Adding Products (v3)

This article covers how to add a new product to your store using the built-in control panel editor. This is the simplest way to add a product to your store and gives you an idea of the various requirements and attributes you can add at the product level. If you need to enter a lot of products in a short amount of time, you can also import products in bulk using a CSV file, use apps to find and source products, as well as create products directly via the Catalog API.

In addition to physical products, you can also create and sell digital files. See Creating Digital Products for more information.

Note: This article covers the v3 product experience. See Adding Products (v2) for help with the v2 experience.

• To view and create products, the Manage Products and Create Products permissions must be enabled on your user account.
• To edit, set as featured, and hide existing products, the Edit Products, Product Options, and Manage Brands permissions must be enabled.
• To Bulk Edit products, the Edit Products, Product Options, Manage Brands, Manage Channels, and Manage Categories permissions must be enabled.
• To delete products, the Delete Products permission must be enabled.
• To create categories, the Manage Categories and Create Categories permissions must be enabled.

The Categories section is where you can assign new or existing categories when adding or editing products. Categories can be assigned to multiple products in the control panel from the Product List or by using bulk edit.

Select the category or categories you want to assign the product to. Each desired category must be selected individually. Selecting a parent or child category will not affect related categories.

A check next to a category name will indicate that the product is assigned to that category. A dash (—) next to a category name indicates that the product is assigned to a subcategory within that category tree, but not the parent category.

In the example below, a product is assigned to the Shop All, Apparel, and Plates categories and not assigned to the Dining, Bath, or Garden categories.

To open the Add Product page, go to Products › Add. Alternatively, click Create when reviewing your catalog in Products › View.

The top of the page allows you to enter the product’s basic information. The following fields are required for creating a physical product:

• Product Name
• Default Price
• Weight

If you are creating a digital product, the following fields must be filled out:

• Product Name
• Default Price

Additional product details, such as variations and inventory tracking, are grouped into sections as you scroll down the page. Use the navigation on the left side of the page to jump to a different section. Though not required, we recommend also adding images, a description, and any identifiers (like SKU, UPC, or MPN) that your product may have.

Product creation is an excellent time for optimizing your product title, description, and image alt tags for search engines. See our Guide to SEO for advice and tips to get started with SEO in BigCommerce.

When you're done making changes, click Save. If your product is set to be visible, this will publish it to your storefront. To help save time when adding multiple products, you also have the option to Save & Duplicate or Save & Add Another. Use Save & View Products to instantly see what your new product looks like on the live storefront.

The Images & Videos section is where you can include visual content for your product. There are three ways you can add an image to your product:

• Drag and drop the image from your computer to the blue box.
• Click Upload Images and navigate to the image on your computer.
• Use Add from URL to use an image (or YouTube video) already on the web.

After you’ve added images, click the Thumbnail radio button to select which image will represent the product on product listing pages, such as category pages, the homepage, or store search results.

If you have multiple images, drag and drop them up or down to change the sort order. The top/first image in this list will be used as the default image on the product detail page and Quick View.

The image description will become the image's alt tag. This is the alternate text that provides information about the image for users who cannot view it. If the image description is left blank, the product's name becomes the image's alt tag. See our article on SEO Fields for tips on getting the most out of your product image descriptions.

Product Image Requirements

In order to upload an image to your product, it must meet the following requirements:

• Supported file types are JPEG/JPG, GIF, WebP, and PNG.
• TIFF and PDF files are not supported.
• The optimal size for your product images is 1280 x 1280 pixels. Other product images such as thumbnails will be created from the uploaded image.
• The maximum file size for product and variant images is 8 MB.

Adding a YouTube Video

Use the Add from URL button to add a video that's already on YouTube.

Uploaded videos are checked for availability and refreshed daily. If a video is unavailable on YouTube for any reason during a check, no further checks or refreshes will be performed. You will be prompted to re-add the video or upload a new one.

The Variations area is where you generate product variants (each with a unique SKU) that can be used to track inventory. You can assign unique attributes to each variant, including image, price, and weight. When a shopper selects a variant on the storefront, the product price and image are updated automatically.

The Customizations area is where you can create modifier options to further customize a product or variant. They work well for products needing an input field for custom messages, dates, checkboxes, and more. Since modifiers do not have associated SKUs, they’re also helpful for products with combined options that would otherwise exceed the 600 SKU platform limit.

For more information about adding variants and modifiers to your products and how they work, see Product Options (v3).

Below are the names and a brief description of what you can find in each section of the Add Products page. For more information on these sections, see our Guide to v3 Products.

Basic information	This area contains the minimum data required to create a product, including Product Name, Default Price, and Weight.
Description	This section provides a WYSIWYG editor to create a content-rich description for your product that appears on the product detail page.
Images & Videos	Add images or YouTube videos for your product here.
Product Identifiers	Add identifiers like SKU, UPC, and MPN.
Pricing	Specify this product’s default price and tax class. Advanced Pricing allows you to add Cost, MSRP, and Sale Price. If you are using an automatic tax provider, specify the tax code and any applicable tax properties. Bulk Pricing lets you offer price discounts based on quantity. Default price also appears here and mirrors the value entered under Basic Information. Note: Pricing changes can take up to 10 minutes to appear on the storefront. See our FAQ on price changes for more information.
Inventory	Indicate if and how inventory should be tracked on this product. Specify current and low stock levels, and set other fields such as BPN and availability.
Variations	Add variant options like size and color to create variants for this product.
Customizations	Add modifier options like a text box, checkbox, or file upload to enable further product customization.
Storefront Details	Here you can set a product as featured, input store search keywords, specify a sort order value, assign a custom template layout file, include product warranty information, enter messaging regarding availability, and specify the product’s condition (New/Used/Refurbished).
Custom Fields	Add custom fields to your product.
Related Products	Enable or disable related products to be shown with this product.
Dimensions & Weight	Enter the dimensions and weight of this product to help calculate shipping rates. See Physical Dimension Settings and the Shipping Calculator for information on configuring your physical dimension settings.
Shipping Details	If your product has a fixed shipping price or product-level free shipping, you can specify that here.
Purchasability	Indicate whether this product is available for purchase, coming soon (pre-order), or unavailable for purchase (catalog-only). Here you can also set a minimum or maximum purchase quantity.
Gift Wrapping	Specify whether this product can use all configured gift wrapping methods, only some, or disallow gift wrapping altogether.
Customs Information	Provide customs information such as country of origin, commodity description, and HS codes to assist in calculating customs duties and fees when shipping internationally.
SEO	Here you can set a custom SEO fields for Page Title, Meta Description, and Product URL for this product.
Open Graph Sharing	Specify open graph (OG) data to share when the product is linked on sites like Facebook.

Products can be edited one at a time or in bulk, via the control panel or by importing a spreadsheet. See our Guide to Legacy Product Import/Export to learn how to create new products or to update larger product catalogs.

To edit a single product, go to Products › View and locate the product you would like to edit, then click the product’s name or select Edit Product from the Action menu.

While editing your products, you can pin sections that you access frequently to the top of the sidebar by clicking the pin icon when hovering over the section name. This also changes your product page so that only your pinned sections are visible when editing a product. Each user in the control panel can create their own list of pinned sections.

Click View all attributes at the bottom of the page to edit product details in unpinned sections.

To update multiple products using Bulk Edit, go to Products › View and select the products that you would like to edit. From the dropdown menu at the top, select Bulk Edit and click Confirm.

The following product details can be edited in bulk within the control panel:

• Product Name
• Brand
• Categories
• SKU
• UPC/EAN
• Default Price
• Sale Price
• Track Inventory (select No tracking, Product level, or Variant level)
• Current Stock
• Visible (toggle on or off)
• Featured (toggle on or off)
• Free Shipping (toggle on or off)

For products with variants, the following variant details can be edited:

• SKU
• UPC/EAN
• Default Price
• Sale Price (Stencil only, Blueprint themes do not display variant sale prices)
• Current Stock

Products are arranged in rows, and product attributes are arranged in columns.

For products with variants, click the plus button (+) to view its variants.

Click on a cell to edit it.

• For variant details that are editable (like price and stock) but have not been defined, those cells will appear as grayed out.
  • If not defined, the variant price will inherit the price of the base product, and stock defaults to 0.
• Some variant details (like category and brand) are not editable at the variant level, and they will appear as grayed out.

You can also click and drag on the small square icon in the lower left corner of the field to make changes in bulk to specific product variations. This is useful when you want to add sale prices only to specific products or product variants. See Using Sale Pricing for more information.

To undo your pending changes and revert back to your previous saved state, click Discard.

To save and commit your pending changes, click Save.

Assigning Categories Using Bulk Edit

To edit the categories assigned to a product, click Edit next to a product's categories to open the Choose Categories pop-up.

Check the boxes next to the desired categories and click Apply when you're done. Clicking Apply to all will apply the current category selections to every product in the bulk edit window.

If you are using the latest version of the product list, use Select all to check all the categories for a particular storefront, and Clear selection to uncheck them.

Sometimes you will want to delete a product because it isn't beneficial for SEO to keep that page intact, such as a limited time product that won't be restocked. Products in your BigCommerce catalog can be deleted in the control panel manually and via the API.

If you will be offering the product in the future and wish to maintain SEO, you could use a 301 Redirect to point the product detail page to its associated category or to a similar product, instead of deleting it.

In the Control Panel

To delete products from the control panel, go to Products › View. Check the box next to each product you want to delete, then click the trash can icon to delete them.

You can delete all of the products on the page by first clicking Select All, then clicking the trash can icon. You can deselect individual products by unchecking the box next to each product.

If you want to delete a certain subset of products, you can filter the results on the page. See Searching Products for more information.

Via the API

Products can be managed and deleted via the Catalog API. See the Dev Center for more information and API documentation.

Can I hide product thumbnail images in the control panel?

Yes, unchecking the box next to Show Product Thumbnails in the Display tab of Settings › General will hide the product thumbnails seen while viewing the product list.

Can I view my pinned sections when adding new products or duplicating an existing product?

No, pinned sections are only available when editing existing products.

Are there any tools that can help me write product descriptions?

BigAI Copywriter is a free app developed by BigCommerce that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create rich and engaging text-based product descriptions.

Do I need to assign products to a storefront channel?

It depends on whether the store has multiple storefronts (MSF) or a single storefront. For MSF stores, a product must be assigned to a channel before it will appear on your storefront. For single-storefront stores, this is not a requirement as there is only one channel ID available to the store. All products will be assigned automatically to this default channel. However, you can manually unassign products from the single storefront channel, and they will not appear on the storefront.

For more information on assigning and removing channels from products, see Product List.

How long does it take for price changes to appear on my storefront?

It can take up to 10 minutes before changes to prices take effect and appear on the storefront. In most cases, this is faster. The delay is due to price caching, which is used to help reduce disruption to storefront performance. This feature cannot be disabled or changed.

Why does my uploaded video show a message saying that it is no longer available on YouTube?

Daily availability checks and refreshes are performed on videos. If a video is not available for any reason during a check, no further checks or refreshes will be performed and this message will display.

If the video appears to be available but shows this message, check that the video and channel are marked public and not private. Then, re-add the video or upload a new one.

Are Product Metafields copied when duplicating an existing product?

Only metafields related to ShipperHQ are copied when duplicating existing products. These metafields are unique as they can be updated on the Add/Edit Product page. Other metafields created via API are not visible in the control panel and are not copied when duplicating products.