We are a local butchery based in Sydney and are looking to rebuild our website, which is exciting. We have about 150 or so products that we would like to add to the site and Shopify offers a templated CSV file to which we can import all of our products into.
Being a first-time user of Shopify and data entry using CSV file templates, we are wondering if anyone in the Shopify community has used this CSV template before and can provide some advice on how to use it? We realise that we are to leave the headings as is, however, being a small, simple butchery, we are not entirely sure which part of the file is required to fill in. To be completely frank, we are not sure what half of the headings are asking for, so hoping to find someone to assist, or even help provide an example to help get us going.
Welcome to the Shopify community forums! It sounds like you are moving your existing online store over to Shopify, is that correct? That’s exciting!
CSV files can be very intimidating if you haven’t used them before. I’ll hopefully be able to help with that by providing a breakdown of some of the best practices.
You can create a free development store to practice importing and exporting CSV files. Create a partner account (free) here: Become a Shopify Partner Today. and these are the steps for creating a free dev store: Creating a development store.
When working with CSVs I recommend creating a couple of products in the admin manually, filling out all your required information, and then exporting those products out to create your own CSV template. This will allow you to see how the information in the product details aligns with the product CSV in a manner that can be more easily recognizable.
Start with just a couple products at a time so that you can review any possible errors that arise upon import. Importing a CSV and overwriting products in your admin is not reversible, unless you have a copy of the products in CSV format to reimport. So we always recommend duplicate versions of your CSV files saved as backup for a safe recovery.
Lastly, if this is just not something you feel comfortable doing yourself you can absolutely hire someone to create your CSV product list for you.