To use Catalog Machine for 100% of its capacity, you should understand three basic concepts and their interconnections. These three concepts are Category & Fields, Template and Product.
Let’s say you are selling a dress (product). This dress has a specific set of product details you want to tell your customers. Its mid-length with three-quarter-sleeve in black.
To tell each of these product details you want to create fields, where the first ones will be assigned. Using dress example:
Table 1
Most probably, you are selling not one dress, but several. Each of the products will have different details but in the same fields.
Catalog Machine defines a product's image as a product details.
Table 2
It makes sense to assign products with the common fields to one category. Important to remember: one product could be allocated to only one category.
Now we understand, that category is a set of products with common fields. So, to present a needed details of your products, you should assign products to the required category and manage category fields. How to do it in practice, we will show you a little later.
How do Category and Products are connected to Templates? A template is a way your product will be presented. It includes both design and content. So, you should say which of the possible (already created in category) fields, you want to show to your customers. The template will get a set of fields from the category, while uploading products will fill them in.
As you have noticed, all of the products in the Table 2 have empty details' cells. As the template won’t find any information, this field will be missed. You should not worry about that unless you are missing a picture. A template will always leave a space for a missing picture. So, catalog could look unprofessional.
You can create any kind of field, that contains text, image, money, number, date. Read more on how to create a resale ad wholesaler price and have several pictures of one product.
How does it work in practice?
Category and Fields
In practice, we would recommend you to start with a Category creation. It does not matter if you have already uploaded products to the platform or not, tt's a simple 4-steps-process.
Step 1
Go to Product on the left part of your screen.
Select Categories.
Use Create a new category or edit the existing one based on your needs. Further steps are similar.
Step 2
Scroll down to the Product Fields section.
Select Add new Field.
Name a new Field and select a type of data that you will present.
Don’t forget to save changes.
Products
After creating a category, you should put products in it. If you have already imported your products to the platform, you should simply move it to the needed category.
Step 3
Existing products:
Go to Products.
Select All products.
From the Product Categories choose All products.
Put ticks in front of the products you want to include in the category.
Go to Bulk Actions and select Change Category.
Click on the Select Category and pick up the name of the needed category.
Press Apply.
Now you have a category with products and needed fields. You should write product details.
Go to Products.
Select All Products.
Select the needed category.
Click on the empty cell under the desired field, in front of the needed product. Type the product details and save changes.
Important! When you are moving a product from one category to another be sure that the second one has all the fields that were presented at the first one. For example, I am moving products from the category Spring Collection (Fields: Wholesale Price, Price, Image, Description) to the new category called Shoes (Fields: Price, Image, Description, Code). The information contained in the Wholesale Price will be deleted from the system, as there is no same field at the Shoes category.
New products:
Go to Products.
Select All Products.
Select the needed category.
Click on Add new product to enter product information manually.
You can also import products via CSV, Etsy, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Magneto, Shopify, eBay.
Another way to manage products is directly from the catalog.
Select Product icon on the right part of the screen.
2. Pick up the product you want to change and place the cursor into it.
3. Click on the appeared pencil icon.
4. In the poped-up window you will see all the fields that are allocated into the product.
5. You can change the product details simply by changing the tesxt below the field's name.
6. To create a new filed scroll down and press edit category.
7. Click Save Product.
Templates
Here we will show you how to add created fields to the template.
Go to the catalog and template option you want to modify. Place the cursor into it and click on the pencil icon that appears.
Step 4
You can insert a field into the template in two ways.
🅐 Selecting + icon in front of the needed filed on the right part of the screen. Here you can also see if the products in the category have product details allocated to the fields.
🅑 Click on the working area and select insert new field on top. Choose a field name from the appeared list.
To delete the field from the template, simply delete its name from the working area.
You can also read detailed information on how to manage templates here.