Products are the backbone of your online store. They are created and managed in the Catalog area of the Miva admin.
On This Page
Adding a Product
1. Click Catalog in the navigation menu on the left.
2. Navigate to Path: Catalog > Products tab > Add Product
3. On the Add Product screen: Fill in the fields with product information. Fields in bold are required
4. When finished: Click Add to save and return to the product list. Click Add+ to save and create another product
Product Details Fields
Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required and must be completed before the product can be saved.
Required Fields (*)
Product Code* - A unique identifier for the product in your store’s database. Each product must have a unique code.
Rules:
Up to 50 characters (shorter is recommended)
Not case-sensitive (e.g.,
CANDY,candy, andCandyare considered duplicates)Allowed: letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores
Not allowed: spaces, decimal points, quotation marks, or slashes
May be visible to customers depending on store settings
Product Name* - The name customers see throughout your store, including the product detail page.
Rules:
Up to 100 characters
Can include letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols
Can be changed at any time
May affect product sorting and display order
Price* - The default price displayed in your store. Discounts and price group pricing are based on this value.
Cost* - An internal value that may differ from the price. Used for reporting and profit tracking.
Tip: Price and Cost work together to help monitor product margins. For more details, see the Margin Awareness documentation.
Profit & Margin - Automatically calculated based on the product’s price and cost.
- Profit is the difference between price and cost
- Margin is the percentage of profit relative to the product price
These values update automatically as you change pricing or cost and are displayed for reference only.
Tip: You can customize how profit and margin are calculated in Margin Awareness. See the Margin Awareness documentation for details.
Weight* - The product’s shipping weight, including packaging. This is used to calculate shipping costs.
Note: The weight value, or unit, is specified in the Units of Measurement (Weight) field in Store Settings. This established one unit of measurement for all weights in the store.
Optional Fields
SKU - An optional identifier often used for inventory tracking or integration with external systems.
Category Code - Assigns the product to a category in your store.
Description - Use this field to describe the product for your customers. There’s no length limit, and you can enter content as plain text or HTML. If Rich Text Mode is enabled, you can also format your text and add images, tables, and more.
Product Visibility & Tax Settings
These settings control how the product appears in your store.
Active - Must be enabled for the product to appear on your storefront. If disabled, the product remains in your catalog but is not visible to customers.
Taxable - Enable this option if the product is subject to tax.
Search Visibility
Use the Exclude from Search Results setting to control whether a product appears in storefront search.
When enabled:
1. The product is excluded from all search results, including:
- Standard (keyword-based) search
- AI-powered (Vexture) search
2. The product is removed from the search index and will not appear in future search results while this setting is enabled.
3. The product remains available through direct links, categories and collections, and merchandising tools.
Common use cases include discontinued products you want to keep for SEO, custom or one-off products, and internal or non-customer-facing items.
Notes
- Changes to this setting may not appear immediately due to search indexing and caching
- This setting takes precedence over search relevance. Products excluded from search will not appear, regardless of ranking, profit, or margin settings
- Products generated as variants inherit this setting from the parent product
- This setting is available as a filter in collections and product queries.
Payment Rules
Payment Rules let you control which payment methods can be used to purchase this product.
By default, all enabled payment methods in your store are available. To restrict payment options for a specific product, enable Limit Payment Methods, then select the permitted methods.
For more information on configuring payment methods, see the Taking Payments section of the Miva documentation.
Shipping Rules
Shipping settings determine how shipping costs are calculated for your products.
By default, products use your store’s global shipping settings. You can override some of these settings at the product level.
Globally - Settings for the Whole Store
Global shipping settings apply to all products in your store.
Manage global shipping settings at:
Path: Settings > Shipping Settings
Use the Settings and Shipping Method Rules tabs to create rules or adjust how shipping works across your store.
Within Shipping Settings, you can define:
Shipping Rules
Subscription Shipping Rules
Handling Charges
Packaging Rules
For a detailed overview of global shipping behavior, including fallback shipping, handling charges, and packaging rules, see the Shipping Settings documentation.
Locally - Product-Level Shipping Settings
On the Product level (When creating a new product), override some global settings at the product level. When adding a product, scroll to Shipping Rules:
Note: Adding Shipping Dimensions helps ensure your shipping rates are calculated correctly.
1. Enter the product’s shipping dimensions
2. Select Pack by Quantity or Pack by Weight in Shipping Settings.
3. Create at least one box the product can ship in:
Path: Settings > Shipping Settings > Boxes Tab
4. Configure Packaging Rules:
Path: Settings > Shipping Settings > Settings Tab
Then scroll to the Packaging Rules section and select a Box Packing method:
Always use fallback package dimensions
Pack by cubic volume
Pack by quantity
Pack by weight
Product Always Ships in Separate Packaging
Product Always Ships in Separate Packaging - Select this option if the product requires its own packaging. When enabled, the product will be packed separately from other items in the order, which are packed independently. Miva will automatically choose the smallest available box that fits the product’s defined dimensions.
Select this option if you have special packaging requirements for a product.
For example, if you sell a hat that ships in a special box, you would enter the dimensions of the special box in the Shipping Dimensions field, and then create a box with those same dimension in
Path: Settings > Shipping Settings > Boxes Tab
To learn more about the Boxes feature Miva see the Boxes Documentation.
When the system tries to calculate the shipping rate, it sees that this item must be packaged separately, so even if the whole order could fit in one box, the software will put the entire order minus this product in one box, and then go looking for a box to put this product in. If you enter the shipping dimensions for this product as 12" x 12" x 12", and then create a box the same size, the software will automatically choose that box since it looks for the smallest box to use.
Limit Shipping Methods
You can control the shipping methods that you want to offer customers at the store level (store wide default shipping methods). You can also control the list of shipping methods that are available for a specific product (product level shipping methods).
To enable shipping methods at the store level, you first enable a shipping module, then you edit the module's tab to enable specific shipping methods. For example, if you want to offer your customers FedEx shipping:
- Enable the FedEx Web Services module by following the instructions on the FedEx Web Services docs.
- Enable the UPS Services module by following the instructions on the UPS Shipping Module docs.
- To learn more about Shipping Integration options see the Shipper Integrations section in the Miva Documentation.
Subscriptions Settings
To learn everything you need to know about taking Subscriptions in Miva, read through the Subscriptions Sub Category in the Miva Documentation.