Creating products as a vendor is super easy. After vendors register and have their vending plan approved, they can easily create products and customise them from an intuitive dashboard.

Create a product from the Vendor dashboard

To create a product, navigate to the vendor dashboard. And then click on Products from the left menu. After that click on the Add New Products button in the top right corner.

You’ll get a new window where you will be able to create a new product giving all the details.

Basic Details

The common information about a product are the title, price, description. Discount price is optional. You can even schedule discounts for a certain amount of time. You can enter a starting date and end date to apply automatic discounts to your products/services.

Select Category

By default, category selection is singular. There is a drop-down field to select a category. This should be the standard-setting. Because according to Google Webmaster Guidelines and other SEO and UX best practices, it is recommended to have only one category assigned to a product.

If you need to show your products based on multiple factors or for searching or sorting features, you can use tags.

Vendors need to select the categories from the drop-down.

You can also search for categories as well. Just type the category name in the search box, and you will see the matching categories.

Click on the Done button to finish adding the categories.

You can also add multiple categories and, If you want, you can add categories while editing the product as well.

Create Tags

Vendors are able to create new product tags from the vendor dashboard.

Vendors click on Vendor Dashboard > Product > Add New Product. Under the Select Product Tags field, add a tag and Press Enter. The word or phrase will be added as a separate tag.

After you have provided all the required information, Click on the Create product button. It will create the product and redirect you to the product edit page, where you will be able to add more information about your product.

If you want to create the product and add another one immediately, click on the Create & add new button.

After you have been redirected to the product edit page, there is an option to select a product type. You can select either a Simple or Variable product type.

Selecting Product Type – Simple Product

These types of products are simple and have no variants. They are single and standalone products, which do not require any other information to define different variants.

Selecting Product Type – Variable Product

Variable products are a product type that lets you offer a set of variations on a product with control over prices, stock, image, and more for each variation. They can be used for a product like a T-Shirt which you can offer in different colors and sizes.

Select Variable Product;

Enabling Variations

Scroll down to the Attribute & Variation section from where you can manage different variations and attributes for your variable product.

Creating Attributes

You can create a new attribute by selecting Custom Attribute and click on the Add attribute button. Now, provide the attribute Name and their values. You can create more values by entering ‘|’ character after providing a value.

Now, to create new variations of your product from the provided value(s), select Create variations from all attributes. You can also create single variables according to your requirements by selecting Add variation option. After choosing your option, click on the Go button and it will generate possible variations from your attributes automatically.

Editing and Saving Variations

From the screenshot below, you can see that all the possible variations for your product have been generated. Now, you can edit generated variations according to your requirements.

Click on the down arrow button of any of the variations that you want to edit. It will open description and SKU option for that variation.

Enter the price, dimensions and SKU for your variation. You can also include shipping class, tax class and variation description for this variation of your product.

You can also remove any of the variations that you do not have available for this product. After you are done with editing the variables, you can save the variation by clicking on Save variations button.

Now, you can include any discount options for your product. Besides that, you can include other options. There are options including product status, visibility, purchase note and product reviews. After completing all of the steps, click on the Save Product button to create your variable product.

Selecting Product Type – Grouped Product

Suppose you want to sell a music album. But you want to sell different tracks and visuals along with the album as a whole. Then you need to create a Grouped product.

Step 1: Create Parent Group Product

Vendors need to login, go to their dashboard, and create a new product.

Navigate to Vendor dashboard → Product → Add new

The product category must be group product. Select Group Product from the Product Type drop-down menu.

Note: a group product is a parent product so there is no price field and you must select a category.

Step 2: Create child product:

Navigate to Vendor dashboard → Product → Add new

As this is the child product the category of the product must be the same as the parent product. Also, this product needs to be hidden from the catalogue. Under other options, there is a visibility field. You need to set it to hidden  and save the product as shown in the screenshot:

Now you can see the product is hidden:

Step 3: Link the child product to the Parent product:

Go back to the parent product and click on the linked product option under the inventory option. Select the child product in the group product section and linked them both.

If you are having difficulties please see the screenshot:

Following step 2 and step 3 you can link more products to the parent product.

After creating and linking all your child product(s) to the parent product you will get a group product:

Inventory and variants

This section holds a bit of complicated information. None of these fields are mandatory.

If you are creating a downloadable product or selling a dress or t-shirt, which has multiple sizes, then you should read this section carefully.

What is SKU?

SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit. It should be a unique set of characters which will not match to any other product.

Enable Product Stock Management

If you enable stock management and enter 10 in the quantity field, then after 10 units are ordered, this product will show a message that all the quantities are sold and there is no stock.

But, you might want to take some pre-orders before your next batch comes up. So you can Allow Back Order to let the customers place orders even if the product is out of stock.

Downloadable Product

If you are selling photos, music, software or any digital product, then this is the option to use. If you click on the Add File button, three more fields will be added.

The name field defines what the downloaded file name should be. We are letting you define that because you might name the original file to something like “new-album-updated-jan-12.zip” and you want the user to download the file as “New Album”. So this option will be useful for you to serve and organise better.

Shipping

Dokan has built-in support for WooCommerce shipping classes. Please read the following docs to know about how to activate and configure them:

• Configure WooCommerce Shipping Classes
• Activate and Configure Dokan Shipping

Activate Dokan Shipping

Vendors need to activate the shipping method from their dashboard settings.

After activating the feature, you will get the default shipping price override option. Else only the shipping class selection will be available.

If you have enabled only Dokan shipping and configured the costs in the dashboard settings. Then you might leave all the settings as is. That means you do not have to input any data in this section. None of the fields are mandatory here.

Tax

Vendors can select from a  list of pre-made tax classes.

Other Options

Visibility: The visibility option defines the privacy of the product. By default “Catalog and Search” is selected. But if you want the product to only appear on the category listing page, search results, or want to list it as a hidden product, then you can select the option respectively.

If you select any option other than “Catalog and Search” then the product will not appear on the site other than the store page.

Purchase Note: If you want the customer to receive a custom message right after purchasing products/services, you can add that in the box.

Reviews: If the vendor does not want to receive reviews for their products/services from their customers, they can turn this feature on or off.

Filter Options for Product Listing Page

Vendors can filter the products on the product listing page according to the product type. Just select the product type and click on Filter. You will see the filtered products on the list.

You can filter the products based on their inventory. You will get two options

1. In stock
2. Out of stock

Product Bulk Edit for Vendors

Vendors can edit products in bulk from the vendor dashboard. Vendors need to go to Vendor Dashboard –> Products. Select multiple products to edit, then click on the Apply button,

Vendors can update/add product categories, change the product status to Draft, and add new Tags. Vendors can update product price, sale, weight, shipping class, visibility, change stock status, etc. Click on the Update button to finish.

After finishing the update, vendors can see the changes in the Product list.

If they click on the quick edit option, they will be able to see the new categories and tags added.

Ask for Product Review

The Ask for Product Review feature allows vendors to set the product status to draft while creating a product using the single-page product creation form.

After the vendor is satisfied with the edit, they can either ask for a review or publish the product directly based on the admin settings and vendor capability.