How to upload your hair in Shopify or WooCommerce?

You have found a hair vendor with the hair and wigs your ideal client is looking for. Congratulations! The hair vendor shares their wholesale prices in a PDF file, together with some images. But how to upload your hair in Shopify or WooCommerce? You can only sell when this beautiful hair, has the right price and is uploaded with the correct images. Follow this handy guide to upload your hair bundles, closures and wigs in your online store and start selling! This post will help you to organize all the information of the hair vendor in a format you can easily upload in your online store. The preparation is the same for Shopify and WooCommerce.

The vendor shares the prices

After the first contact via WhatsApp or the phone, the hair wholesale supplier will mail or app you the prices. Every hair vendor has a different format and type of file. It can be an image, or a pdf or even in an email. They also have their own system to name the products they sell. Finally, you need to find a system to match the right hair image with the product names. How to get this, with as little effort and errors in your online store?

Preparation of the upload of hair products

The best way to start with the upload of hair and wigs is at the last stage. The stage where you upload the hair and wigs in the Shopify or WooCommerce hair store. The reason is you can easily have 200 or more different products with variations in lengths, colors, density and origin. When you upload this one by one in the online hair store, you will lose too much time. Better to look for an automated way to upload your hair.

Import function for hair

Both Shopify and WooCommerce have an import function, for your hair products and wigs. The import function is a spreadsheet, a list with columns. Every column has a unique name. The name of the column explains the information stored in that column. For example:

• the name of the hair product
• the price of the closures, bundles and wigs
• The product description
• the variations, like length, density, and color

The idea is to organize the hair from the vendor(s) into this spreadsheet. This will save you a lot of time and frustration. Plus, you can start selling much faster, because the visitors of the webstore will see your hair and the collections right away.

Import function Shopify

For Shopify you can find the import function under the products menu, you can find the menu on the right side of the screen. Click on product and the next screen will who the import function at the left of the screen. See the image below.

Tip! When your store is new, you can use the export function (at the left from the import button) to download a new CSV file, a file to upload data for other programs like excel and Google sheets. This sheet has all the columns you need for your upload. No need to think about this and start entering the hair description, prices and more right away! And you are sure they will end up in the right place of the store. 

You can export your products to a CSV file to help with several tasks:

• Creating a backup of your products
• Moving your existing products to a new Shopify store and
• Editing your products in bulk using a spreadsheet

We will use the last suggestion to get a blank sheet with all the columns we need to enter the hair in the store.
Select the radio buttons for all products and a CSV file for Excel.

Import function WooCommerce

WooCommerce has the product menu also on the right of the WordPress Dashboard. Click on products and you will see the import function, left from add new products.

Tip! When your store is new, you can use the export function (at the left from the import button) to download a new excel sheet. This sheet has all the columns you need for your upload. No need to think about this and start entering the hair description, prices and more right away! And you are sure they will end up in the right place of the store. 

A pop up screen, titles “Export products to a CSV file” will ask you what you want to export. For this first exercise select all options, including the last option to export custom meta. This will allow you to enter valuable SEO data for your hair products.

What do you need to know?

Regardless of if you use Shopify or WooCommerce, you will have a spreadsheet in front of you with all the columns you can fill. Now we can look at the information of the hair vendors. The information from the hair vendor is not complete yet. You must decide based upon your ideal client how you want to group the hair. What kind of collections do you want to show to the visitors of the webstore? A collection will help your visitor to find what they want, with the least effort. In the sales process it is important to reduce any stress, for example too many options or variations. At this moment, you should think about the collections you want to offer. You could make collections based upon origin, or texture. You know your client best, so you can make the decision on how to group the hair products. Try to reduce the number of variations as much as possible. Once your client is ready to buy the hair, she should be able to do so with one click!

Your price

You also need to think of the price you want to sell the hair for. The vendor will only give you, their price. Check our post about the best pricing strategy to find the method to calculate the selling price. The price you offer your hair bundles and wigs to your client for. If you want to give a discount, you can also calculate the discount now. These prices you need not only to enter in the upload spreadsheet, but also to make a nice profit! The calculation will be made in the spreadsheet you will use to upload the hair into the online store. But now you need to decide about the pricing strategy and the calculation method.

You enter your hair in the spreadsheet

Open the spreadsheet and start to enter the information about the products in the sheet. There are two methods, they are both fine, so you just select the method you feel comfortable with. The outcome, all hair product information in the spreadsheet will be the same regardless the method.

Hair product per product

In this method you enter for every bundle, weave, or wig you are going to sell all the information for that product. You will add all columns for that specific product. The advantage is you will have a complete overview of that specific product when you work on it. The disadvantage is it will require more time. It also depends how the hair vendor has provided the product information.

Column per column

Another method is to finish first all the information for every column. For example, you enter first all the product titles. This will show you in one overview the number of hair products you are going to sell and helps to put the hair in collections, but also to keep an idea of the progress. Because you work on one specific item at the time, and you repeat this for all your products you can improve and speed up the process because you will learn at the same time.

Step by step

Let us go step by step. Every hair supplier has his or her own way of providing the information, but the steps can be similar. I will go column by column, but you can decide to finish first one product.

1. Add two columns at the end of the table in the spreadsheet to enter the vendor price and the margin per product. This margin could be a percentage or fixed amount and should cover all expenses, shipping and payment and you profit margin. When you add the margin with the vendor price you will get your sales prices. The price your client is going to pay for the hair and that will cover your costs and give you the profit.
2. Decide about the number of variations, like length, weight, density, texture, or color. For every variation you must create a separate column, for the name and the variation, like the number of inches, the kind of color etc.
3. Enter the names of the products, you are going to sell, in the import file, this is the base for the rest of your actions. You will see exactly how much you still must do. Use a name your visitors will understand. Every name should be unique.
4. Enter the collection for every product
5. Add the variations in the column Attribute. You can open a new column for the name and value of every variation.
6. Enter the vendor price in the table for every product and product variation.
7. add the margin in the column next to the vendor price and the outcome of the vendor price and the margin in the column with the sales price
8. Now you have for every product and variation a row in the sheet
9. Take a break
10. Check the data you entered in the sheet, compare the prices and the variations
11. After the check you can upload the file (use the import function)

All data is now in the store, now you can add the images and the product descriptions.

The images

Try to use high resolution images, this will allow your visitors to zoom in and to see the strands of the bundles, closures, or wigs. Give the files with the image a good name. Make sure the product name is mentioned and your brand name. This will help you to improve your ranking in the search engines. The images you can upload one by one when you edit the individual products. When the images are available on another website, you could also copy the link to these images in the export file.

The product descriptions for hair

The product description for your hair products is very important. Do not copy a description from the vendor, what happens when you go for drop shipping. Be original and appealing. Check the special page about appealing product descriptions. Add the product description in the product pages. Be sure to check in the view function how the description will look like. Is all information readable on desktop and mobile device? In case of doubt, optimize for mobile devices, because most users shop with their smartphone.

Start selling hair!

Well, you have done a great job! You have uploaded all your gorgeous hair and your visitors can see all the beautiful hair and beauty products you offer. Now it is up to your store and your marketing effort to turn these visitors into loyal clients. Good luck and start selling hair!