Product types and attributes

Product types are groups of products that share the same attributes. For example, books are typically distinguished by such attributes as ISBN, author, publisher, cover type, language; apparel can be characterized by brand, season, material, etc.

With the help of product types and attributes you can specify additional information on product details pages, as well as keep some private details that you don’t want to share with your customers (e.g. net cost) in your Ecwid admin.

Using product types and attributes

Besides displaying the additional information about products in your storefront, product types and attributes can be helpful in keeping some service information about products in your Ecwid admin and enhancing the search in your online shop with product filters.

Keeping private information about products

With the help of hidden product attributes you can keep product specifications that you use for internal purposes in your Control Panel without publishing them online, e.g. you can use them as cost price field, place for manufacturer’s codes, etc.

To mark an attribute as hidden:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Settings → Product Types.
2. Select the type to which the attribute belongs.
3. Choose Do not show for this attribute:

Now the value that you add for this attribute will be visible in your Control Panel only:

You can use the values of your custom attributes in reports by exporting them with the help of Ecwid API.

Searching products by attributes

This is quite important for many merchants to provide an easy way to navigate their inventory, especially in those stores that accommodate large multi brand catalogs. With the help of attributes you can offer product filtering that allows shoppers to refine searches by attribute values, for example, a brand, a material, and more.

Eliminating products from search results

If you have hidden products and categories in your catalog, you may have already noticed that items from disabled categories still appear on the search results pages.

With the help of hidden product attributes you can add special tags to the products that will be used in a custom JS code based on Ecwid API and define whether the product should be searchable.

Showing net product weight

In your store you might sell products that should be packed very properly before shipping (e.g. fragile items). In this case there can be a considerable difference between the weight of your product with and without packaging. Values from the Weight field on the General tab of the product page in your Ecwid admin are used to calculate shipping rates, so you should put the maximum possible weight (“with” packaging) there, to avoid pricing errors. You can hide or show this field in your storefront by choosing the respective option for the Weight box in Design, Sidebar section in your Ecwid admin.

To display weight without packaging on the product page (i.e. net product weight) for your customers, you can use product attributes. Just create an attribute named “Weight (without packaging)”, enter your value and choose Show on the Manage Attributes page.

Creating product types and attributes

Product types

By default, all products in your catalog belong to the General type. To segment products internally you can add as many other product types as you need and add different attributes to these types. Example:

Type: Books Attributes: ISBN, publisher, language, age limit, cover.

Type: Clothing Attributes: gender, age group, color, size.

To create a new product type:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Settings → Product Types.
2. Click + Add New Product Type.
3. Use the search bar to find matching types in the drop-down:
   

   

4. Select one of the suggested product types and click Add.

Now you can edit the attribute fields to provide your customers with extra details about the products of this type.

Product attributes

When you create a new product in your Ecwid store, it is automatically assigned to a General product type. The General type has two attributes by default:

• UPC — a unique product identifier which is called EAN in Europe, JAN in Japan, and ISBN for books.
• Brand.

You can add more attributes to the General type. For example, if you sell jewelry, you can add Gender and Material attributes.

You can also choose a type with preset attributes from a list of types. For instance, if you choose a Clothing type, your product will have Gender, Age group, Color, and Size attributes. You can also add specific attributes manually if you need one. For example, you can add the Collection attribute to the Clothing type.

To add a new attribute:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Settings → Product Types.
2. If you don’t want to create a new product type, select the General type in the left-side list. Otherwise click Add New Product Type, select the type you need and click Add.
3. In the empty attribute field, type additional detail for this kind of product. For example, add Cover and Language for books:
   

   

4. To add more attribute fields, click + Add New.
5. (optional) You can edit the displayed name of the attribute. For example, rename Brand to Author.
6. (optional) To hide the attribute from customers, in the Show dropdown select Do not show. Now, this attribute will be visible in your Ecwid admin only.
7. (optional) You can also change the order in which the attributes will be displayed in the product details. To change the order, drag and drop the fields:
   

   

8. Click Save.

Now you can assign product types to the items and fill in attribute values.

Assigning type and attributes to a product

When you create a new product in your Ecwid store, it is automatically assigned to a General product type, which has two attributes by default, UPC and Brand. You can add more attributes to the General type. The values for each attribute should be specified for each product.

You can also create more types of products and assign them to your items. If you haven’t created any product types for different categories, you don’t have to assign them because the General type with its attributes will be automatically used in this case.

Assigning and editing attributes

To assign a particular attribute to a product, you don’t have to create a product type. You can simply add attributes to the General type.

To assign more attributes to a product:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Catalog → Products.
2. Choose a product you want to assign an attribute to.
3. Click on the Attributes tab.
4. Click Manage Attributes:
   

   

5. In the empty fields, add the attributes you need for this product. If you need more fields, click + Add New:
   

   

6. Click Save.

Now all your products will have the attributes you added. It will be displayed as a list in a product description:

The values for each attribute should be added to each product. You can do it from your Ecwid admin or from your Ecwid mobile app.

To edit values of an attribute:

Assigning product type to a product

If you created the product type, you could assign the created type with its specific attributes to any product in your store.

To assign product type to a product:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Catalog → Products.
2. Choose a product you want to assign the product type to.
3. Click on the Attributes tab:
   

   

4. Next to the General title, click Change type:
   

   

5. Select the required product type, for example, Clothing.
6. If needed, fill in the attribute values.
7. Click Save.

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