If you sell car parts, you might consider setting up an online store to get your products in front of more customers. Selling car parts online also makes it easy for people to buy from you since they can quickly search for what they're looking for.
One of the biggest problems store owners have when selling car parts online is finding a good way to list products in a way that makes it easy for customers to find exactly what they're looking for. One way to do this is by setting up a WooCommerce store and listing automotive or car parts in a product table with purchasing options. As a result, you can increase product visibility and grow your bottom line.
With this in mind, in this article, we’ll explain how you can start selling car parts online. Along the way, we’ll also show you how you can optimize your online store’s shopping experience for customers.
How to list a large number of car parts
Selling car parts online means that you have to work with a lot of information. You might have posts for multiple vehicle types with multiple product types for each vehicle type.
Here are some of the key challenges store owners need to think about:
- You need an easy way for customers to narrow down the list of car parts based on specific criteria such as make, model, and category.
- Displaying information about each car part is more important than having large images.
- Ideally, you want to display a large number of car parts on a single page so customers don't have to browse through multiple pages to find what they're looking for.
One way to optimize the customer’s shopping experience is by structuring and displaying product information in a user-friendly way on your store.
For this, you’ll need to make the most of WooCommerce categories, attributes, and custom taxonomies to properly structure data about car manufacturers and models – more on this later.
To make your online car parts store a success, you need to make it as easy as possible for customers to find products, learn more about them, add them to their cart, and proceed to checkout. This is possible with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.
Search, sort, and filter options will help customers quickly find what they’re looking for. Dynamic filters (i.e. filters that are connected to each other) allow customers to see available products only. In other words, when a customer selects an option in one filter, the options in the next filter are automatically updated.
For your online automotive or car parts store, this means that instead of listing all the available car makes and models in a single dropdown menu, when the user selects Toyota from the Make dropdown, the Model dropdown will update to only include Toyota models only.
Dynamic filters are ideal for e-commerce websites that contain lots of information as is allows customers to narrow down their search and quickly find the product they want. Similarly, with a search box customers can search the product name or description to find what they’re looking for.
How to sell car parts online
To sell auto parts online, you’ll need a WordPress site with an e-commerce platform like WooCommerce. After you’ve set up your WordPress site, and installed WooCommerce, add automotive parts or car parts as WooCommerce products. Once that’s done, you can categorize them and list them in a front-end table layout.
Step #1: Add car parts products to WooCommerce
Here’s how you can add car parts to WooCommerce:
- From the WordPress dashboard, navigate to Products → Add New.
- Enter the title of the product, description, and product image.
- Fill out the Product data section by entering information for each car part like the pricing and stock details.
- Simple product refers to products with no variants. So, when adding car parts with only one version, have this option selected.
- For car parts with multiple product options (for example color, size, or material), select Variable product. This way, customers will be able to select these attributes before placing their order.
- When you’re done, click on the Publish button to add the car part to your store.
Step #2: Categorize the car parts
A typical WooCommerce car parts website contains hundreds or even thousands of products. It’s not easy to find a specific car part on an online store that sells tons of different types of products.
Here are some ways you can structure the car parts products on your website to improve user experience:
- WooCommerce product categories. Using WooCommerce categories and sub-categories, you can break down your car parts listings. For instance, if you sell car parts for different car manufacturers, you can create a category for each one of them (e.g. Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai). The Toyota category may include subcategories for Aygo, Corolla, RAV4, and Yaris.
- Tags. Tags let you label products and allow customers to quickly see all products with the same label. Labelling your products with appropriate tags will enable customers to quickly find car parts. For example, you might consider creating tags for battery, bumpers, doors, windows, tail lights, new, and used.
- Attributes. You can add specific data related to car parts in product attributes. For example, you might create attributes for colors, sizes, and materials. Use attributes when you’re selling auto parts online with variations. For instance, you might create an attribute group Material containing laminated glass and tempered glass for car windows.
- Custom fields. WooCommerce custom fields enable you to store additional information about the car parts you are selling. Ideally, they should only be used when you want to display information that is unique to a product. For instance, you can create a custom field containing information about the item’s condition if you sell used car parts or fitment details.
- Taxonomies. As with categories, taxonomies also enable you to organize products into hierarchical groups. However, organizing with taxonomies is a little different than organizing with the standard categories and subcategories. For instance, you might use standard WooCommerce categories for car manufacturers and models and create a custom taxonomy to store hierarchical information about the type of car such as SUVs or Crossovers.
As an example, let’s say you are setting up a WooCommerce car parts website. Here is how your products and categories might look like:
- WooCommerce Categories – Toyota → RAV4.
- Tags – Windshields, Car Windows.
- Attributes – Material: Laminated Glass.
- Custom Fields – Part #194358Z; Condition: used, high-quality.
- Taxonomies – Car → Crossover.
These WooCommerce features enable you to implement a logical product structure for your online car parts store.
Step #3: Create car parts order forms
The default WordPress shop page layout isn’t ideal for selling car parts online. When selling products where the customer’s focus will be on information rather than what the products look like, you need to display them in a structured, grid-style layout.
The first thing you need to do is get the WooCommerce Product Table plugin and install and activate it on your WordPress website. From the setting screen (WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables), scroll down to the Table controls section.
From here, use the Product filters dropdown to choose the filters you'd like to display. You can set this to Custom and then enter the filters you'd like to use in the Custom filters option.
The next step is to start creating order forms for car parts. There are two ways to do this:
Method #1: Use a shortcode to list all your car parts in a one-page order form
Head over to the page where you want to list your car parts. Add the [product_table] shortcode to the text editor. This will list all your WooCommerce products in a neat table view. If you’re using the Gutenberg editor, you can simply insert the product table block.
When you preview the page on your store’s front-end, you’ll notice all of the car parts are listed in a table layout.
This way, you can list all car parts in a single WooCommerce table similar to an online order form. An intuitive, single-page layout combined with search and filter options will help customers quickly find the car parts they want. This will also enable customers to view all the products and product information on the same page and place their orders.
You should implement this product layout if you sell dozens of products. For instance, this is perfect for auto parts sellers that stock car parts for a handful of cars only.
You can also create separate category pages for different types of car parts.
To do this, you’ll need to create a different product table on each page listing the car parts for each product category. For example, one category page for Air Filters and another category page for Brakes, each with Make and Model filter dropdowns above the table to let customers select their vehicle. This way, customers will be able to view the correct products for their cars using dropdown lists.
Alternatively, you can choose to split a single page into different sections, with each section containing a table listing different car parts.
This product display style works well if you sell hundreds or thousands of car parts.
Method #2: Add order forms to your shop and category pages
The WooCommerce Product Table plugin also lets you automatically replace the standard WooCommerce templates with a product table. In other words, you can automatically add car parts order forms to your main shop page and category pages.
For this, you'll need to head over to the plugin's settings page (WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables). Next, scroll down till you reach the Table display section. Tick the checkboxes next to the Shop templates option.
Click the Save changes button to continue.
Bonus! Add advanced car parts filters
So far, we've looked at how to use the filters that are built into the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. They're pretty good for selling car parts, but you can supercharge them even further by installing the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin.
This lets you add a step filter to your car parts store. When the list of car parts first loads, the car manufacturers filter dropdown appears on the page. After the customer selects a manufacturer, a 'Car models' dropdown appears underneath. And so on, for as many levels as you set up when you added your product data:
As well as adding step-by-step dropdown filters, you can use WooCommerce Product Filters to add a wide range of other filter styles. For example, it comes with filter checkboxes, radio buttons, clickable images, range sliders, and so on. If you have lots of car parts to sell, then this is a good way to help customers find what they need more easily.
Start selling car parts online
Selling information-dense products like car parts can be difficult if you’re running vanilla WooCommerce. As a car parts retailer, you need a better solution.
The WooCommerce Product Table plugin lets you display products in a neat, front-end table layout complete with a search box and sorting functionality. In addition to this, you can use it to add dynamic filters above your product tables making it easy for customers to quickly find the exact car parts they’re looking for. By doing so, you’ll be able to increase online sales and grow your bottom line.
Ready to optimize the user experience of your online car parts store? Get WooCommerce Product Table today!