Entering products manually in WooCommerce takes about five minutes per product if you do it properly. With 500 products that's 40 hours of work. Import tools reduce it to a fraction.
Built-in CSV import
Under Products → Import. Upload a CSV file with columns for name, description, price, SKU, categories, images, stock, attributes. WooCommerce maps the columns and creates products. It works well for simpler products and is completely free.
The image column takes URLs. Images are fetched automatically. Make sure images are available at a public URL before importing. Local file paths don't work.
WP All Import
99 USD per year. Much more flexible than the built-in importer. Handles XML, CSV, Excel. Visual drag-and-drop mapping. Supports variable products, ACF fields, custom taxonomies. We use it on all projects with more than 100 products.
Incremental imports: only update products that changed instead of importing everything every time. It saves time and avoids overwriting manual changes.
Migration from another system
From Shopify: Cart2Cart or LitExtension does automatic migration of products, customers, and orders. From Magento: same tools. From custom database: export to CSV, map columns, import with WP All Import.
Common mistakes
Forgetting to map categories correctly (everything ends up in "Uncategorized"). Importing images with wrong URLs (broken images across the entire site). Not checking character encoding (special characters become question marks). Always run a test import with 10 products first.