Before creating a new product on your website, you need to have certain standard pieces of information:

1. SKU
   This stands for "Stock Keeping Unit", and is an unique code to identify your product internally.
   Every product on your website needs an unique SKU... and yes, it can be a good idea to use the product's barcode.
   
   
2. Product Name
   What is the name of your product?
   
   
3. Product Price
   What price will you be selling the product for?
   
   
4. Short Description
   Type a short (max 100 characters) to describe your product.
   A character can be a letter, number, symbol (e.g. "#") or even just a blank space.
   
   
5. Long(er) Description
   This is where you can detail the complete description of your product... usually with complete HTML formating, etc.

Finally, you will also need a picture (or multiple) to represent your product.

Having this information handy, before starting to add your products to your website, will greatly decrease the time taken to add your products.