A product is the thing you sell. Everything else in the catalog — brands, vendors, categories, tags, collections, attributes — exists to organize and enrich products. This article explains the two product types and walks through every section of the product form so you know where each fact about a product lives.
The two product types
Every product is one of two types, chosen when you create it. A simple product is a single sellable item: it carries its own price, stock, and identifiers. A variable product is a family of sellable items — variants — that differ by attribute options like color or size; the price, stock, and identifiers live on each variant.
The product form, section by section
- **Product information** — title, URL slug, descriptions, SKU and identifiers (barcode, MPN), and the product's condition.
- **Attributes and Variants** (variable products) — declare which attributes drive the variants, then generate and edit the variant set.
- **Pricing** (simple products) — per-currency regular, sale, and cost prices.
- **Selling options** — inventory source, low-stock alerts, and per-order quantity limits.
- **Inventory** (simple, tracked) — stock per location.
- **Shipping** — weight, dimensions, HS code, and country of origin for rates and customs.
- **Tax** — per-market tax class assignment.
- **Media** — the product gallery, drawn from your media library.
- **SEO** — search-engine title and description.
- **Metafields** — your custom fields, defined in Settings.
- **Sidebar** — status and scheduled publishing, organization (vendor, brand, tags), categories, sales channels, and the storefront template.
Status and publishing
A product is draft until you're ready, active when it should be live, or archived when it's retired but kept for records. You can also schedule a product: set a publish date and it flips to active automatically at that moment, in your store's timezone.
Where products appear
An active product is visible on the sales channels you assign it to. The Online Store channel drives your storefront; other channels feed marketplaces and integrations. A product with no channels is live nowhere — channels are the switchboard.