Creating Products manually in Optimizely <<product-name>>would not be considered the standard procedure, as this is normally handled via an integration job. However, it is possible from time to time, that a small number of products would need to be added temporarily. Keep in mind, if your Products are added via standard integration job, any manually added products will be overwritten during the next run of the integration job. Additionally, adding Products manually is time consuming due to the number of options that are available under Products: images, documents, a description, attributes, cross sells, and so on.
Prior to creating a Product, it is important to understand the underlying relationship between Categories, Websites and Products. Products are assigned to Categories, Categories are assigned to Websites, and Websites then use these Categories to display the Products that are configured for the respective website. Because of this construct, all Products are required to have at least one Category assigned to them in order to be displayed on the website.
## Create a product
Note
Once these fields have been saved the other finger tabs will be available to edit.
Go to **Admin Console** \> **Catalog** \> **Products**.
Click **Add Product**.
Enter in the following fields with the appropriate information: Product Number, Product Title, URL Segment, Activation Date, and Basic List Price.
Product segment URLs allow for the following special characters:
a-z
A-Z
0-9
\- \_ ( ) /
Any other characters used are automatically converted to dashes
Click **Save** to accept changes.
## Add an image to the product
Go to **Admin Console** \> **Catalog** \> **Products**.
Click **Edit** of the desired product.
Select the **Content** finger tab.
There are three image fields, each tied to a different location within the website:
**Small Image** – this image is displayed within the autocomplete visual search.
**Medium Image** – this image is displayed on the search results page.
**Large Image** – this image is displayed on the **Product Detail** page.
Note
The same image can be used for all three fields, as the image will automatically render to the correct size. The purpose of the three fields is to provide a level of customization, if needed.
Click **Browse**.
Select the desired image.
Note
Images must first be uploaded to the Admin Console before they can be selected. See the [Uploading and Assigning Images article](🔗) for more instructions
Click **Save** to accept changes.
## Assign product to category
Go to **Admin Console** \> **Catalog** \> **Products**.
Click **Edit** of the desired product.
Select the **Categories** finger tab.
Click **Assign Categories**.
Select the desired Category.
Click **Assign**.
Click **Save** to accept changes.
## Add related files to a product
Go to **Admin Console** \> **Catalog** \> **Products**.
Click **Edit** of the desired product.
Select the **Documents** finger tab.
Click **Add Documents**.
Populate the fields.
Note
The **Name** and **Document Type** are displayed on the **Product Detail** page.
Click **Browse**.
If the file isn't already stored in the file management system (Media Manager), click **Upload** and add it.
Double click the desired file.
The file will be provided as a link on the **Product Detail** page.
️ Important
To reiterate what was stated above, for a Product to appear on a website, it must be assigned to a Category.