The Merchant Dashboard is the interface you will use to list your products, view your sales and analytics, manage your account information and subscriptions, and more! The Dashboard is designed for ease-of-use, but should you need any clarifications then resources such as this Handbook, the chat bubble on the bottom right of your browser, and our Contact Us page are available to you.
Editing a Product #
Navigate to a product’s “Edit” screen by visiting the Merchant Dashboard, clicking the Products tab, then hovering over a product to reveal the product menu containing the “Edit” link.
Title: This is the name of your product. Please do your best to make this name unique and descriptive of your product.
Permalink: This is the link you would give to people for this product. Make the link similar to, if not an exact match of the product title. Replace any blank spaces in between words with dashes (something-like-this).
Product Type: Use this dropdown menu to select the Product Type for your product (these types are described in the Product Types section).
Downloadable: Some products may be available digitally as downloads, like digital art. If this is the case, where your product can be downloaded, then check this box.
Virtual: If your product is entirely digital, with absolutely no physical aspect to it, check this box. These products are almost always downloadable or service related.
Price: This is the normal, every-day, non-discounted price for your product, excluding tax.
Discounted Price: If you wish to apply a discount to your product, this is where you would put the discounted price. If you wish to only apply the discount for a set number of days, you can click the “Schedule” button to apply date restrictions.
Category: This is a very important step, as the tax applied to your sale of this product is determined by the product’s category. Use the dropdown to select the most applicable category for your product.
Tags: Tags are used primarily to tie products to search queries (when a user searches for something using the search bar). With that in mind, create or select up to 5 product tags to associate with your product. The rules outlining this are in the Product Guidelines section.
Product Images: Use the clickable image boxes (to the right of the above settings) to add images for your product. Be sure the main image for your product has a white background. The guidelines for product images are covered in the Product Guidelines section.
Short Description: This description appears prominently between the product price and the “Add to Cart” button on the product page.
Description: This description appears below the main product area, as the first tab in a set of tabs related to the product.
Inventory: This section is used for managing item stock, mostly. If you use a SKU system, you can enter the SKU information here.
Add-Ons: You may offer extra features for certain products, like a gift wrapping service. You can use this Add-Ons section to apply any such product ‘extras’.
SEO: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s how search engines know when to pull up your product in relation to a search. This is a vital section. Make sure you use an accurate and applicable word or phrase for your product here. This will affect searches outside of the [dephoro] site, on search engines like Google.
Shipping & Tax: Both shipping and tax are covered thoroughly in other Merchant Handbook articles and you absolutely should read through those documents, as well. Once you set up your shipping systems, this is where you would link the product to your systems. Tax is a bit complicated, as marketplaces are treated as a unique tax entity and this affects the merchants. Unless you have a very good reason not to, default every product you create to ‘Taxable’ and ensure your product is in the most correct category possible. Also, unless you have a very good reason to change it, keep the Tax Class defaulted to ‘standard’.
Linked Products: Use this area to “link” similar products to each other. This gives you some degree of control over the recommendations a user gets based upon viewing or buying the product you are currently creating.
Attribute: If your product is a Fashion product (clothing), then activate all available attributes and configure them according to your product. Attributes are things like color, size, and gender. If you are selling anything other than Fashion items, skip this section and provide your product details in the product description or product title (like the size and type of canvas for an art print). These attributes do have searchable archives attached to them, so be sure to add these attributes for your Fashion items or your product won’t appear on those archive pages.
RMA Options: If this product has a set of return and warranty rules that deviate from your default Return & Warranty policy, then use this section to describe the products unique set of rules and stipulations.
Other Options: Use the product status to activate and deactivate a product. The Visibility section should be left on “Visible” unless you have a very good reason to change it.
Enable Product Reviews: We encourage everyone to leave this box checked, as reviews affect search results, they trigger sitewide notices that link to your product, and more. Reviews are in place to bolster customer confidence and good reviews can make a product stand out.
