Catalogue entry is almost never included in a store build, and at roughly five to fifteen minutes per product it’s frequently more work than building the store itself — so decide who does it, and get it priced, before you commission anything. For most sellers, launching with thirty products rather than two hundred is the correct answer.
The moment it happens
Who types 200 products into your online store is the question nobody asks until the store is built and empty. The design is approved, the payment gateway works, the cart works, and there is nothing to buy.
Then someone asks you for a product list. And you realise you don’t have one — you have a printed rate card from last year, some photographs on WhatsApp, and prices in your head.
What each product actually needs
This is why the estimate surprises people. Every product needs:
- A name, spelled consistently
- A price, current
- A description — even two lines
- At least one photograph, cropped and reasonably sized
- A category
- Variants where they exist: size, colour, weight, packaging
- Stock status
- Sometimes weight and dimensions, for delivery charges
Five to fifteen minutes each, depending on how ready your source material is. Two hundred products is realistically several full days of work — not an afternoon, and not something that happens in the gaps of a working week.
| Products | Realistic entry time |
|---|---|
| 20 | Half a day |
| 50 | 1–2 days |
| 200 | 4–8 days |
| 500+ | Weeks, or a bulk import |
Who should do it
You or your staff. Cheapest, and there’s a real advantage: you know the correct names, current prices and which variants exist. Someone external will guess and get some wrong. The disadvantage is that it competes with running the business, which is how store projects stall for months.
The developer, priced separately. Usually charged per product or per hour. Reasonable, and worth getting quoted before the build starts rather than discovered afterwards. Give them a clean spreadsheet and it goes much faster and cheaper.
A data-entry person, hired for the task. Often the most economical route for large catalogues. They need a complete, unambiguous spreadsheet from you — the quality of that spreadsheet determines everything.
Bulk import. If your products already exist in a billing system, Tally, an Excel sheet, or a marketplace listing, most store platforms can import from a formatted file. Ask about this before anyone types anything. It can turn eight days into an afternoon plus corrections.
That last option is the one most often missed and the one with the biggest saving. Ask the question first.
How to cut the work by two-thirds
Launch with thirty, not two hundred. Your best-selling and highest-margin products. A store with thirty products live this month beats a complete catalogue live never. Add the rest over following weeks — and you’ll discover which products actually get viewed, which changes what deserves the effort.
Group into fewer listings. Sixty variants of one item is one product with options, not sixty products. This alone often halves the count.
Write short descriptions. Two accurate lines beat a paragraph nobody reads. Consistency matters more than length.
Photograph in batches. Set up once — a plain surface, daylight, phone on a stand if you have one — and shoot fifty items in one session. Far faster than photographing as you go.
Name the photograph files by product code as you shoot. This is the single biggest time-saver during entry, because matching unnamed images to products afterwards is the slowest part of the whole job.
The spreadsheet to prepare
Whoever does the entry, this is what they need. One row per product:
Product code | Name | Category | Price | Variants | Description (2 lines) | Photo filename | Stock
Prepare this yourself even if someone else does the entry. It’s the part only you can do accurately, and a clean sheet cuts entry time substantially — often enough to pay for itself in reduced charges.
Get it priced before the build
Ask this before commissioning a store:
Is product entry included? If not, what’s the cost per product, or can you bulk-import from a spreadsheet? And what format do you need?
Three things follow. You learn whether bulk import is available, which is the largest possible saving. You get the entry cost as a number rather than a surprise. And you find out the format, so you can prepare the sheet while the store is being built rather than afterwards.
That parallel timing matters. Preparing the catalogue during the build is free time; preparing it after the build is delay.
What to do this week
- Ask whether your products can be bulk-imported from a spreadsheet.
- Get product entry priced separately, before commissioning.
- Pick the thirty products to launch with.
- Photograph in one batch, naming files by product code.
- Build the spreadsheet while the store is being built.
If you want it done the certain way
Tell us how many products you have and where they currently live — Tally, Excel, a marketplace, a printed rate card — and we’ll tell you whether a bulk import is possible and what entry would cost. We’d also usually recommend launching with your top thirty rather than everything. WhatsApp us; we reply in about five minutes between 9am and 7pm.
Related reading
- Should you pay someone to write your content?
- What photos do you really need?
- The content stall that delays most websites
- What should “all-inclusive” actually include?
FAQ
Is product upload included in an online store package?
Almost never. It’s usually charged per product or per hour, or left to you. Ask for it to be priced before commissioning the build, and ask whether a bulk import from a spreadsheet is possible.
How long does it take to add products to an online store?
Roughly five to fifteen minutes per product depending on how ready your material is — so around half a day for twenty products and several days for two hundred. A bulk import from an existing spreadsheet is dramatically faster.
Should I launch my store with all my products?
Usually not. Launch with your thirty best sellers and add the rest over following weeks. A live store this month beats a complete catalogue that never goes live, and you’ll learn which products get viewed.
