Articles About WooCommerce

Did you know that the single store on your WordPress site can be turned into a multi-vendor marketplace, without having to change the platform! It's the perfect way to give your customers access to multiple vendors, with a seamless experience. At the same time, you can convert more visitors into customers.

Benefits of the online multi-vendor marketplace

We all know what a marketplace is. It's a place where a number of sellers gather under one roof, with their products displayed to sell to customers. But we are not talking about the traditional marketplace - we're talking about an online marketplace.

You cannot deny the charm of running an online store. You can sell without having to leave your home, you don’t have to pay rent for a shop, etc. Now imagine the same carefree style with an online marketplace. You can turn a lot more visitors into customers without having to provide extra products.

Creating a WooCommerce marketplace

WooCommerce is a familiar name in WordPress. It is used to create a store on your site.

WooCommerce came into the market in 2011. It rose to popularity within a short span because of its easy installation process and endless customization facility. According to the latest statistics, 42% of all online stores use WooCommerce:The reason WooCommerce is so popular and still ruling the growth scale is due to its flexibility and ease of use. WooCommerce has grown with demand.

Taking WooCommerce as foundation, people can turn a store into a popular marketplace. Dokan is such a solution - it uses WooCommerce as its base to turn your store into a comprehensive multi-vendor marketplace.

Using Dokan to make WooCommerce a multi-vendor marketplace

Dokan is the first WordPress plugin to turn a store into a multi-vendor marketplace. It's compatible with any WordPress and WooCommerce themes. So you don’t need to worry about creating new a theme for your marketplace.

Unlike many other platforms, Dokan comes in a lite version. Facilities of this lite version work as a package for small business owners. You can run your business for free if you don’t feel like upgrading to the paid business version.

You can also check out its free demo if you want to test the user experience. Dokan also has a 14-day refund policy.

Requirements

You need to meet a few requirements to be able to use Dokan:

1. First of all, you will obviously need a website running the WordPress content management system. After all, Dokan is famous for being a WordPress marketplace platform.
2. Then you will need WooCommerce installed on your site - this is the base for Dokan.
3. Finally, you will have to install the plugin 'Dokan'.

Dokan features

Turning your simple store into a marketplace is a massive move for your business. You need to be sure of what you are doing, right? So check and double-check the features Dokan offers to ensure that it is worth your risk and investment.

Dokan has a 3-fold agenda. How? Well, it is a system that works to make the marketplace owner, vendors and customers happy. This is not an easy task to achieve.

Firstly, the dashboard is the main workhouse for vendors and admin in the marketplace. Dokan provides a separate dashboard for vendors and admin. Vendor dashboards in marketplaces such as Cs-Cart or Shopify can be a bit complex. But do vendors need a complicated dashboard? We all know the answer to that. Fortunately, Dokan offers its users a simplified and precise dashboard.

Vendors have freedom of uploading products. Dokan gives the vendor the option for quick editing of their products. Sellers now can add their blogs and run their own campaigns. But as the admin, you have the ultimate power and ownership of the marketplace.

And there's more!

You can add unlimited vendors and earn commissions from each sale. Not only that, Dokan add-ons let you have auctions. Auctioning products bring many benefits to vendors and admins, as the market sets the price.

As for customers, they can give product/store reviews and can view pick their desired product in one place. Since it is not a traditional marketplace, transparency may seem difficult in some stores. Dokan's customer review system proves the transparency of your marketplace.

With Dokan’s new module 'Follow Vendor Store', customers can follow the vendors they like and get regular updates of products from them. Moreover, Dokan Extensions allow customers to have invoices. Vendors, on the other hand, can get hands-on sales reports.

Dokan has a dedicated support team that is always ready to resolve customers' problems and any technical issues they may face.

Further reading: Learn about all the WooCommerce multi-vendor marketplace plugins and which ones work best with WooCommerce Product Table.

Turn your single seller store into a marketplace with just a few clicks

Since you are here, we assume that you already have a WordPress site. It won’t be a surprise if you already have WooCommerce installed too. But we do not want to rely on any guesswork. So we are going to show you each and every step from the beginning of how to install WooCommerce and Dokan on your WordPress site.

Step-1

1. After you log in to your site, you need to install WooCommerce. For that navigate to Dashboard ->Plugins.
2. This will take you to a page with plugins in it. You can search for WooCommerce from the search bar there.
3. Install and activate the plugin.

Step-2

1. Repeat the previous steps, looking for Dokan from the search bar to install and activate it.
2. When you activate Dokan, you will get its dashboard automatically placed inside your WordPress admin.

Step-3

Remember how we talked about how anyone can be a vendor and there is no limitation to that? Now we have to configure that setting. For that, you have to go to your WordPress settings and enable the option.

WordPress admin → Settings → General

Step-4

Vendors will make it a marketplace. So the next step is to add vendors. You have to add vendors from the WP admin’s 'Users' section:

WordPress admin → Users → Add New

You will see the roles that you can assign to the vendors. As the admin, you have to fill in the fields while assigning the roles.

You are almost done once you have added new users with user roles.

After adding vendors, the vendors will add products.

Here it is, your multi-vendor marketplace is ready!

Choose the best layout for your marketplace products

Dokan lists each vendor's products in a grid layout, with a 3-column layout and large images plus add to cart buttons and links to the single product page. This is a brilliant way to sell lots of product types, such as clothing.

Other products can be listed more effectively in a product table layout. You can easily achieve this by using Dokan with WooCommerce Product Table.

There are lots of benefits to listing marketplace products in a table view:

• List products from the entire marketplace in a single table.
• Add filters to help customers to find products for a specific vendor.
• Add quick buying options such as variation dropdowns and quantity selectors directly to the product listing view.
• Ideal for displaying less visual products where large images aren't important.
• Perfect for showing more information about each product, such as technical data or additional filters.

How to use Dokan with WooCommerce Product Table

Create a table listing all your marketplace products

It's easy to list the contents of your entire marketplace in a searchable table:

1. Install Dokan and WooCommerce Product Table.
2. Create a page and add the shortcode [product_table].

This will list all products from all vendors in a table. If your vendors have uploaded variable products then customers can choose variations directly from the product table.

Add vendor information to the table

By default, your products will appear in a table without information about their vendor. Customers can click through to the single product page to find out who the vendor is.

If you'd like to create a 'Vendor' column in the table or allow customers to filter for products by a specific vendor, then this is possible. To do this, you need to create a custom taxonomy called 'Vendor' by following the instructions in this article. You can then add it like this:

[product_table columns="image,name,tax:vendor,price,buy" filters="true"]

Listing an individual vendor's products in a table

So far, you've learned how to list the products for all vendors in a table. If you have created a 'Vendor' taxonomy in the previous section, then you can also use this to create tables listing products for a specific vendor only.

This example shortcode will list products for 'vendor1':

[product_table term="vendor:vendor1"]

You can add this shortcode to any page on your site. You can also add multiple shortcodes to a page, for example, to list each vendor's products one at a time on the same page.

Use product table on vendor store pages

Dokan comes with built-in templates for each vendor's store page. If you'd like to include product tables on these too, then you can do this. It's a bit more technical and you will need to add the product table shortcode directly to the template file.

If you don't have a developer who can do this for you, then you can post a job on Codeable. This is the perfect way to find WordPress expert for specific tasks like this.

Use WooCommerce quick view to increase sales in your Dokan marketplace

Whether or not you're using product tables, you can increase sales in your Dokan marketplace by adding quick view options.

The WooCommerce Quick View Pro button works beautifully with Dokan and adds quick view links to the vendors' shop and category pages.

It's a great way to speed up the buying process, as there's no need to visit a separate page for each product. Instead, customers can view extra product images, the short description, choose variations and buy directly from the quick view popup window.

Get Quick View

Benefits of turning a store into marketplace

Researchers say if you want to make it to the highest then you must be brave enough to take greater steps. Turning a store into a marketplace is that greater step with minimum chance of any loss. Especially when it is with Dokan, you can build your marketplace risk-free as you get to own a marketplace for 60% less cost than others. Check out Dokan's Pricing Plan to find out why it is known as one of the most cost-effective marketplace solutions for WordPress.

Besides that, it will be a better-earning source for all the marketplace owners as well. Multiple sellers will help you in better marketing, with a wide range of products.

This also lightens your burden of maintenance and gives you time to set up other strategies and grow your marketplace.

Analyzing all the benefits, it seems like turning a single seller store into a full-fledged marketplace is a win-win situation when you already have a store set up for yourself.

Get started

E-commerce is the most convenient way of shopping for people with the digitalization of the entire system. Just look at the profits e-Bay, Amazon, Alibaba make every year. Do you see their market going down? They don’t go down - rather new marketplaces add to the list as popular e-commerce marketplace with each passing day.

The great news is that you can create your own marketplace, without switching from WordPress! So just have faith in yourself and give your marketplace owning potentials a chance with Dokan.

Want to add WooCommerce frontend product submission to your store? This allows other people to add products from the frontend of your website. They never need to visit your WordPress admin dashboard.

Frontend product creation is great for any type of multi-vendor store. That's because most people will find it more convenient to work from the frontend. It can also come in handy for many other types of WooCommerce store.

In this post, you'll learn how to allow WooCommerce frontend product submission using Gravity Forms and then display those products using WooCommerce Product Table.

Thanks to Gravity Forms' flexibility, you'll have a ton of control over how your frontend add product forms look and where they appear. Here's an example of what you can build:

You can then display the user-submitted products in a table layout, like this:

Beyond that, we'll also share tons of tips for working more effectively with your frontend forms. This includes restricting access to the forms, assigning custom taxonomies for vendors, and displaying user-submitted products in a shopper-friendly manner.

Either read the article below, or watch this video:

What sorts of website need WooCommerce frontend product submission?

The biggest use case for frontend product submission is any type of WooCommerce multi-vendor store. That is, a situation where third-party users can add products from the frontend and sell them through your Woo store.

While there are quality full-service multi-vendor plugins, sometimes you don't need all that extra functionality for commissions, vendor reports, etc. This method is a much more lightweight approach.

For example, maybe you're creating a website for a food festival and you want to let each restaurant owner add their menu items as WooCommerce products. This method would make that easy, without bogging you down with a bunch of functionality that you don't need.

Beyond letting other people add their own WooCommerce products, you might find this method helpful even if you're the only one selling products.

For example, maybe you've hired an assistant to help with uploading new products. Rather than forcing your assistant to learn the WordPress backend, you can just have them work with a WooCommerce frontend add product form instead. Beyond being more user-friendly, this also helps keep things secure as you don't need to worry about which backend capabilities the user has.

What you'll need to follow this tutorial

To create your WooCommerce frontend product submission form, you'll need two plugins:

• Gravity Forms - this is the core form builder that you'll use to build the structure of your form.
• Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types - by default, Gravity Forms' form-to-post functionality creates a standard WordPress post. This free plugin lets you change the post type to a WooCommerce product instead.

Then, you'll also learn how to use the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to display the products submitted through your add product form.

Get WooCommerce Product Table

We'll use WooCommerce Product Table to list the uploaded products in different ways. For example, you'll learn how to create a separate page for each vendor's products, or let shoppers filter products by a specific vendor:

As such, we'll divide this tutorial into two parts.

First, we'll cover building the form and mapping it to a WC product. Then, we'll cover how to take those product submissions and display them to potential shoppers.

Part 1: Create your frontend product form with Gravity Forms

Ok, so you want to let users add WooCommerce product from the frontend - great plan! To get started, you'll need to create the actual form that people will use to add products on the frontend. To do that, go to Forms → Add New.

Step 1: Map form submissions to WooCommerce product

Unlike most WordPress form plugins, Gravity Forms has a neat feature that lets you automatically create a WP post whenever someone submits a form.

To map form submissions to a post, Gravity Forms includes a special set of Post Fields. By default, these post fields create a standard WordPress post. The Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types add-on plugins let you change that and map fields to a WooCommerce product, instead. That's what transforms Gravity Forms into a WooCommerce frontend product uploader.

To set up this mapping, add the Post title field from the Post Fields area. Beyond letting users enter the name of the product, this Post title field also includes some important configuration options:

Once you've added the field, click on it to edit it. Here's what you'll need to configure:

1. Post Type - use the dropdown to select Products. If you can't see this, don't forget to install the free Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types plugin.
2. Post Status - we recommend leaving this as "Draft" or choosing the "Pending Review" option. This ensures that you're able to moderate all the submitted products before they're publicly available at your store. Alternatively, you can also choose "Published" to make products live right away without admin approval.
3. Default Post Author - WooCommerce products don't support authors by default, so this setting isn't relevant. We'll show you how to use a custom taxonomy to store vendor/author information later on.
4. Post Category - you can select the default category here. You'll also be able to let submitters choose their own categories and tags, if required.

And that's it! You're part way there. Now, a user can submit the form and Gravity Forms will add a new product.

But...you still need to collect some more information, right? What about prices, pictures, categories...you get the idea.

Step 2: Add form fields for WooCommerce product information

Next up, you need to add form fields for all the product information. Exactly how you do this depends on what type of information you're collecting, so bear with us here! There are four different approaches for:

• Featured image
• Description
• Basic product information like price, stock status, etc.
• Taxonomies (categories, tags, custom taxonomies)

We'll go through each approach in detail.

How to add the product image

To add the featured product image, drag over the Post Image field. Then, edit the field and check the box for Set as Featured Image. This will let the form submitter upload an image that will be used as the Product featured image:

How to add the product description

To add a field for the product long description, use the Body field from the Post Fields area. In the field settings, you'll want to configure the basic information to be the same as the information you added in Step 1:

If you want to also add a separate Product short description, you can use the Excerpt field from the Posts fields area.

How to add prices, stock status, etc.

To add basic product information like price and stock status, you'll use Gravity Forms' Custom Field field from the Posts Field area.

This is the trickiest field to add, but we'll try to simplify the process as much as possible.

When you drag over the Custom Field field, the first thing that you'll want to do is choose the Field Type. This type depends on what type of information you're adding with this field, but for most of the fields, you'll use a Number. For example:

• Price - Number
• Shipping weight - Number
• Etc.

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Then, under the Custom Field Name, choose New (you're not really creating a new field - but Gravity Forms doesn't let you select most WooCommerce fields from the existing drop-down).

In the text box underneath, you need to enter the custom field ID. Here are the field IDs for the most relevant fields:

• Price - _regular_price
• Shipping weight - _weight

It should look something like this:

You might also want to add some other restrictions, like a minimum and maximum range.

Then, repeat the process for as much information as you want to collect.

If you need to add other WooCommerce fields beyond price and stock status, a neat trick to find the field name is to use Chrome Developer tools on the edit product page and look at the label for ="FIELD NAME":

You can also create your own WooCommerce custom fields to display on the product page.

How to let users choose a product category

Finally, let's cover how to work with taxonomies like categories or tags (or your own custom taxonomies - more on this later).

For product categories (or other hierarchical taxonomies), you can let users choose one or more of your existing categories. And for product tags, you can also let users add their own tags.

Let's cover categories first…

To let users select from your product categories, you can use one of these Standard Fields:

• Drop-down - users will only be able to select a single category with this method.
• Multi-select - users can select one or more categories using a multi-select box.
• Checkboxes - users can select one or more categories using checkboxes.
• Radio buttons- users will only be able to select a single category with this method.

You can choose whichever method works for you. No matter which one you choose, you'll first need to drag the relevant field over from the Standard Fields area.

Then:

1. Edit the field
2. Go to the Advanced tab
3. Check the box for Populate with a taxonomy
4. Select Product categories from the drop-down

For product tags (or other non-hierarchical taxonomies), you can use all the same field types. However, you also get a new option.

If desired, you can use a Single Line Text field. Then:

1. Edit the field
2. Go to the Advanced tab
3. Check the box for Save To Taxonomy
4. Select Product tags from the dropdown
5. Check the box for Enable enhanced UI

The benefit of using this approach for tags over checkboxes or a multi-select field is that people submitting products will be able to use that same "autosuggest" style box that you get in the back-end. Here's an example of what we mean:

Step 3: Configure other basic form settings

Phew - that was a lot! If you made it through, you can be happy to know that pretty much all the hard work is done now.

Next, you'll just want to go to the Settings and configure some things there. First, you'll want to consider these options in the Form Settings:

• Button text - changing this to "Submit Product" or something more descriptive is good for UX.
• Require user to be logged in - you can check this box so that only logged-in users can add new WooCommerce products from the frontend.

Beyond that, you also might want to configure the Confirmations and Notifications so that they're more relevant to creating a product. For example, you can receive an email whenever someone adds a product from the frontend in WooCommerce.

Putting it all together

Ok, so here's what the finished form looks like on the frontend of our site. We've filled it out with some basic information:

Now, when we submit that form, the product shows up as a draft when we go to the Products area in our dashboard:

And if we edit that product, you can see that it also includes both the product description and the product image:

Protect your frontend add product form with a password

One way to restrict access to your form is to use Gravity Forms' feature that requires users to be logged in.

However, maybe you don't want to create user accounts for each person. Maybe you don't want all registered users to be able to add WooCommerce products from the frontend. If so, then you can easily password protect the form.

To do that, you can use WordPress' built-in password protection:

People will need to enter the password before they can access the form.

Create a custom taxonomy for vendors to help organize products

If you want to:

• Create a separate display area for each vendor
• Let shoppers filter by each vendor

Then you'll need to create a custom taxonomy to associate a product with a vendor.

To do that, you can use the free Pods plugin to create a new custom taxonomy and associate it with your WooCommerce products - you can follow our Pods tutorial here to do that.

Then, you can add a field to your Gravity Forms form and populate it with information from your Vendors custom taxonomy, just like you did for your regular product categories. Here's what it should look like:

Then, form submitters can choose the vendor when they add a new product:

Part 2: Display WooCommerce frontend product submissions to shoppers

In Part 1, you learned how to create a WooCommerce frontend add product form. Now, let's cover how to take those frontend product submissions and display them in a shopper-friendly way at your store.

To do that, you'll use the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. WooCommerce Product Table takes all or some of your products and displays them in a searchable, sortable, and filterable table anywhere on your site.

Step 1: Configure basic settings

Once you've installed and activated the plugin, you can configure its basic settings by going to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables:

You can configure the settings according to your preferences, but you'll want to pay special attention to these settings:

• Columns - this lets you control what information displays in your columns. For example, you could include the product short description, a column for price, etc. Learn more about columns options.
• Add to cart column - this lets you control how the add to cart functionality works, including how product variations are displayed. Learn more about add to cart.
• Table controls - these let you control filters, search boxes, etc. Depending on your implementation, you might want to use filters to let shoppers filter out products from specific vendors. Learn more about filters.

Step 2: Choose how/where to display tables

Once you've configured the basic settings, you'll want to decide exactly how and where you want to display the tables.

To display your tables, you'll use a shortcode.

You can either use the shortcode to display all products. Or, you can use the include/exclude rules to only display specific products. For example, you could filter out products from:

• A specific category or tag
• Your vendor custom taxonomy
• Etc.

Learn about all the include/exclude rules

So where can you put that shortcode? Well, you have a few different options here. You can:

• Create a single page and display all your products in one table
• Create a single page and use multiple shortcodes with different include rules to create different sections on the page.
• User separate pages and use the include rules to display different products on each page.
• Add the table to your theme's category archive template to automatically use the product table layout on all category pages. Here's a tutorial for how to do that.

For example, here's what it looks like to create a separate page and populate it with only products from the "Barn2 Sports" vendor using the custom taxonomy term include rule:

And here's what that looks like on the frontend:

Alternatively, you could also use one table for all vendors and use WooCommerce Product Table's filter options to let shoppers filter by the Vendor custom taxonomy like this:

If desired, you could also display the vendor information as a column in your table, as well.

Bonus tip: Show extra information in a quick view lightbox

When you list products in a table layout, you can show information submitted by the user in the various columns.

If you'd like to show more information than will neatly fit into the table, then you can add the WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin. This handy plugin adds quick view buttons or links to the product table. Or if you're not listing your user-submitted products in a table, then you can also use quick view with the default WooCommerce shop and category pages.

Either way, customers can click on the quick view links to view extra product information in a lightbox. This can include the product image, short description, price, and add to cart column. The customer can view this information and add the product to the cart without having to visit a separate page for each product.

It's an excellent option if you want to keep your product tables clean and simple, while still providing extra information about each product.

Get Quick View

Can users add products in the frontend and then them?

You might want users to be able to edit the products in the table after they go live in your store. There are 2 ways to do this:

1. You can use WooCommerce Product Table with a frontend editor plugin and add an 'Edit' button above or below the table. Logged in users with the correct role can use this to access an editable spreadsheet, from which they can edit products without having to access the WordPress admin. If you just want users to edit their own products, then you can use the free User Role Editor plugin to edit the appropriate user role, adding the capability "edit products" and removing the capability "edit others products". (Read tutorial.)
2. You can allow them to edit information about your products using a WordPress frontend editor plugin such as Editus. Logged in users with the correct privileges would click through to the single product page to make changes. This is because Editus makes the single product page editable, but not the product table.

Create your own WooCommerce frontend product submission form today!

By combining Gravity Forms, the Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types add-on, and WooCommerce Product Table, you can create your own WooCommerce frontend add product system that's perfectly suited to your needs.

Click below to get started with WooCommerce Product Table, and leave a comment if you have any further questions.

The Barn2 blog is famous for revealing how to achieve specific use cases in WordPress and WooCommerce. Today, I advised a colleague how to set up a WooCommerce booking system for a window cleaning company.

As well as being able to book available time slots, they needed a price calculator to work out the correct price, including any extras.

In this post, I will share my suggested solution so that you can set it up on your own WordPress site! We'll do it by combining two well-known WooCommerce extensions.

Related: How to create a WooCommerce tour booking website, step-by-step.

The brief - booking appointment system with calendar, integrated with an instant quote calculator and online payments

Phew, that sounds like a mouthful!

In a nutshell, my colleague wanted to build a booking appointment system for a window cleaner, which included a calendar range showing his current availability. He also wanted an online price calculator which would take information provided by the customer, and use it to generate an instant quote. Customers would then be able to book a window clean for an available time slot, and pay the correct amount online via PayPal.

If you want something similar for your own website, keep reading. I'll show you how to set up your WooCommerce booking system. It's a great solution whether you're a window cleaner, hairdresser, tutor, dog groomer, medical practitioner, or something else. You might even use it to sell bookable rooms or venues, such as hotel rooms or meeting rooms. All that matters is that you need a calendar-based booking system, with chargeable extras.

The challenge

There are plenty of WordPress and WooCommerce and booking plugins. These let you set your availability and sell time slots or sessions. However, they don't come complete with a price calculator where the customer can input their requirements and generate an instant quote, which they can then accept and pay for online.

There are also plenty of WordPress quote calculator plugins. You can even use Gravity Forms for this. However, these don't integrate with any WooCommerce booking calendar plugins.

If you are a developer (or are willing to pay for one) then you could integrate the two. Unfortunately, this isn't straightforward.

My colleague was building a website for a friend on a tight budget, so a bespoke integration wasn't realistic. Instead, I advised him of a compromise solution that would achieve a similar result straight out of the box.

The solution - combine 2 plugins to take WooCommerce bookings with an instant price calculator

As we've seen, it's complex to integrate a WordPress bookings plugin with a quote calculator plugin. As a compromise, you can achieve a similar result by combining two high quality plugins: YITH WooCommerce Bookings with Product Options. These are compatible with WPML.

How the booking system and quote calculator work

Your customers will visit your website and view a product page for the service that you are selling time slots for. They will choose an available date and time from the calendar.

Underneath, they will see a services of optional extras which they can select before adding their chosen time slot to the cart. While the total price isn't displayed on this page, the rice for each extra appears in brackets so that customers can make informed choices. Once they are happy with their selections, they can click 'Book now' to add everything to the cart.

On the cart page, the customer can view the total cost for their booking:

As the Administrator, you will receive an order confirmation email with all the booking information, extras and price.

Before you start

Before you start, I'm assuming that you already have a WordPress website with the free WooCommerce plugin set up. If you haven't already done so, do this now. You should also set up your chosen payment gateways and payment methods, such as PayPal.

1. Set up the WooCommerce Bookings plugin

1. Install YITH WooCommerce Bookings.
2. Create a new product and call it 'Window Clean' (or whatever service you are allowing people to book).
3. In the 'Product Data' section of the Add/Edit Product screen in WooCommerce, choose the 'Bookable Product' type.
4. Add a base booking price for the product. (I'll show you how customers can add extras in a minute.)
5. Upload your availability (i.e. available dates) to the bookable product so that it appears on a calendar.

Your customers can visit the single product page to select an available time slot and add the bookable product to the cart in real-time.

2. Use product add-ons for the price calculator

1. Install Product Options.
2. Go to Products → Product Options and create as many add-ons as you require, each with their own price. At the top of the Add/Edit Option Group page, select which bookable product(s) or categories you want to display the extra add-on fields on.

Think carefully about how to set up your add-ons because there are plenty of options. For example, you can have checkboxes, radio buttons or dropdowns. You can have quantity input fields where the customer enters the desired quantity (e.g. 10 if they have 10 windows) and the price increases accordingly. There are even text fields where the customer can add any further information.

When the customer selects options, the total price will appear at the bottom.

Can I add my WooCommerce bookings to Google Calendar?

WooCommerce.com have helpfully provided an extension that lets you automatically add bookings to Google Calendar. This is a fantastic way to manage your time. It's much quicker (and more reliable) than having to manually add each booking to your calendar.

Wrapping up

Now you know how to use WooCommerce bookings to sell time slots alongside chargeable extras. It's a neat alternative to using an actual price calculator plugin. It's also much easier to set up than integrating a booking plugin with a full price calculator.

I hope you found it useful. Do you think it's a good compromise? Let me know in the comments below!

New customers are the lifeblood of every business, that’s for sure, but finding a way to keep them coming back after their first purchase can be quite challenging.

On the other hand, stats say that it’s somewhere between 5 and 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep an existing one.

So, it’s pretty self-explanatory why you can’t rely on a number of one-time purchases for growing your e-commerce.
Instead, building customer loyalty through a subscription-based model will get you far. It will bring much-needed recurring, predictable revenue.

You'll be able to plan your finances more effectively because you'll know when to expect the next round of payments.

Luckily, there are some handy WooCommerce plugins - especially the YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions extension - designed especially to help you build ongoing repeat income.

These plugins will back you up and help you tap into the power of recurring revenue.

The benefits of recurring revenue

It’s a no-brainer that you should go for a recurring-revenue business model, so let’s discuss a couple of its benefits:

1. Better stability No matter what industry you’re in, the unpredictability of the next purchase is one of the most daunting things when you start a new e-commerce shop. This issue can stretch beyond your cash flow and hinder the growth of your business in the long run. Enter recurring revenue backed by subscription-based business model, and here you are with the prospect of a steady income. It gives you more time and energy to focus on growing your customer base and improving your marketing efforts.
2. Improved retention Did you know that 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its loyal customers? The fact that your customers decide to get into a long-term business contract with you allows you to learn more about them and their needs. As a result, you’ll be able to additionally fine-tune and tweak your offers. Subsequently, you’ll improve their customer experience and boost your customer retention rate.
3. Targeted marketing A subscription-based model can give you valuable insight into your customers’ behavior. It gives you a huge amount of data on their interests, needs, and demands. This way you’ll be able to leverage different targeted marketing strategies, such as upselling, cross-selling, and recommendations. For example, Beeketing is a useful WooComerce plugin which can help you capitalize on these marketing strategies. It offers your customers exactly what they want or need, based on their previous purchases or viewed products.

Types of products and services that can be offered on a subscription basis

Before you offer to deliver your goods on a regular basis, ask yourself whether you sell products or services that your customers will need month after month.

It’s true that a new batch of toys for your kids every month or a 3-pack of socks biweekly doesn’t make much sense. However, don’t get upset because you can still offer a bimonthly or quarterly subscription on these.

Now, let’s see some examples of products which are a perfect match for a subscription-based model.

Baked goods make a great subscription product for WC. A pie of the month, a delivery of fresh croissants every weekend, or a box of pre-measured ingredients and instructions for your DIY baking challenge - what’s not to love?

A regular supply of pet food delivered to your door is a real time-saver, and it will help you avoid running out of treats for your beloved kitty or dog.

Office supplies, such as Xerox toner cartridges, ink cartridges, or paper, are needed on a regular basis, and you can bet that many people would find your subscription-model offer appealing and useful.

Cleaning supplies can be excellent for being offered on a regular subscription-based model because it’s hard to keep tabs on what cleaning product needs to be replenished. Just make sure to stand out by offering natural, chemical-free, or baby-safe products as many retailers provide this particular service.

Related tutorial: Complete Guide to Selling Services in WordPress and WooCommerce

Introducing WooCommerce Subscriptions

That’s where YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions comes in. This official plugin from woocommerce.com helps you set up different kinds of subscription plans and recurring model payments.

With this premium extension you’ll be able to sell both digital and physical products, offer various types of subscription frequencies-weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, or any other interval you define. You can keep track of the performance of each plan and package, and project your monthly revenue.

It’s worth noting that WooCommerce supports 25 payment methods, including PayPal, Stripe, and Wirecard. This means that your customers from all over the world can easily make repeat payments.

How to set up a WooCommerce subscription-based website

Plugins such as WooCommerce and WooCommerce Subscriptions are designed for anyone who is familiar with WordPress to set up. They come with comprehensive documentation that is easy to follow.

However, if all this sounds too complex, maybe it’s a good idea to check out this list of reliable e-commerce companies. They can help you design and maintain your website, product pages, and brand identity, as well as keep your Woo e-store running smoothly.

Related tutorial: How to list WooCommerce subscriptions in a searchable product table

Types of recurring payment plans

When it comes to deciding on the type of payment plan that you should offer to your customers, think about their needs and benefits, and try to align them with the kind of products or services you’re offering.

• Membership plans are common for all kinds of online platforms, tools, or services. You can create monthly, annual, and three- or six-month membership plans, but don’t forget that your customers will expect a discount for a long-term commitment.
• Subscription boxes are an interesting and fun way to promote new products and showcase them to customers by delivering them on a fixed schedule. All kinds of foods, snacks, cosmetics, and beauty products are suitable for this type of plan.
• The Subscribe for discounts option allows your customers to obtain a discount on the products they purchase on a regular basis. This brings you more sales and revenue.

Other WooCommerce plugins for selling more subscription products

Apart from the Subscriptions plugin, there are countless other WooCommerce plugins to help you establish recurring revenue and boost conversions.

Managing subscription products in WooCommerce

• WooCommerce Product Table is our bestselling plugin at Barn2 Media. It works beautifully with WooCommerce Subscriptions, listing your subscription products in a searchable table layout.
• WooCommerce Quick View Pro adds user-friendly lightboxes to show extra product information and purchase options. You can use it on its own or with WooCommerce Product Table. Customers can buy subscriptions directly from the quick view lightbox.
• WooCommerce Protected Categories is ideal if you want to sell subscriptions to a members-only discount club. List your subscription products in the public parts of your store, so that anyone can sign up. Then, use WooCommerce Protected Categories to create hidden categories that only logged in subscribers can access.
• YITH Waitlist asks your customers for their email address in case that the product they’re interested in is out of stock at the moment so that you can notify them after it becomes available again. Even if they don’t make a purchase right away, you can still make good use of the collected information. For example, send prospects your newsletters and email promotions.

Maximising sales of subscription products

• Abandoned Cart Lite targets customers who abandon items in their shopping cart and leave your e-store without converting. Given that the average online shopping cart abandonment rate reached almost 70%, this plugin will come in handy for bringing your prodigal customers back and pushing them gently towards the checkout.
• Review Reminder is a useful plugin for leveraging the power of social proof. Consumers are more likely to trust their peers than brands when it comes to product descriptions and quality. As a result, it’s a good idea to ask happy customers to leave a product review. This plugin will remind them to do so after a predefined period of time.
• WooCommerce Multilingual lets you localize your e-commerce website, translate your product pages in more than 60 languages, and allocate unique URLs for every version of the page. Besides that, you’ll be able to send emails to your customers in their native language. You can even express prices in different currencies. People are more willing to make a purchase if they see products and prices in their own language and currency. Therefore, this plugin removes language and psychological barriers. It's a great way to increase your sales and improve customer loyalty.

As you can see, the sky’s the limit. Use YITH WooCommerce subscriptions and related plugins to attract customers and keep them.

Many WooCommerce online stores are highly visual by nature. You may have noticed that your page layouts place a lot of emphasis on WooCommerce product images. However, what if you don’t have access to high-quality photographs for your products? Keep reading to learn how to create a WooCommerce product list without images.

While displaying lots of media can be very valuable for some stores, it’s not always necessary. In some cases, a featured image for your storefront and WordPress theme may be more than enough.

However, there's no need to worry if you have a different vision for your shop, or are constrained as to what type of WooCommerce product images to use. There are alternative ways you can display your products in an attractive and compelling manner, such as in a dynamic table:

In this post, we’re going to talk about the reasons you might want to create a WooCommerce list view with no product images, or with small images. We’ll also show you some examples of this feature in action, and introduce you to a tool you can use on your own site – WooCommerce Product Table.

Let’s jump right in!

The benefits of creating a WooCommerce product list without images

There’s no denying the power of visuals. In many cases, people use images as a key part of their decision-making process when buying items online. That’s why you’ll see so many stores that put a significant focus on what each product looks like:

However, the benefits of having large images only apply to certain types of product. Sometimes, you might want to avoid placing a lot of focus on product imagery. In fact, you may prefer to have no WooCommerce product images. Or you might want small product thumbnail product images, instead of high pixel imagery that takes over the page.

There are a lot of reasons your store might benefit from small product images, or no images at all:

• Lack of high-quality WooCommerce product images. Quite rightly, you don’t want to shortchange your products by using photos that don’t represent them at their best. This also applies to developers building sites for clients who’ve provided less-than-stellar product imagery (or nothing at all). Let's face it, we've all been there and received blurry product images from clients 😅.
• Your products are completely digital – such as ebooks, music albums, computer programs, or PDFs – and so there’s nothing to take images of.
• While your products are physical, they’re very simple or not interesting to look at. For instance, maybe you’re selling machine parts, or other items where appearance isn’t a key factor. Here, you may only need thumbnail-size catalog images, or none.
• Removing images places emphasis on your products’ details or specifications, rather than the way they look. It may be more important that your customers are able to compare a large number of items quickly, based on their sizes, materials, capacities, and so on.
• A WooCommerce product list without images will make your store load faster. High-quality images, are, by nature, large image files. If larger images fill your product gallery, they may slow your website’s loading time and hurt your SEO performance.

To give you some real-life example, here are some quotes from our own customers who wanted to have no product images:

My client HAD to have the table layout. The grid layout just does not work for boring electronic parts.

I’m selling digital goods that require little more than a thumbnail image, excerpt, title, and price. The product details page is largely redundant.

Most of the products we sell do not have pictures, and a list looks cleaner than a blank thumbnail.

Ultimately, not all stores need or can benefit from including a lot of large, dominant WooCommerce images.

Which WooCommerce products sell best with no image?

By now, you have some idea of the reasons a WooCommerce store might not have product images (or only use small, simple photos). However, you may still not be sure whether this applies in your specific situation.

To answer that question, you’ll want to consider the types of non-visual products you’re selling. Of course, we can’t possibly list all the types of items that fall into one of the categories discussed above. However, here are some examples of products that don’t need to rely on images:

• Lab products, scientific instruments, or medical devices
• Machine parts, electronic parts, blueprint templates and similar items
• Ground support equipment for airports
• Instrument cases (and other types of containers)
• Gift certificates
• Any sort of digital products (music, games, files, etc.)
• Pharmaceuticals
• Modular furniture (for example, a selection of various cupboard doors)
• Event tickets and registrations
• Certain food and beverage items, such as wine or spices
• Practical household items (such as fans)

Even if you do have access to images for these types of items, it can be a better choice to have no product images, or to keep them small. Customers are more interested in making comparisons and viewing details about your products than what they look like.

To further illustrate the point, let’s take a look at how having small WooCommerce product images might work in action.

Universal Fans: A case study of selling non-visual products in WooCommerce

As it turns out, there are a lot of e-commerce stores that have decided not to emphasize product imagery, and have found ways to do so successfully. For example, Universal Fans is a website selling – you guessed it – fans and similar products:

This store owner offers everything from ceiling fans to exhaust fans, and lists a wide range of products, parts, and options on its website. For some of those items, WooCommerce images do in fact matter. If you’re looking to buy a ceiling fan, for example, you probably care what it looks like:

Other types of fans are a lot less exciting to look at. For instance, there’s not much reason to include a single product image of an exhaust fan. What customers care about when searching for that type of product is its specifications, not its appearance.

The team at Universal Fans understand that fact, which is why they use product tables to display non-visual items:

This listing of exhaust fans does include WooCommerce product images, but they are small, simple, and basic thumbnail pictures. Instead, the focus is on the products’ key details, such as duct size, capacity, and wattage. Customers viewing this page can easily see all the different sizes and options on offer, make comparisons between them, and plan out exactly what they want to buy.

This is made even easier by the table’s dynamic design. Individual columns can be sorted, and there’s a handy search bar. Plus, you can use a dropdown menu at the top to filter the listing, and only include products with a specific duct size:

You could even create a table like this with no product images at all. As you can see, it wouldn’t make a significant different to the listing’s usefulness.

It’s clear that Universal Fans knows what its customers are interested in, and how they shop. That’s why this business has tailored the design of its e-commerce store to focus on the elements that really matter – which isn’t always WooCommerce product images.

How to create a WooCommerce product list without images

By this point, you probably have a good idea of whether or not listing WooCommerce products with no images (or with small, simple photos) would benefit your store.

If you’re using Woo to run your store, this can be a little tricky. After all, WooCommerce is designed with product images in mind. Its layouts assume that everyone will want to display large, high-quality images on individual product pages. But as we’ve seen, this isn’t always the best approach.

That doesn't mean you can’t use WooCommerce, however. After all, it’s an easy and flexible way to set up an e-commerce shop. Instead, the solution is to pick up an additional tool as well – the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

This WP plugin is designed to work right alongside WooCommerce. More specifically, it enables you to create a dynamic product listing with no product images or with small thumbnails:

While this plugin has many applications, it’s especially useful if you want to create a WooCommerce product list without images, or keep the photos understated. Let’s talk about why.

How WooCommerce Product Table can display your inventory more effectively

At first, WooCommerce Product Table may seem like a simple tool. Its goal is straightforward – helping you design a better product listing for your WooCommerce store.

Check out the Woo Product Table demo!

However, there are a lot more benefits to using this plugin than you might at first expect. Some of its key features include:

• Enabling you to fully customize the information that appears in your product table.
• Letting customers search, sort, and filter the table to find what they need quickly.
• Keeping all your products and their key information organized.
• Saving space by displaying everything on a single page.
• Making it possible to list your store’s entire inventory in a single shop page, or to pick and choose. which items you want to include.

As one customer put it:

We sell relatively technical products, so it is really helpful for customers to be able to see products in certain categories and view them in a list format, which can be sorted by custom attributes.

What’s more, there are a variety of ways you can use WooCommerce Product Table to display products with no images, or to draw visitors’ focus to other key elements. Here are just a few of the ways you can customize your product table:

• You can remove WooCommerce product images entirely, by simply not including them in your table.
• Alternately, you can include a product image column, but keep the photos small.
• You’re also able to customize the image dimensions in your table, so you have complete control over how prominent they are.

Instead of putting all the focus on images, the product image settings in WooCommerce Product Table help you display what is important about the items you’re selling. That helps to sell your products more effectively, leading to increased conversions.

How to get started with WooCommerce Product Table

At this point, all that’s left is to start using WooCommerce Product Table for yourself. Watch this video or follow the written instructions below:

1. Get WooCommerce Product Table and install it on your WordPress site.
2. Activate your license key in the setup wizard which opens automatically. You'll find the license key in your order confirmation email.
3. Now go to the plugin settings page at WooCommerce → Settings → Product tables. Choose the following options:
   • Shop page display - If you want to use the table layout on all your shop pages, tick the relevant boxes. Alternatively, you can insert the table by adding the [product_table] shortcode anywhere on your site.
   • Columns - Choose which columns to include in the table. Remove the default 'Image' column if you want to hide images from the shop pages.
   • WooCommerce product image size - If you're keeping the image column but want small single product images, then enter the desired size in pixels.

Now view the page where you added the product table. This might be the shop page or wherever you added the shortcode. It should look something like this, if you opted to have small product images:

Or maybe there's no product image column at all.

How do images in the table work?

By default, customers can click on the WooCommerce product images to open them in a lightbox. If you're working with poor-quality or blurry images, small resolution or image sizes, there's an option on the plugin settings page to disable the lightbox. That way, customers will only see the small version of each product image.

You can also disable the links from the product table to the single product page. This keeps the customer on the product table, where they can use it as a one-page order form. There's no need for them to access the product detail page, which will display a much bigger version of each WooCommerce product image.

For more information, you can take a look at the complete list of options in WooCommerce Product Table. With a little time and tweaking, you’ll find it easy to list WooCommerce products with no images.

Bonus tip - Add WooCommerce quick view without images

As you can see, it's easy to list products in a table layout without images. You can build on this by providing extra product information and purchase options within quick view lightboxes - also with no product images!

To do this, you need to use WooCommerce Product Table with our other plugin - Quick View Pro. This adds a 'quick view' column to the product table, which customers can click to open extra information in a lightbox. You can choose what information to include in the quick view, including:

• Whether to show product information with or without an image gallery. (If you're reading this tutorial, then you probably want the lightbox option without no product images!)
• Product data such as the price, categories, tags and reviews.
• Add to cart information including the quantity picker, variation dropdowns and add to cart button.

WooCommerce quick view is an excellent way of providing extra information about non-visual products. Use it to encourage customers to buy more and immediately return to the product list, without being taken to a separate page for each product.

Get WooCommerce Quick View

Create a non-visual WooCommerce checkout

The next or the final step in an ideal buyer’s journey is the cart and checkout pages. The default WooCommerce cart page is designed to show the product images alongside the product list and there’s no option in the settings to disable the images. But, if you want to create a true non-visual shopping experience, this can be achieved by our WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin.

WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin is designed to increase conversions by providing a more seamless checkout experience by trimming down the long and tedious traditional WooCommerce checkout process.

The WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin features a custom popup cart and checkout window that comes with loads of customization options and one of those options is to remove product images from the cart page.

You can use this plugin in combination with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to give your store visitors a complete non-visual shopping experience.

After installing and activating the WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Fast Cart, and in the cart contents section, deselect the product image item and the product images will not be displayed on the cart page. Simple as that!

WooCommerce Fast Cart is perfect for giving your shoppers a more streamlined and swift checkout experience. Using it can reduce the cart abandonment rate by shortening the checkout process.

Product images matter - but not for every store!

WooCommerce is an excellent way to design and run an online store. At the same time, it isn’t perfect. It makes certain assumptions about the kind of shop you want to create. For instance, it provides few options for helping you build an e-commerce store that doesn’t rely on large, high-quality WooCommerce images.

If you don’t have product images or can only access low-quality photos, you’re in luck. The WooCommerce Product Table plugin makes it simple to design a WooCommerce product list with no images, or to display small images instead.

Do you have any questions about how to use WooCommerce Product Table on your own site? Let us know in the comments section below!

Most online stores work by charging customers at the time they place their order. But what if you want customers to have a balance or virtual wallet, where they add credit and use this to pre-pay for their orders? Or what if you want customers to place orders online, and then pay later by paying off their balance at the end of the month?

Today, I'm going to show you how to use WooCommerce Product Table with some other plugins to create a WooCommerce pay later system for regular customers. We'll do it using off-the-shelf plugins, and you don't need any technical expertise or coding skills.

Let's get started!

Example use case - school website for parent ordering and payments

Before we start, let's look at a typical use case that will benefit from WooCommerce pay later plugin. This is actually a real-life example, as one of our WooCommerce Product Table customers expressed an interest in a credit system for their store.

Many schools save time and reduce administrative costs by creating an online system for managing parents' payments and balances. Parents use the system to order school dinners, snacks, school uniform, and school trips. They can login and pay online, add funds, or top up their balance.

When a parent places an order for school dinners or snacks, they are not required to pay straight away. This is crucial because parents might order on a regular basis, and most schools prefer them to pay later or take payment from a pre-paid balance. That's what makes a WooCommerce pay later system different from a typical WooCommerce store.

As well as a credit-based pay later plugin, the school needs some other features that are different from other WP and WooCommerce websites.

Since parents are ordering the same products (i.e. school meals and snacks) on a regular basis, a standard e-commerce store layout is not appropriate. They don't want to spend hours browsing through multiple pages and large images of each school lunch option! Instead, products should be listed in a structured table layout where parents can quickly make their choices and add to the cart.

Many WooCommerce pay later websites are also aimed at pre-approved customers only, such as parents of children at a school. As a result, they need a way to hide the ordering and payment pages from public view. The school might be using WordPress for their main website, but only parents should have access to the private parent area for ordering school dinners and making payments online.

What plugins will I need?

I'm going to tell how to achieve all of this by creating a WordPress WooCommerce plugin with 3 handy extensions. You will need:

• A WordPress website.
• The free Woocommerce plugin.
• A WooCommerce pay later plugin for letting customers top up their balance and use it to pay for orders.
• WooCommerce Product Table to list products in a space-saving order form that will help your repeat customers.
• (Optional) A WooCommerce privacy plugin to create hidden, protected areas for your store.

Keep reading to learn how to choose the best plugins for your WooCommerce credit system, and how to set them up.

Step 1. Set up WooCommerce

The first step is to set up WooCommerce and add your products:

1. Install the free WooCommerce plugin on your WordPress website. The WooCommerce Setup Wizard makes this easy. You can also use the official documentation for extra tips on getting started.
2. Next, add a product for each item that you want parents to be able to buy. For example, if you're a school then you'll probably want to create 1 product called 'School Lunch', and another for 'Snack' or 'School Trip - London'. You can also add items of school uniform as individual products, with a variation for each size option.
3. Use WooCommerce to set up payment gateways, depending on how you want customers to be able to pay and top up their balance. I recommend PayPal and Stripe, which are both very easy to set up. These payment gateways will cater for customers who like to use PayPal, and those who prefer to pay with credit or debit card.

Step 2. Add a WooCommerce pay later plugin

The next step is to transform your store into a WooCommerce pay later system where customers can add credit and use their balance to pay for their orders. To do this, you need to add a WooCommerce credit plugin.

Use the documentation to set it up.

Account Funds is an official WooCommerce extension available from woocommerce.com. It gives customers an online wallet on your WordPress website, where they can add funds, top up their balance, and pay for orders using their balance.

Account Funds works perfectly with YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions. This is ideal if you want customers to set up an automatic monthly payment to pay off a set amount each month. It's a good alternative to having to top up their balance manually every time.

Get Account Funds

Step 3. List your products in a table

As I mentioned earlier, WooCommerce websites with credit systems and online balances are aimed at repeat customers. This means that the traditional WooCommerce store layout isn't suitable.

By default, your store will list products in a grid layout with about 3 products per row and large images. Customers will have to click through to a separate page for each product in order to choose quantities, variations, and add to the cart. Obviously, that's no use for customers who know what they want and need to order quickly.

Instead, you need a quick WooCommerce order form layout which lists products in a user-friendly table. You'll need the WooCommerce Product Table plugin for this:

WooCommerce Product Table takes the products that you added in Step 1, and lists them in a quick order form with quantity pickers, variation dropdowns, and more. This is a much better way to sell to regular customers who are already familiar with your product offering.

Collect extra information with each order

The other good news is that WooCommerce Product Table integrates nicely with the Product Options plugin. Extra product field plugins like this are perfect for repeat ordering because they let you add extra fields where customers can provide additional information.

For example, if you're a school creating an online ordering and payments system for parents, then parents need a way to indicate which day of the week their child requires school dinners. If they have more than one child, then they'll also need to confirm which child the order relates to. You can easily do this with the Product Options add-on. For example, check out our separate tutorial about how to create a daily order form with WooCommerce Product Table and Product Options.

Alternatively, if you want to collect information for the entire order rather than each specific product, then you can do this with the WooCommerce YITH Checkout Manager plugin.

Step 4. Create private and hidden shopping areas

Some WooCommerce pay later websites are open to the public, and anyone can register and order. If that's you, then you can skip this step. Or if you only want specific people to be able to add credit and place an order, then keep reading.

I'm going to let you choose between 2 plugins for this bit. Which plugin you choose depends on whether you want to make your entire WC store private (e.g. a school selling exclusively to parents), or whether you want to show different products to different people (e.g. a university with a public shop, a hidden staff store, and a hidden shop for alumni).

Related tutorial: How to use WooCommerce to Sell Protected Products to Schools

Plugin option 1 - WooCommerce Private Store

WooCommerce Private Store provides a ridiculously easy way to hide the shop parts of your WordPress site from public view.

The non e-commerce parts of your website will remain available for everyone for view. This is perfect if this is also your main company or school website.

All the WooCommerce-related content - such as the shop page, product pages, cart and account pages - will be hidden from public view. You can choose whether to let people unlock the store using a simple password, or whether the store will automatically unlock when they log into their individual user accounts.

For example, a school might be using WordPress for their main school website. They use Woo Private Store to create a hidden e-commerce area where parents can order school dinners and school uniform, top up their balance, and pay later on a monthly basis or whenever they choose.

Plugin option 2 - WooCommerce Protected Categories

If you need to sell different products to different people, or if you need to sell to the public as well as privately, then you'll need WooCommerce Protected Categories instead.

WooCommerce Protected Categories offers more fine-grained control over who can access different parts of your store. For example, you can use it to have a public shop and one or more private areas that are hidden from public view. You can use it to let anyone browse your shop, but require them to login or enter a password before they can make a purchase. You can also use it to create multiple hidden shops, for example a parents shop and a teachers shop.

Conclusion

Straight out of the box, it's not possible to create a WooCommerce online shop with the ability for customers to manage their balance and pay later. However, you can easily achieve this by adding some extra plugins.

Choose the plugins that fit the specific needs of your website, and start setting it up today!

In this article, we've talked about how to create a WooCommerce pay later credit system for parents at a school. This is just one use case and I'd love to hear why you need a similar system for your own store. Please let us know in the comments below!

Hello again! This week we’ve shown you some of the many variables affecting your eCommerce sales. We showed you some benchmark statistics, and then how to increase your conversion rate.

The key takeaway was this: to improve conversion rates, it’s vital you make the most of your website traffic, and remove any barriers getting in the way of your customers making purchases.

Our most popular plugin, WooCommerce Product Table, does exactly this in minutes.

Here’s a quick recap of just some of the ways it can increase your sales:

• Table and list layouts make it easy for customers to view your products, without the need to navigate through lots of pages.
• Using instant search, sort and filter, your customers can quickly find the products they want.
• “Buy” buttons let your customers select and buy products all in one place.
• It’s fully responsive, so your customers can buy on any device, including mobile.
• Multiple product selection boosts the value of each transaction.
• The auto-refreshing cart powered by AJAX reduces bounce rate by removing the need for page refreshes.

When you buy WooCommerce Product Table, there’s absolutely no risk in trying it for yourself, thanks to our full money back guarantee :)

Buy WooCommerce Product Table today and start increasing your conversion rate.

Buy Plugin

Hello! Yesterday, we introduced you to our bestselling plugin: WooCommerce Product Table.

This plugin helps increase the conversion rate of your WooCommerce store.

Today, we want to share more insight into overcoming the barriers affecting your conversion rate.

We'll show you how more than 3,500 e-commerce shop owners, just like you, have boosted their sales with WooCommerce Product Table.

Sell more products

John runs a WooCommerce store, and was struggling to increase the average order value of purchases. He added WooCommerce Product Table to his site, and has increased the average number of items per order by three times. Here’s what he has to say:

"Before I installed I was lucky to get orders with three items, now I AVERAGE ten products per order. Support is also really good too. I highly recommend this plugin." - John

WooCommerce Product Table helps you sell more products by letting you display as many products as you like in one easy to navigate table. This lets customers quickly sort to find the products they want – and helps you sell more, just as John did.

Increase conversions

Joe also runs a WooCommerce store, and was struggling to ensure his clients could sort through his products in order to find what they want. WooCommerce Product Table helps Joe’s clients quickly find what they’re after, increasing his conversion rate. Here’s what Joe has to say:

"I love how the products load fast to make it a smooth operation for my clients to find the products to add to their order. The display of the columns and the ability to filter the product categories is a great help." – Joe

You can enjoy the same boost to your conversion rate by adding WooCommerce Product Table to your site. Plus, it even works seamlessly on tablet and mobile :)

Outstanding customer support

If you need help, we’re here for you: we understand you’ll occasionally need help, and we’re on hand to promptly and efficiently get your issues fixed.

You shouldn’t just take our word for it. Here’s one of many gracious testimonials our current customers have left for us:

"Barn2 not only make fantastic plugins that just work very easily but the customer service is second to none. We will be using them for many future projects. There’s nothing better than a dependable product, well there is it’s dependable customer service — and they have that too." - Rob

We hope you’ll join our list of very happy customers, and be like Rob :)

More reviews and example websites

You can read dozens more reviews just like these on the WooCommerce Product Table reviews page. Read the full list of reviews, or search for reviews about your exact use case.

We've also published a plugin showcase, where you can see real-life examples of other WooCommerce stores who have improved their conversion rates.

Can we boost your conversion rate, and make your customers happier?

Now that you’ve heard how other WooCommerce store owners have benefited from our plugin, are you ready to join them?

WooCommerce Product Table comes with regular updates and personal support for 1 year. We think you’re going to love how quick and easy it is to setup and customize.

Hello! Yesterday, we told you about some of the factors affecting your WooCommerce conversion rate.

Today, as promised, we’re going to show you how to address these and increase your conversion rate.

Convert traffic into sales, quickly

On top of getting traffic to your site, it’s vital to remove any barriers which are getting in the way of users making a purchase.

To do this you’ll need to maximise the value proposition and present it in a way that appeals to your customers.

Your website’s usability is also a key factor – it needs to be intuitive, quick, and easy to navigate. Most store owners just use the default layouts that come with WooCommerce or your theme, but that may not be the best way to sell your products.

All this sounds like a lot of work – and that’s why we created a WordPress plugin to make this easy. We created WooCommerce Product Table for WooCommerce store owners just like you: it’s an easy way to display your products in a fully responsive, interactive grid on your website.

This allows your visitors to quickly get all the information they need to make a purchasing decision – and thus increases your conversion rate. I put together a list of ten ways the plugin does this in this post, which you can read for more detail :)

10 Tips: Increase Your WooCommerce Conversion Rate with Product Tables

Essentially, the plugin removes the barriers which get in the way of users buying your products. If you’ve got a lot of data or comparison points for your products, this is the plugin for you.

Get WooCommerce Product Table and increase your conversion rate in minutes

You can see WooCommerce Product Table on your website. Or, if you’d prefer: play around with the live demo here.