAP, ISBN & MPN Numbers– These 6 individual fields are fairly self explanatory and in any case will be covered in detail in a future posting on my Opencart blog so let’s not dwell on these.  If you know them, it’s wise to include them for similar reasons as mentioned in the last step.

12) Location – The location field is often neglected by Opencart shop owners who operate out 1 single business premises. Perhaps In an effort to save time while product inputting, or a part of a misplaced belief that it’s of little importance, this entry is often left blank.  This approach is erroneous for a number of different reasons.

Consider that in most cases, search engines either know or can deduce an approximate geographical location of the searcher.  If all other factors are equal, search engines tend to throw up local results ahead of those located further away and so it’s important to state the location of your product even if your business does not have multiple premises.

In my opinion it’s well worth the few seconds it takes to enter the town that you are trading from and by doing so will have a distinct and very real SEO advantage over your competitors who have chosen to overlook the importance of this field.

13) Price – Here you should enter the full RRP of the product you are listing excluding tax and before any discounts that you plan to offer are applied.  Do not include the currency symbol as Opencart will simply use the default currency that you have selected in the site settings and automatically make the calculations when differing currencies are selected by users from different parts of the world.

14) Tax Class – You will have needed to have set up the tax classes in the LOCALISATION options of Opencart.  Detailed instructions of how to do this will be covered by future postings.  Simply select the appropriate tax class you wish to apply to the product from the choices available from the drop down menu.

15) Quantity – Here simply enter the number of units that you keep in stock

16) Minimum Quantity – If you have a minimum quantity that you want your customer to purchase then enter it into this field.

17) Subtract Stock – In the site settings, we can choose if we want our customers to be able to check-out even if the product they are purchasing is temporarily out of stock.  If you do not want orders for out of stock items and have chosen not to allow customers to proceed it’s important that for each of the products that you input you select “YES” for the “Subtract Stock” option or Opencart will still accept orders for these products.

18) Out of Stock Status – The selected message will be displayed on the product listings of products that are temporarily out of stock according to Opencart’s stock check.

19) Requires Shipping – This has nothing to do with the cost of shipping, (weather you intend to make a charge or not) the choice you make here is actually weather to invoke the shipping module or not (all shipping cost implications and variables are defined by the options within the shipping modules) If the product you are selling is downloadable then select “NO” but if the product is a tangible item that will require some for of transportation from a to b, then select “YES”

20) SEO Keyword – here simply input the Primary Keyword that you would associate with the product.  But remember to replace the spaces between words with a dash and the keyword is unique to that product.  If i was going to write a primary keyword for this post I might chose to input it like this:       “how-to-add-products-to-opencart-shop”

21) Image – The image you upload here, is used for the the product thumbnail through out the various sections of the site. Depending on your site’s styling, it’s also the largest image that is displayed at the top of the product listing page (example)

22) Date Available – Enter the date that you wish to start selling the products from.  If you set a date in the future the product you are entering will not display in categories or products searches until that time.

23) Dimensions & Length Class – Some of the shipping modules you may wish to use will require the size and weight of the item to calculate the cost.  It may also be helpful for the customer to know this information.  Enter the width, height and depth and then select the unit of measurement from the drop down menu immediately below.

24) Weight & Weight Class – As per step 23

25) Status – When removing a product from your Opencart shop, you don’t need to delete the whole product listing. Instead you can turn products on or off by selecting ENABLED or DISABLED from the status drop down menu. If you feel it’s likely that you may be able to offer a product again at some unidentified point in the future, but for what ever reason you do not wish to display it right now, it’s recommended that you just turn the product off.

Caution!

Be aware that disabled products still occupy space on Opencart’s database and so will have an effect on the speed of your site regardless of whether the product is displayed. Page load-times have a big impact on your site’s SEO and so it’s good practice to delete unwanted entries and simply disable those that you feel you may need again.

26) Sort Order – This is the order in which products appear in a category page or other section of Opencart. With all other factors being equal,  products which have been assigned with the lowest number will be displayed first.  Many shops will have found that Opencart orders products pretty well on it’s own and I know clients who just don’t bother with this unless they have a specific reason why they want a product to appear at the top of the list.  If you plan to use your Opencart shop in this way then it’s a good idea to enter a value of 10, that way if at a later time you have specific product ordering requirements you can simply enter a lower number for that product.  It may well be also that your browser remembers the initial “10” value and inserts it as default each time that you enter a product.

Next, scroll up and click on the “LINKS” tab which is located towards the top of the page.

27) Manufacturer – Select the product manufacturer from the drop down list.  (How to add Manufacturers in Opencart will form the basis of a future posting)

28) Categories – You can select multiple product categories for each product to appear in. Simply check the boxes next to the category names.

29) Stores – With Opencart, you can run multiple stores across different domains from just one admin panel and one database. Select which store you want your new product to be sold in by checking the boxes next to the names.  (For single store Opencart installations ensure that the box next to “DEFAULT” is checked.)

30) Related Products – A strong plus for Opencart is the related products tab that appears on the product page next to the description of the product.  Effective use of the related products feature has been shown to have a big  impact on conversion rates and average number of products per purchase and average order values.  Be creative and try to anticipate what your customers might want to view next.  Ask yourself, “Which products compliment this one?” Keep changing this around from time to time to discover what yields best results.  Over time you’ll develop a feel for your customer base and what they respond well to.  To enter a product start by typing it’s name into the box provided.  After a few keystrokes the Auto complete feature will kick in and show you other products that have already been inputted into the system. Click on your desired choice and your selection will be added to the list.  To remove an option simply click on the  icon to the right of the product you wish to remove as a related product.

Next, scroll up and click on the “ATTRIBUTE” tab which is located towards the top of the page.

Attributes are features of a product. For example some watches are shock proof others waterproof or perhaps splash resistant.  Attributes show up in the product comparison pages and are largely geared to assisting customers to make informed choices.

To add add attributes to products you will first need to add an attibute group and a list of attributes to your Opencart system (details of how to do this will form the basis of future postings) If you do not have attributes all ready set up on your system you can skip this for now and come back to add the attributes at a later time.

Next, scroll up and click on the “OPTION” tab which is located towards the top of the page.

In Opencart, an OPTION is a piece of info that will be supplied by the customer with out which it would prove difficult to fulfill their order.

Imagine if we sold paint. It’s likely that any given paint will be available in a number of different sized tins.  The size would be an OPTION. Likewise, if we sold T-Shirts we would likely sell the same size shirt in many different colours, so the colour can be thought of and set up as an option also.

To add options to a product you will first have to set up the options on the system. (A detailed overview of how to do this will form the basis of future postings) A brief set of instructions on how to do this follows below

If you have you Options already set up on your system continue with the options below;

• In the OPTION tab enter the option name you want to add to the product into the box on the left of the screen.  After a few keystrokes you’ll see a list of possible options set-up on your system. Click on the option that you want to add from the pop up list.
• When you do this Opencart will create a horisontal sub-tab where you will now input the option values to use for this product. (Notice that you can add more than one option to a product. the box on the left drops beneath the sub-tab simply click in it and repeat the last two steps)
• Now click the ADD OPTION VALUE button on the right hand side of the horizontal sub-tab
• Select the “Option Value” from the drop down list of set-up values
• Next enter the quantity in the box provided. (This will usually be 1)
• Now choose weather to subtract the stock or not
• If the selected option has price implications enter these into the “PRICE” field.
• Now do the same with the reward points and the weight fields
• You can add multiple choices for each option

Next, scroll up and click on the “DISCOUNT” tab which is located towards the top of the page.

1. Click the ADD DISCOUNT button
2. Select the customer group you wish to offer the discount to.  Different customer groups may have a different discount applied to the price of a product (eg wholesale and retail) If your shop dose not have different customer groups set up in the global configuration then simply ensure that DEFAULT is displayed in the drop down menu.
3. Next Specify a numeric value to represent the number of product units that must be purchased in order for the discount to be applied and enter this into the “Quantity” field.
4. Next specify a numerical value to represent the priority of the discount you’re adding.  In most cases this can be left blank but if you intend to offer multiple discounts or offers on the same product then you need to specify the priority of the discount.  This tells Opencart in which order to apply your entered discounts.[Imagine a customer who buys 2 units of a product that cost £10 each. Now imagine that our customer has qualified for a 20% new customer discount but also qualifies for a £1 per item discount when ordering  2 units or more. £20 – 20% –  £1 – £1 = £14.00  but £20 – £1 – £1 – 20% = £14.40]
5. Now enter the new discounted price that you will be selling the product for after the discount is applied.  Be sure to enter the price in the default currency (Opencart will make the conversions to other currencies) but with out the currency symbol itself as Opencart just needs the numbers.
6. Enter a start date for your discount to be applied from
7. Enter a date you wish this discount to be discontinued

Next, scroll up and click on the “SPECIAL” tab which is located towards the top of the page.

The Special feature works very similarly to the Discount feature but there are some crucial differences in the results they have on the product pages themselves.  To many users, the difference between the two are not immediately clear.

• Think of the Price you entered on the DATA tab as the Manufacturers Recommended Retail Price
• The price you have entered in the DISCOUNT tab is the price that you sell the product for normally
• And lastly the price you specify here in SPECIAL tab is your special offer or sale price.

In the UK, according to the law governing sale of goods and the displayed price of said goods, for a product to be labeled a “Special offer” or “Sale Price” it must have been sold in that establishment for a min number of weeks per year at it’s normal price. (or something like that)

I’m no expert at retail law but the point is that because the Opencart displays the normal price but crossed out next to the Special price if you do not use this features in the correct way  a shop owner can inadvertently end up falling foul of trading laws.

Next, scroll up and click on the “IMAGE” tab which is located towards the top of the page.

Here you can upload additional images and set the order in which they appear. Simply click the ADD IMAGE button and choose the images you want to use.

Next, scroll up and click on the “REWARD POINTS” tab which is located towards the top of the page.

The reward points is your Opencart shop’s customer loyalty scheme.

The first box in this tab is the number of points a customer will need to redeem to purchase this obtain this product for free.  Below that is a list of different customer groups that you have installed on the system in the box to the left of each one you should enter the number of points that your customer receives when they purchase the product

Next, scroll up and click on the “DESIGN” tab which is located towards the top of the page.

For most users the Design tab remains redundant.  But should you wish to force a product page to adopt the same layout of a different page from your Opencart site then you can select the page type from the drop down menu in this tab.

Lastly, click the SAVE button at the top of the product entry screen to save your product listing. 

Congratulations.

You have now entered your first product on your Opencart eShop