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Free WooCommerce AJAX Product Importer

by Michael Westgate
5 replies
  • ECOMMERCE
    • |
Hi All,

A few days ago I was in the same situation as many on here... how to import hundreds/thousands of products into a WooCommerce store.

I was just about to bite the bullet and purchase the Import Suite for $99 when I came across a FREE plugin that does everything I needed. There are only a few features it does not support but I think it will be a real time saver for many of your stores!

A Free, Simple WooCommerce CSV Importer

woo-product-importer on github

I've tested another free one before but gave up on it because it was buggy as hell and very amateurish looking. This one is the exact opposite - looks and functions professionally. I'm using this one now and it is perfect for my store.

Some info from the site:

Cool Stuff It/You Can Do
AJAXy Importing (avoids timing out on large data sets)
Import Images via a URL (Requires allow_url_fopen or cURL on your server)
Set Featured Image
Import Categories and Tags (Categories and Tags are created if they don't exist)
Add Categories and Tags to Products by Category/Tag Name or ID.
Import Custom Fields
Set Visibility on Custom Fields
Map any CSV column to any Product field (No header row required, but if you happened to include one, I'll use it to take a stab at what goes where)
Map multiple CSV columns to one Product field (last non-empty column wins, good for merging columns)
Basic validation for multiple-choice fields (fields with a limited set of valid values like yes/no, instock/outofstock, etc.)
Dollar signs, commas, etc. are stripped out of number fields like prices, weight, length, width, height
If SKU already exists, existing product is updated rather than inserting new product.

Importable Product Types
Simple Products
Virtual Products
Downloadable Products
External Products

Full List of Importable Attributes
post_title (Name)
post_content (Description)
post_excerpt (Short Description)
_price (Price)
_sale_price (Sale Price)
_tax_status (Tax Status)
_tax_class (Tax Class)
_visibility (Visibility)
_featured (Featured)
_weight (Weight)
_length (Length)
_width (Width)
_height (Height)
_sku (SKU)
_downloadable (Downloadable)
_virtual (Virtual)
_stock (Stock)
_stock_status (Stock Status)
_backorders (Backorders)
_manage_stock (Manage Stock)
product_cat (Categories, by Name or ID)
product_tag (Tags, by Name or ID)
Custom Fields
Product Images (By URL or Local File Path)
_button_text (Button Text, for External Products)
_product_url (Product URL, for External Products)
_file_path (File Path, for Downloadable Product)
_download_expiry (Download Expiration, in Days)
_download_limit (Download Limit, an integer)

Not Supported (Yet)
Variable and Grouped Products
Custom taxonomies
Attributes (and Global Attributes)

Regards,
Michael
#ajax #free #importer #product #woocommerce
  • Profile picture of the author Anton543
    Once you import everything, doesn't it mean you end up with a duplicate content site? I suppose the idea is then to rewrite the content (product descriptions), right?
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Westgate
    Correct. I'm importing from my Drop-shippers product feed and have been using their product descriptions for now. I will however rewrite my descriptions and titles over time (have a few thousand products to import so it will be some time ). I won't be rewriting them for the reason of thinking my site has duplicate content, but rewriting them for optimization.

    I've read before that if your website uses product descriptions from other sources, say Amazon for example, but the website has enough unique content such as blog posts, reviews, prices, guides, etc, then Google knows your website is not simply a spam based duplicate content site and you won't suffer the same penalization they place on such spam sites. It's like basic product information can be duplicated on the web. I have no source for this opinion but I am happy to go live with my basic product description as imported. Perhaps someone with more experience can correct me on that.

    I suppose the only alternative is to re-write all of the product descriptions before importing and then go live with a completely unique website. I worry if I do that I will never get round to launching :p
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  • Profile picture of the author Anton543
    And how successfully did you implement the products? Can you choose what you want to import by ticking boxes because maybe you don't want to import the dropship site's policies and other content (of which there maybe loads) they may have on the site. Perhaps you just want to import product descriptions, images, categories, meta descriptions and that's it.

    Doe the images import in the same size as the dropshipper site or do they get defined by your own Woocommerce settings.

    My only problem with importing the 'sale' price is that the dropshipper's price to you maybe be over the 'sale' price.

    My only problem is that if you import the descriptions, the product pages themselves may not rank well even if you add a good deal of unique content on the site's blog. So you have to make your changes pretty quickly. But I suppose the good ting is it allows you to open the store very quickly and you can then rewrite the descriptions without rushing.
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  • Profile picture of the author kdmpublishing
    Good links, I tried different free importers and some did not give you the option to map according to the columns on the csv file, which caused a lot more headaches. I have realized that no matter what plugin we use to import, once we are importing hundreds of items, we still have to go back and make them unique which takes time, but I think we have to get away from the "site in minutes" idea.

    The plugins are certainly time savers as a headstart, but not the only thing we should use.
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  • Profile picture of the author Hiemie
    Bit late, but a question. When importing the product description, can you import HTML or just text? Say I wanted formatting and a link in the description

    post_content (Description)

    Cheers
    lennart
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