The top section of the Products page has three blue tabs on the left for “Products”,  “Categories”, and “Archive”, plus one button on the far right to create a “New Product”.

​Categories
Let’s begin with the Categories page, because when populating a new Figure account at the start, it is best to contemplate your categories and how you want to organize your wines. Wineries and wine retailers have different protocols on how they display wines. If your winery has an open cart sales module as part of your Figure app, then determining your Categories will be more important than if you only sell wines via club membership. Most wine retailers rely on open cart setups for ecommerce sales which will require detailed Category creation.

You can read some additional insights in the article titled, Product insights and guidance.

To get started, on the right side you will click “New Category”.

Type in the name you would like to call this new category and click the Create button.

This will take you into another screen where you can add content to this new Category, yet it is not required.

The default for the Category Status is “Active”, so that clients can see this section of products on your commerce page, but only if the category is populated with products. If at any point you would like to hide all the wines in a particular category, you can make the category “Inactive”. This can come in handy when, say you have a Library category with small quantities available of past vintages. You can activate a list of Library wines on the website all at once, then inactivate them quickly.

Return to the Products page and click the Categories tab again.

You will see your new category at the bottom of the list (if you have multiple categories created).

To move it to the top of the list, so it is viewed first on the commerce page, use your mouse to click, hold, and drag up the three horizontal lines on the right side of the Category name. This is the Reorder column and allows you to move your categories up and down the list. This reorder feature also applies to individual products on the Products page.

**Very Important**—Be aware that if you ever send out an email offer or social media post containing a hyperlink to the exact URL page of a wine listed on your website, it can still be accessed via that hyperlink even when marked as “Inactive”. Read more about this in the section called “Hyperlinks connected to inactive products” in the article titled, Product insights and guidance.

​Products
This tab will show you the list of products you currently have in your Figure app. At the top you will see a tally showing the Total Products and Most Popular item.

Once you start creating new products and designating them into categories, the list of products on this tab will be organized by the categories you have created and the order in which you have placed those categories. Each Category will be listed in a left hand shaded area, and on the right it will show if the category is “Active” or “Inactive”. If a category is “Inactive” and there are no products assigned to that category, it will not appear on the Products tab.

Each category will list the product, sku, bottle size, available stock, retail price, product status (active or inactive), a check (✓) to show if you uploaded a bottle image, and the option to move the products up or down within the category list via the reorder column.

Each product has a check box on the far left. By selecting a product, or numerous products, you will then activate the “Choose an Action” drop down menu for only the products within that category. The options in that drop down menu include:

-Status changes to “Make Active”, “Make Inactive”, and “Archive” the selected product(s).

-Export options for “Product Data” and “Orders”.

-Categorize changes to add or remove the selected product(s) in to or out of any of the categories you have created.

*Partially Important*—Be aware that if you select products in different categories, the “Choose an Action” drop down menu will only apply changes to the products within that category. In other words, every category you create will have its own “Choose an Action” drop down menu for modifying products.

The Products tab also has an “Actions” box on the right side where you can start the process of creating a “New Product” (read more about that in the article titled, Product details page for a single item). “Import Products” allows you to upload numerous products at once via an Excel spreadsheet. Touch base with us via the Intercom app for the current upload template and so that we can provide guidance for this process. “Export All Products” will produce an Excel spreadsheet with all the product details broken out into columns. For wine retailers, if you populate your product details with Country, Region, Appellation, Varietal, etc, this helps when a customer emails you to say, “Send me a list of all your Chablis” or “Send me a list of all your Syrah.” 

​Archive
If you never Archive a wine, this tab will show a mirror image of the Products tab.

Just because you Archive a wine doesn’t mean it becomes a stagnant product. You can always retrieve a wine from the Archive tab and bring it back to the main products tab. Or if you want to duplicate a SKU, you can certainly accomplish that from Archived SKUs.

As wines start to sell out, older vintages with no stock will begin to pile up on your main Products page (as an admin user). You cannot delete these past Products once they are affixed to customer orders. The course of action is to Archive these sold out products.

>Click the check box to the left of a product name. At the top of that product Category list you will see a drop down menu called ‘Choose an action’. Click that drop down and select Archive.

>This process will move the product from your main page of active/inactive wines, over to the Archive page. You can still access these Archived products which allows you to duplicate the SKU, research past orders, etc.

>Doing this will keep your main products page organized for your staff and it will decrease the amount of options on the “Select Products” page of the new order process.

>Do not leave stock/quantity available in products that you Archive. You should make sure to set the quantity to zero before archiving a SKU. To learn why, we will again suggest you read the section, “Hyperlinks connected to inactive products” in the article titled, Product insights and guidance. 

**Very Important**—For retailers, take this advice to heart now and start the process of archiving your sold out vintages. Even if you archive a wine you can still bring it back to the main Products page later on. However, if a couple months or years go by, and you don’t archive any wines, the Products page will become far too overstocked to manage. Plus, if you have a speed challenged internet/wifi connection, loading thousands of items on the main products page will become noticeable.