Articles About WooCommerce

All WooCommerce stores share a single aim: To increase conversions and get more sales. Whatever your wider business goals, that's what it all comes down to!

If you Google 'WooCommerce conversion rate optimization', you'll find lots of general advice on how to convert more visitors into paying customers. This usually focusses on improvements to the cart and checkout. These are important, but often forget that you need to convince customers to buy your products in the first place.

In this article, I'm going to do the opposite. I'll provide specific and actionable tips on how you can convince customers to add more products to their cart using a specific tool: product tables.

WooCommerce product tables are an excellent tool for increasing your sales. By adding well designed table layouts to your store, you can present products in user-friendly ways that make it easier for customers to buy from you.

What is a WooCommerce product table?

A WooCommerce product tables lists products in a structured table layout. This will consist of rows and columns, with each product as a separate row in the table.

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin is the easiest way to create a table view for your store. It comes with dozens of options, and saves having to code complex table layouts from scratch.

Product tables sound simple, but they provide lots of opportunities to optimise your WooCommerce conversion rate. Read on to discover how to get more sales by listing products in a table layout.

#1 - Display sales-winning product data in the table

Most store owners don't stop to consider what product data to include on the WooCommerce shop pages. Big mistake!

WooCommerce and your theme will display pre-defined information on the shop and category pages. This typically includes the product image, title, price, ratings and add to cart button. But what if this isn't the data that will convince your customers to buy?

WooCommerce Product Table lets you choose exactly what data to provide on product listing pages. Each piece of information is displayed as a column in the product table. The plugin supports all the standard product data such as SKU, name, short and full description, categories, tags, featured image, reviews, stock, size, and price. If this isn't enough, you can also show custom product data by creating custom fields and taxonomies.

With so many possible columns, you have full control over the product information in the table. Think carefully about what data your customers need to see on each page. If your product tables have links to the single product page, the aim is to provide enough information to inspire customers to click through and learn more.

If your WooCommerce tables include add to cart buttons, they'll need to include enough data to decide to buy without clicking elsewhere.

Don't just add columns to your WooCommerce product tables because you can. Think carefully about all the available columns. Only use the ones that will actively convince customers to buy your products.

Examples - choosing the right product data for your store

• A WooCommerce wholesale order form might use product tables to show as many products as possible per page. Wholesale customers already know what they want to order, so they don't need images or descriptions. The product table will therefore contain columns with factual data such as SKU or ID, name, attributes, and multi-select checkboxes.
• A WooCommerce restaurant order system might use product tables with a small image of each dish, plus columns for name, short description, price, and add to cart buttons. It might also include custom fields and taxonomy to show extra information such as calorie count and meat-free labels.

See the knowledge base for a list of all the product data you can show in the WooCommerce table layout.

#2 - Make it easier to buy with add to cart buttons & checkboxes

Amazingly, WooCommerce Product Table comes with 3 options for adding products to the cart. Well, there are 4 options really, as you'll see below:

1. 'Add to cart' button for each product.
2. Multi-select checkbox to add multiple products to the cart.
3. Use the add to cart button and checkbox together, giving customers a choice.
4. Perhaps you want customers to buy on the single product page instead of directly from the table. You can include a button linking to the single product page instead of (or as well as) having add to cart buttons.

How to choose an add to cart button type

First, you need to decide whether add to cart buttons will help or hurt your WooCommerce conversion rate optimization.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. It depends on the type of products you sell, and how much information your customers need to convince them to buy.

Some tips

• Do you sell high value products, where customers spend a long time reading and researching before deciding to purchase? If so, it's often best not to include add to cart buttons in your product table at all. Instead, add a 'Details' button linking to the single product page. Or don't bother with buttons at all, as customers can click on the title to access the product details. Once customers click through to view more information, they can spend more time reading full details, reviews, and other data that will convince them to buy. They will only click the 'Add to cart' button after they have read all the information, so there's no point including them in the product table view.
• Do you want to disable online ordering, with different calls to action? This article is about optimizing your WooCommerce conversion rate. However, conversions don't have to be online sales. You might sell your products offline, for example via phone or in person. If this is you, then you can create a product table without add to cart buttons. You can disable all the links in the table so that customers can't click through to the single product page at all. Instead, create a custom field with a different call to action - for example, a 'Call us now' button. Show this as a column in the product table, encouraging customers to do whatever action counts as a conversion for you.

And what about multiple purchases?

• Do customers buy one product at a time? If customers are likely to order single products only, then the best option is a single add to cart button for each product in the table. For example, if you're selling hot tubs then customers will only ever buy one, so there's no need for multi-select boxes.
• Do you want customers to buy several different products? Lots of WooCommerce stores want customers to buy as many products as possible. This applies to all sorts of store including clothing websites, online food ordering systems for restaurants, and shops selling low-value products such as stationery. If this is you, then you can vastly increase your income by taking steps to increase the average order value. It's more profitable to increase your average order value than to attract more low value customers - for example, because it reduces advertising and support costs. Multi-select checkboxes are a great way to do this. Customers can quickly tick all the products they want, and add them all to their basket in a single click. Nice!

Use quantity pickers to sell more products

If your product tables have add to cart buttons, then it might also be worth adding a quantity selector. This is always worth doing if you want customers to buy more than one of each product.

For example, if you're selling pens then having 'add to cart' buttons without a quantity picker will encourage customers to buy one pen at a time. This isn't what you want! In contrast, adding a quantity selector will unconsciously prompt customers to stock up and buy more. This is another great way to increase the average order value, which can hugely increase your revenue.

#3 - Should the product table link to the single product page?

We've already touched on this, but let's delve deeper into the question of whether to use the single product page. The great thing about WooCommerce Product Table is that you can choose whether or not to have a separate 'Details' page for each product.

By default, customers can click on any product in the WooCommerce table to access the product details page. If you like, you can also add buttons linking to the product pages.

This is ideal if customers will want to see more information about your products than you can include in the table. However, not all stores will benefit from using the single product page.

Some examples

• WooCommerce quick order forms simplify the buying process by keeping everything on the product table page. There's no need for customers to click through to separate pages.
• Read-only product catalogues provide information about each product, without an option to buy. The single product page includes Buy buttons, so you may want to remove access to these pages.
• WooCommerce wholesale stores are for regular trade customers who already know what they want. They want to order quickly from the wholesale order form, without having to click elsewhere.

To stop customers accessing the product details page, you can disable these links in the product table. When they view the products in the table, the only action they can take is to buy!

#4 - Use quick view to give your conversions an added boost

As you can see from these top 13 tips, product tables are a fabulous way to convert more customers into paying customers.

In many ways, it boils down to using one-page shopping as an alternative to sending customers to a separate page for each product. This in turn speeds up the buying process and encourages customers to buy multiple products at once.

But what happens if your customers need more information than you can fit into the product table layout? Sure, you can add extra columns to show information in the table view. However, some types of product do need extra information. Or they may have too many variations to fit into one-page shopping. So how do you provide extra information without requiring extra page loads?

The answer is to add WooCommerce quick view to your product tables. 

The Quick View Pro plugin adds quick view buttons or links to WooCommerce Product Table. Customers use these to view the full product image gallery and read extra information such as the short description in a lightbox popup. They can even choose variations, quantities and add to the cart directly from the lightbox.

This is the perfect way to provide extra product details without taking customers away from the product table page. Customers remain on the list of products throughout the process, offering true one-page shopping with an extra boost.

#5 - Use variations & add-ons to optimize your WooCommerce conversion rate

Do you sell product options or variations? WooCommerce Product Table fully supports variable products, and add-ons creating using the WooCommerce Product Options plugin.

There are 3 user-friendly ways for customers to choose a variation before adding a product to the cart. If you're using the add-ons plugin then you can also add various combinations of check boxes, text input fields, radio buttons and more. To increase your WooCommerce conversion rates, present options in a way that will make customers more likely to buy:

Think about which option will maximise your WooCommerce conversion rate optimization. Again, different types of store will benefit from presenting variations and add-ons in different ways.

For example:

1. Show variations as dropdown lists if you have lots of products. The dropdowns let you save space by listing as many products as possible per page.
2. List variations on separate rows if you have a small number of products and want to draw more attention to each variation. For instance, you might sell a single product but offer it in several variations. The best way to sell this product using a table view is to list each variation as a separate row in the table.
3. Use add-on fields if the logic of variations doesn't meet your needs - for example, if you want customers to be able to select multiple options.

#6 - Use image sizes that will sell your products

The great thing about WooCommerce product tables is that you have full control over the images. Most WooCommerce themes display product images in a standard size. This may not present your products in a way that will show them off and maximise conversions.

When creating product tables, think about what image size will sell your products most effectively.

How to get your product images right

• Do you need product images at all? Lots of WooCommerce websites upload an image for each product, just because the theme expects them to. This leads to some strange results, such as huge images to promote non-visual products such as e-books. Think about whether images will attract customers to your products, or whether they'd prefer a text-based layout with more products per page.
• How big should the images be? Again, most WooCommerce stores use big images because the theme automatically sizes them. Images take up a lot of space and reduce the number of products that will fit on each page. Only use big images if they actively help to sell your product. Many types of product will benefit from an image, but a small thumbnail is enough. For example, a WooCommerce website selling spare automobile parts need product images to reassure customers that it's the right part. However, customers aren't buying based on what the part actually looks like, so it's best to keep the images small.
• What about the image proportions? The most popular WooCommerce themes require square images. This may not be ideal, for example if you're selling a tall and thin product such as clothes.

By listing products in a WooCommerce table layout, you can choose whether or not to include an image column. If you add featured images, you have full control over the image size and dimensions. This is an opportunity to improve WooCommerce conversion rates by making your images more appropriate and ensuring they will actively sell your products.

Experiment with the image size option to get the perfect balance to sell your products. Try to achieve a balance between creating images that will make customers want to buy, and fitting the optimal number of products onto each page.

#7 - Use social proof to convince customers to buy

Research shows that almost 70% of customers read reviews before making a purchase, and having customer reviews on your website can increase conversions by nearly 75%.

This highlights the power of social proof as a tool for WooCommerce conversion rate optimization.

There are several easy ways to include social proof in your WooCommerce product tables. Think about the best way to use them to sell your products:

• Product reviews Include a 'Reviews' column in the product table. This is built into the table plugin and shows each product's average star rating. Customers can click to read full reviews on the single product page.
• Product audio & video reviews Word of mouth is the best sales tool. Leverage this by adding audio or video testimonials from happy customers, with embedded players in the product table. People can click the 'Play' button to watch or listen to customers talking about why they should buy each product. What better way to convince them to buy?

#8 - Find creative ways to bring your products to life

With WooCommerce Product Table, you can think of exciting new ways to bring your products to life. This can have a big impact on your conversion rate.

You can be really inventive here, as the WooCommerce table plugin supports shortcodes from your theme and other plugins. This means that you can add content provided by other shortcodes and display them in the product table.

For example, you might have promotional videos or 360 degree tours to promote your products. You can embed them directly in the product table. Customers can see the product in action without having to click elsewhere.

#9 - Make your products easy to find

So far, we've looked at some conversion-winning ways to display products with WooCommerce Product Table. That's all well and good, but your sales will only increase if it's quick and easy for customers to find the products they want in the table.

If customers have to scroll through lots of products to find what they're looking for, they'll quickly give up and look elsewhere. This increases your bounce rates and reduces conversions.

To get the most benefit from your product tables, you need to design them in a way that makes it super-easy for customers to find products. If you only have a few products, this isn't really an issue. But if you have a large product catalog, then it becomes incredibly important.

How many product tables do you need?

First, decide how many product tables you need. You can list your entire inventory in a single product table. Or, you can create multiple tables, each containing different products.

There are several ways to use multiple product tables on your WooCommerce site:

• Multiple product tables on a single page One option is to divide up a single page with multiple product tables. For example, a WooCommerce restaurant might create a single page for ordering their foods online. They would structure the page with a heading for each section of their menu (Starters, Main Courses, etc.), followed by a product table listing foods from that category. Alternatively, they can create a tabbed layout or accordion with a product table in each section. Customers can select their foods and place an order from this one-page order form.
• Product tables on separate pages Alternatively, you can add product tables to different pages across your site. The tables might replace your standard WooCommerce product category page layout. Customers can navigate between pages via the navigation menu, sidebar links and other internal links.

How will customers search, sort and filter the WooCommerce table?

WooCommerce Product Table comes with lots of ways to help customers find products in the table. To optimize your WooCommerce conversion rate, don't just activate them all! Think about the number of products in the table and how customers will use it. Armed with this knowledge, you can add search and filter options that will be most useful to your customers.

First, think about whether you need to make it easier to find products. If you only have a few products, then there's no need to clutter up the table with a search box or filters. Instead, keep it minimal - this draws more attention to your products.

If you have lots of products, then you can definitely improve your WooCommerce conversion rate by adding extra search and filter options.

Search & filter options

• Sort columns Customers can click on any column to sort the table by that column. The sort arrows appear automatically and make it easier for your customers. You can also change the default sort order for when the WooCommerce table first loads.
• Keyword search box By default, a search box appears above the table. There are options to hide or reposition this. Keep it if customers might want to search for a product by typing a particular keyword. For example, this can be a life-safer if customers already know the name, ID or SKU of the product they're looking for.
• Filter dropdowns You can show filter dropdowns above the table to let customers filter by category, tag, attributes, variations, etc.
• WooCommerce filter widgets The product table plugin comes with its own version of the built-in WooCommerce filter widgets. These let you filter the table by selecting a product attribute, price, or rating in the sidebar.

Add even better filters with WooCommerce Product Filters

As you can see, WooCommerce Product Table comes with lots of options for adding filter dropdowns and widgets. For even more flexibility, you can use it with its sister plugin - WooCommerce Product Filters.

This comes with a huge range of filter styles and the ability to filter by any type of product data.

#10 - Let customers sample products before deciding whether to commit

Lots of products - e.g. curtains, make-up or paint colors - are difficult to sell online. Customers simply can't tell whether the product is suitable based on pictures on a screen. That's when you need WooCommerce Product Sample to improve your conversion rate.

When you use WooCommerce Product Table with product samples, it works like this:

1. The customer views the products in the product table. Each product or variation has an 'Order Sample' button as well as the usual 'Buy' button.
2. If the customer wants to compare sample items in their own home, then they simply order a sample of each product.
3. The WooCommerce Product Sample plugin sends them a friendly email a few days later to ask which was their favorite and remind them to order the full product.

Product samples give customers 100% certainty that they're ordering the right thing, removing the risk factor - and therefore improving your WooCommerce conversion rate. You can choose whether or not to charge for samples or delivery, so it's a great opportunity to boost conversions at no cost to you. The product table is particularly useful for ordering samples because customers can see all the options on one page.

#11 - Let customers complete their order without leaving the page

As we have seen, WooCommerce Product Table makes it super-fast to find and add products. After that, customers complete their order using the standard WooCommerce cart and checkout pages.

To supercharge the customer journey even more, you can replace the multi-page checkout process with an on-page cart popup. WooCommerce Fast Cart lets customers view their cart, pay and complete their order from within the popup cart. This all happens directly on the product table page, so there's zero chance that your customers will get bored and give up. That can give a nice boost to your WooCommerce conversion rate.

#12 - Increase the WooCommerce conversion rate for mobile users

WooCommerce Product Table is responsive and mobile-friendly straight out of the box. Resize your browser to see the table resize before your eyes.

Even so, you can take further steps to increase your WooCommerce conversion rate for mobile users. This is definitely worth doing, as most stores have higher bounce rates for mobile users. It's more of a challenge to create a good buying experience on mobiles compared to larger screens.

How to perfect your product tables on mobiles

By default, the WooCommerce table plugin will automatically prioritise which columns are visible on mobiles. If you have too many columns to fit onto smaller screen sizes, then some columns will be hidden. Customers can click a small cross icon to view the hidden columns.

This may or may not be the best way to maximise your mobile conversion rates. WooCommerce Product Table has several responsive options to control how the table works on mobiles. This includes:

• Priorities Choose which columns are visible and which are hidden on mobiles. Use this option to make sure the most important columns are always visible, such as the product name and add to cart buttons.
• Responsive Display Choose what happens when not all the data in the table will fit on the screen. Instead of hiding columns behind the cross icon, you can show it all by default, or let it appear in a modal window.

By perfecting your store's user-experience on mobiles, you can optimize your WooCommerce conversion rates for mobile users and get more sales.

#13 - Measure the impact of your WooCommerce conversion rate optimization

If you're making improvements designed to increase conversion rates, it's important to make sure they actually work! Conversion tracking lets you monitor your conversions in an evidence-based way. Make each improvement one at a time, and track the impact on your WooCommerce conversion rate. Use this information to do more of what works best, and less of what doesn't.

Google Analytics is the best tool to track conversions in WooCommerce. You can easily set it up using a free WordPress plugin such as WooCommerce Conversion Tracking. Once it's in place, check your Google Analytics regularly. Dive into the data and learn about where your best referrals come from, who your best customers are, and much more.

You'll also want to discover how the product tables are affecting your WooCommerce conversion rate. By default, Google Analytics doesn't record data about changes you make to your website. However, you can use a little-known option to record the improvements you make, and view them alongside the conversion rate tracking data.

How to record website edits in Google Analytics

1. Go to any screen in Google Analytics that has an Overview chart (similar to the line graph shown below).
2. Click on the tiny up arrow underneath the chart.
3. Click 'Create new annotation'.
4. Select the date when you made each change to your website (e.g. adding product tables), and add some text describing the change.

Remember to create an annotation every time you do something that might affect your conversion rate optimization. The date of each animation will appear as a dot on the chart. When you're viewing your WooCommerce conversion rate data, if there are any major changes in the graph then you can easily see which change/annotation they were caused by.

For example, adding product tables should increase your WooCommerce conversion rate. If you see a sudden spike in the conversion rate tracking chart, you can easily see if it happened after you added the product tables.

It's time to optimize your WooCommerce conversion rate!

Conversion rate optimization is a cost-effective way to invest in improving the success of your store. With a bit of time and the cost of a plugin, you can see an immediate increase in your sales which will continue well into the future.

The amazing thing about improving the conversion rate is that you can increase your WooCommerce store's revenue without spending any extra on marketing or customer acquisition. If you're already getting a decent amount of traffic, then conversion rate optimization increases your sales for very little effort.

As you've seen, WooCommerce product tables provide lots of opportunities to increase conversions. Of course, you'll see the greatest success if you combine WooCommerce conversion rate optimization with other ways to increase revenue.

How to get even more conversions

• Make sure nothing else is putting customers off buying from you. For example, is your pricing competitive?
• You need to ensure that each part of the buying process will maximise your sales. Product tables will convince customers to buy your products, but don't forget about optimizing your cart and checkout too. Here's a link to a comprehensive guide on how to optimize your cart and checkout based on real human behavior. Kinsta have also published a definitive guide to boosting your WooCommerce store sales.

To start increasing your WooCommerce store revenue, get WooCommerce Product Table today and follow the tips in this article. Combine it with excellent products at the right prices, and enjoy healthy sales well into the future.

Our bestselling plugin, WooCommerce Product Table, has a new option to display product variations on their own row in a table. We've also added support for individual variation images.

This means that there are now 3 ways to display product variations in a table:

1. The original method of displaying variations as dropdown lists in the add to cart column.
2. The new method of listing each variation on its own row.
3. Or alternatively, customers can click through to select variations on the single product page.

Lots of customers have asked for an option to separate variations and list them as individual rows in the table, as if they were unique products. So we're pleased to have added this feature, and hope you find it a useful way to display variable products.

Keep reading to learn all about this exciting new feature.

How does the new option to display product variations work?

WooCommerce Product Table has a new option which breaks out variable products into their individual variations. It lists each variation as a separate row in the product table. This is perfect for many use cases, for example:

• Change variation dropdown to checkbox in WooCommerce - just list each variation on a separate row in the table, and use the add to cart checkboxes that come with the plugin.
• Display variations as individual products - maybe you've added your options as variations, but want to list them as separate products. Just list them individually in the table, and you're sorted!

Either way, you can list variations as individual products even though they're actually variations of a single product. This means that you can list them alongside standard products in a single table, with a separate row for each product or variation.

See the separated variations in action on the WooCommerce table plugin demo site

Note: Since this article was published, we have also added support for Product Add-On Options. This lets you add even more product options in your Woo tables. 

Example: separated variations in a WP table

Let's say that you have a product called 'Hoodie' with 2 attributes: Color and Toggles. Each attribute might have 2 options, giving you 4 product variations in total:

• Red - Yes
• Red - No
• Blue - Yes
• Blue - No

There are now 3 ways to display these variations in a product table:

1. With the default variations option in WooCommerce Product Table, the T-Shirt product will use a single row in the table. The variations will be listed as 2 dropdown lists before the add to cart button: 1 for size, and 1 for colour. Customers can use the dropdown lists to select any combination of attributes before adding their chosen variation to the cart.
2. The new separate variations option works differently. It displays product variations on individual rows in the table, each with their own add to cart button. By displaying variations as individual products, you would think they are separate rather than options for a single product. In this example, the T-Shirt product takes up 4 rows in the table - 1 for each variation. The product name column contains the full details for each variation so that customers can see the difference and choose which ones to buy. If you're using separate variation images then each variation will show its own unique image.
3. Instead of displaying product variations in a table, you can let customers click through to the single product page. Then, they can view and select variations, and add to the cart as usual.

GET THE PLUGIN

Case studies: Real sites using a WooCommerce variations table

Mechanical Air Supplies used our code snippets to dynamically list product variations on separate rows in a table on individual product pages. It's a fantastic way of listing large numbers of variations in a user-friendly format:

Similarly, First Kitchens use the Woo Product Table plugin to list variations as separate products in a table. This is a fantastic way for them to sell different parts for their kitchen door ranges:

Does it work with lazy load?

WooCommerce Product Table comes with a lazy load option for stores with large product databases. This improves performance and page load times by loading the results 1 page at a time.

At the moment, the new option to display product variations separately only works with the default version of WooCommerce Product Table, and not lazy load.

Please let us know if you'd like to use it with lazy load. If enough people ask, then we will add it to the plugin.

Individual Woo product variation images

The new version of WooCommerce Product Table also includes support for individual variation images.

Previously, if you were displaying dropdown lists for variable products, the 'Image' column would always show the main product image.

Now, if you have separate images for each variation, then the image in the table will change according to which variation is selected.

How can I display variations as individual products in a table?

Existing WooCommerce Product Table customers can update to the new version of the plugin from Dashboard > Updates. If the update doesn't appear, check our article on update problems.

Or if you haven't bought the Woo Product Table WP plugin yet, you can get it here.

Once you've got the latest version of the plugin, there are full instructions for how to display product variations on their own row. Check out our Variable Products knowledge base article.

Passive income is the holy grail for modern online entrepreneurs. The Internet - and WordPress in particular - has created unique opportunities to earn money online without having to work for each sale. A little known way of earning passive income is to create a WooCommerce affiliate website which compares and reviews products from other companies.

Most WooCommerce affiliate review websites are started on a shoestring budget. With that in mind, I will teach how you to build a website to earn commission through publishing product reviews and comparisons, for minimum cost. We'll focus on free tools and plugins where possible, and I will only recommend paid options if there's no free alternative.

The website will be built using the free WordPress content management system, which gives you full control over your website content. The products and reviews will be listed using the free WooCommerce plugin, which powers over 41% of all online shops worldwide.

To improve on the rest of the 41%, I'll show you how to use the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to list products and reviews in a user-friendly product comparison table, with extra features such as search, sort and filter. This will make it easier for customers to compare the products reviewed at a glance, make quick buying decisions and click on your affiliate links.

How can I earn affiliate income by publishing product reviews?

It works like this:

1. You develop a genuinely useful website with comparisons and reviews of companies other companies' products. These might be reviews you have added yourself, and/or reviews that other visitors to your website have written.
2. Each product is added to your website using the WooCommerce plugin. However, instead of selling the products directly on your website, the 'Buy' buttons are affiliate links to the website that sells them (e.g. Amazon).
3. When a customer reads a review and clicks on the Buy button, they are taken to the other companies' website. A cookie is stored in their browser to record that they clicked on your affiliate link. If they buy the product, you will earn a percentage commission of the total sale price.

It's that easy! With this method, you can list products and product reviews and ratings on your website. This provides useful information to your visitors, giving them an incentive to use your site. Once they find a product they like, they can click on your affiliate link and buy from the other website.

Most major e-commerce stores have affiliate schemes. The easiest option is to sign up with Amazon Associates, since Amazon sells a huge range of products and offers generous commission. However, you can implement this tutorial using any store that provides referral links that will pay you affiliate commission.

Can I really earn affiliate commission that easily?

Ok, no. Did you notice the phrase 'genuinely useful' in the previous suggestion? That's the key.

Your WooCommerce affiliate reviews website will only be truly successful if you offer something useful that people will benefit from.

If you're lazy and publish content that is already available elsewhere, then your site won't get a good search engine ranking and no one will visit it. That means that you won't earn any affiliate commission.

However, if you work hard at finding a niche, and spend time adding and promoting unique content, then this is a good business model that could work well for you.

Case study - Best Toys for 2 Year Olds Amazon affiliate site

For example, my reviews website Best Toys for 2 Year Olds is a WooCommerce Amazon affiliate website. It's a very simple blog-style website that provides parent-friendly advice and reviews on the best toys for 2 year old children. It's intentionally non-corporate and speaks from one parent to another. Parents read the advice and click through to buy the products on Amazon, which generates affiliate commission in the process.

To do this, I publish a blog post reviewing a range of products. Next, I add each product to WooCommerce with my Amazon affiliate link. Finally, I use the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to list the products directly in my blog post. This makes it really easy for customers to compare products and click through to buy - using my affiliate links, of course!

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to use WooCommerce to create an affiliate reviews website just like this.

What types of products can I include in my WooCommerce reviews website?

You can use WooCommerce to review almost any type of product. In terms of earning affiliate commission, it's best to focus on products that can easily be compared with similar products.

Here are some examples, but do your research and find an area that interests you personally! For instance, I founded Best Toys for 2 Year Old because I had a daughter this age and had been struggling to find developmentally age-appropriate toys. Think about what interests you, start Googling, and look for gaps in the market.

Generic affiliate websites reviewing a wide range of products

If you're an affiliate for a diverse website like Amazon, or for a range of different companies, then it's tempting to review many different types of product. While this is a chance to get a nice variety of traffic to your website, it's hard to find success by trying to be all things to all people.

Instead, I'd recommend finding a niche industry or even focus on a specific type of product.

Affiliate websites focusing on a specific industry

Another option is to choose a specific industry and feature a range of products for that market sector. This could be anything from lightbulbs, spare parts or tools, to electronics, appliances or WordPress plugins.

By reviewing lots of products from a specific industry, you can create a website with plenty of high quality, keyword-rich content. This is a good opportunity to establish your affiliate reviews website as an authority in your industry, which will reward you with a good search engine ranking. This will drive more traffic to your website and more people are likely to use your affiliate links.

Niche websites reviewing one type of product

As anyone in the SEO (search engine optimisation) industry will tell you, it's better to be no. 1 in Google for a less competitive keyword than to be no. 30 for a popular one. With that in mind, look for a specific type of product where you have a reasonable chance of success.

For example, I was recently researching hot tubs and discovered an affiliate reviews website which reviewed all the main hot tubs on the market. It provided unique and genuine comparisons of the options, with plenty of advice. By adding extra value and information that wasn't available elsewhere, their website was ranking nicely in Google and was probably attracting enough traffic to earn affiliate commission.

What will it cost?

There are very few upfront costs. These are the main financial costs:

• Domain name All websites need a domain name, e.g. barn2.com. These aren't expensive and cost a few pounds per year, depending on the type of domain name you choose. A local domain (e.g. .co.uk) is cheaper than a generic domain such as .com.
• WordPress web hosting All websites need a good host. I recommend an optimised WordPress host such as Kinsta. Don't use cheap web hosting because your website will be slower and less reliable. This will harm your search engine ranking, reduce visitor numbers and increase bounce rates - all of which will reduce your affiliate commission. Investing in good hosting is money well spent.
• WooCommerce Product Table plugin This is the only paid plugin needed for this tutorial. You need it to display your products, ratings and affiliate buttons in a user-friendly comparison table or grid which will maximise your affiliate income.

This tutorial will show you how to save money by using free options where possible. For example, we'll be using the free WordPress content management system (CMS) and the free WooCommerce plugin. The screenshots in this tutorial use a free WordPress theme, so there are no design costs. I'll even tell you how to add affiliate links in WooCommerce without needing any dedicated WordPress affiliate plugins. (Special affiliate plugins are available and they all work with the methods in this tutorial, but they're not essential.)

As you can see, you can launch a WooCommerce affiliate reviews website with very little upfront cost. The main investment is your time. While the overall website setup won't take much time, you need to invest more time in your website content. If you're prepared to do this, let's get started!

#1 - Sign up to 1 or more affiliate programs

Before you start setting up your WooCommerce product reviews website, you should register for one or more affiliate schemes.

If you're just getting started, then I recommend signing up to Amazon Associates as a minimum. This is a good starting point because Amazon sells nearly every type of product. They probably have the biggest affiliate scheme in the world and pay fairy generous commission.

You can also sign up to any other websites that offer an affiliate scheme. (If you're reviewing WordPress plugins, sign up for our own affiliate scheme and earn 30% by writing about Barn2 Media's plugins!) The important thing is that the scheme provides referral links or affiliate links that you can use online.

Once you've done that, get the affiliate link for each of the products that you're planning to review or compare on your WooCommerce website.

Read our complete guide to creating a WooCommerce Amazon affiliate website.

#2 - Get a WordPress website & install a theme

Next, sign up to a good WordPress hosting package (we use and recommend Kinsta). They should provide a tool to install WordPress and help you get up and running with a domain name.

You need to install a theme for the design of your website. Since you'll be using WooCommerce, I recommend using a theme that is designed to work with WooCommerce. This will avoid a lot of problems later on.

The best free WooCommerce theme is Storefront - you can find it by going to Appearance → Themes in the WordPress admin and searching for it. This is the official WooCommerce theme and is the theme I used for the screenshots in this tutorial. If you don't like the design, you can use one of the Storefront child themes which provide a nice choice of skins. The child theme designs are either free or $39. They all come with full instructions and documentation on how to set them up.

If you want a more versatile theme, there are plenty of WooCommerce-ready themes on ThemeForest. These typically have significantly more features than Storefront and its child themes, and are a lot more work to set up. There's also a greater potential for things to go wrong, due to the extra complexity. You should only choose a more flexible/complex theme if there are definite benefits in doing so.

#4 - Start blogging or writing reviews

This section depends on how you're planning to structure your WooCommerce reviews website.

If you're planning to publish your reviews as comparison-style blog posts, then you can start writing posts. This is easy - just log into the WordPress admin and go to Posts → Add New. Each post should compare multiple products.

Alternatively, perhaps you're adding your reviews in a more permanent format. You can use pages for that (Pages → Add New).

Either way, you can write about the products that you're reviewing and add your reviews in whichever format you're like. Then, use the following steps to add a product comparison table to boost your affiliate commission.

#4 - Install WooCommerce

Now it's time to install WooCommerce. This is the world's leading e-commerce plugin and is 100% free. While your affiliate reviews website won't be selling products directly, you need this to create your affiliate products, add information and reviews about them, and add your referral links.

1. Still in the WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New and search for 'WooCommerce'. Install and activate the free plugin.
2. You'll be taken to the WooCommerce Setup Wizard. This is the quick way to get your affiliate store set up. Follow the steps in the wizard. They won't all be relevant to your affiliate product reviews website, but don't worry about that.

#5 - Add your affiliate products, with descriptions or reviews

Next, go to Products → Add New and add your first product:

1. Add the various information for the product, e.g. title. Most fields aren't compulsory (e.g. categories and tags) - just use the relevant ones.
2. Upload a product image. I recommend using images for a WooCommerce affiliate review website because images will attract customers and make them more likely to click your affiliate links.
3. For the main product description, add one of the following:
   • Information about the product, such as the specification. I strongly recommend writing unique content here. Don't copy and paste text from the manufacturer's website because if you do this, your website is very unlikely to get a good ranking for that product in the search engines. While you probably won't be penalised for duplicate content (although this is a danger and there are copyright issues), the search engines will reward you for unique content.
   • Your own review of the product.

Add the product data

1. Next, find the 'Product Data' section. Select 'External/Affiliate product' from the dropdown list. Add the following:
   • Product URL - Add your affiliate link for the product here.
   • Button text - Enter the text that will appear on the button with your affiliate link. This might be 'BUY', 'BUY NOW', 'Buy on Amazon' or similar.
   • You can also add a product price and sale price below. This will display the price on your website so that people can see what it costs before clicking through. However, if you do this, I recommend that you regularly check the price on the website selling the product. You don't want to advertise the wrong price!
2. In the 'Advanced' tab, tick 'Enable reviews'. This will allow visitors to review the product. It's an excellent opportunity to increase your affiliate clicks by providing 'social proof', which makes the products more credible. Customer reviews add keyword-rich content to your website and can boost your search engine ranking. WooCommerce will collate the product ratings and you can display these as a column in your comparison tables (see next section).
3. Click the blue 'Publish' button.

Repeat the steps in this section to create each of your affiliate products.

#6 - Create your affiliate products table

The next step is to install the WooCommerce table plugin, which you need to list your products and their ratings in a comparison table layout:

1. Get WooCommerce Product Table. Install it using the instructions that you receive when you buy it.
2. After activating your plugin license key, the table builder will launch. Use it to set up the affiliate products table, for example by adding columns and filters.
   

   

3. You can also choose exactly which products to display in the table.
   

   

4. Copy the shortcode from the final page of the table builder.
   

   

5. Next, go to the page or blog post where you want to add a product comparison table with affiliate links. Either insert the 'Product Table' Gutenberg block, or the shortcode that you copied a minute ago.

This will create a default WooCommerce table listing your products. As your WooCommerce reviews website grows over time, you'll probably want to list different products on different pages. You can do this by creating multiple tables, each containing different affiliate products. For example, you might want to create a different product category for each type of product, or use tags too control which products to show in each table. Play around with all the options and create as many WooCommerce comparison tables as you like, each listing different affiliate products.

Add extra product data to the comparison table

When you added your products earlier, you added various types of data such as title, description, price, categories and tags. All of this can be displayed in the WooCommerce product comparison table.

If you need to store and display even more data about the products, then you can do this by creating WooCommerce custom fields and taxonomies. Each of these can also be displayed as columns in the table. For example, you can use these to store technical data that will help customers to check the suitability of each product.

Add product quick view popups

You can choose which columns of product data to include in the list of products reviewed. But what if you want to show more data than will fit in the table, or you've added multiple images of each product? In that case, you'll need to provide extra information outside of the comparison table. There are a couple of ways to do this:

• You can add the extra information to the main product review. For example, if you've published a blog post reviewing the best 5 smartphones then you can add extra information to the main content of the post. You can then keep the product table simple, with more basic information.
• WooCommerce automatically creates a separate page for each product. Visitors can access by clicking on the name of a product in the table. However, this means loading an additional page for every product, which isn't very user-friendly.
• A better option is to use WooCommerce Product Table with its sister plugin - WooCommerce Quick View Pro. This adds user-friendly quick view buttons to the list of products. Visitors can view the full image gallery for each product and extra information in a popup lightbox, without having to visit a separate page. The lightbox also includes a button with your affiliate link, so customers can learn more about the product and immediately click through to buy. (Tip: If you add quick view to your WooCommerce reviews website, then you should enable the option to replace all links to the single product page with quick view links.)

Add filters to the product table

If your tables are just comparing a few products, then you don't need to worry about filters. After all, visitors will be able to see everything on one page!

If you're comparing lots of products, then filters can make it easier for visitors to find the products they're looking for. WooCommerce Product Table has 2 types of filters: dropdown lists above the comparison table, plus sidebar widgets. These can be used to filter by various types of product data, price, or average rating.

Make your store more successful with our Top 10 Tips for using product tables to increase your WooCommerce conversion rate optimization

Creating a successful WooCommerce affiliate reviews website

If you follow the steps in this tutorial, you'll be well on your way to creating a successful product reviews website that will generate affiliate commission.

Once your website goes live, it's important to continue adding search-engine-friendly content to it. This will build your search engine position over time. To give you website the best possible chances, check out our WordPress SEO packages and discover how we can promote your website.

Do you already earn affiliate income by publishing product reviews and comparisons in WordPress and WooCommerce? Please share your tips and advice with our other readers by adding your comments below.

We're pleased to announce that our bestselling Product Table Plugin now supports all the WooCommerce product filter widgets. Keep reading to learn all about them.

What are the new product filter widgets?

WooCommerce Product Table now works with the filter widgets that are included with WooCommerce. You can use them in addition to - or instead of - the product table dropdowns that were already available to filter by category, tag, custom taxonomies, attributes or variations.

Here's the official overview video from WooCommerce. (Just bear in mind that to use the widgets with product tables, you need to follow the instructions below and not the ones in the video! I've provided a dedicated vide on how to use the WoCommerce Product Table filter widgets below, so this is just a general overview.)

WooCommerce Filter by Rating

This filter widget displays a graphic of 5 stars, which customers can click to refine the product table to view products based on the star rating. They can select 1 or more stars to find products with the exact ratings they want.

WooCommerce Filter by Attribute

This filter lets customers refine the products shown in the table by selecting one or more attributes. It offers a quick way to narrow down the product table's contents to find products with a specific feature or combination of attributes.

WooCommerce Product Table fully supports product attributes, so this feature will be really useful to our customers. You could already display attributes as filter dropdowns above the product table, but the dropdowns did not interact with one another. The attributes filter adds more sophisticated ways to refine the table.

WooCommerce Active Filters

This WooCommerce active filters widget works with the other filters. It displays the active filters so customers can see which filters are already in place. It's a quick way to revert the table to the full list of products.

WooCommerce Price Filter Widget

The WooCommerce price filter widget adds a neat-looking price slider. Customers can drag it to set a budget and refine the product table to view products within their price range. You can set a lower price range, upper price range or both - all within a single price slider.

The price slider works nicely with the other features of WooCommerce Product Table. For example, if customers click on the 'Price' column header then they can sort by price in ascending or descending order. If they have an exact budget in mind then they can use the WooCommerce price widget instead.

Why have you added product filter widgets?

Adding support for the WooCommerce product filters is the most asked-for item on our feature request list. Dozens of you have asked for more flexible ways to filter the product table, in addition to the existing filter dropdowns above the table.

GET THE PLUGIN HERE

Where can I see the WooCommerce filter widgets in action?

We've added the WooCommerce product filter widgets to the sidebar on several of our demo pages. You can see various combinations at:

• Product Table Filters Demo
• WooCommerce Quick Order Form Demo
• WooCommerce Product Directory Demo
• Product Table with Attributes

How to use the WooCommerce product filter widgets

The process for using product tables with WooCommerce product filters is slightly different from how to add them to your main shop page and category pages. This is because the built-in WooCommerce widgets are only designed to work on the shop page and category archives. Product tables are normally added to standard pages (although you can add them to category archives if you prefer), so we've created a special WooCommerce Product Table version of each widget which works perfectly on pages:

1. Get WooCommerce Product Table and use the documentation to create your first table. Add the table to any page on your WordPress website. Make sure the page has a widgetized area such as a right or left sidebar. (Most WordPress themes come with a page layout that includes a sidebar. Ask your theme developer if you're not sure.)
2. Go to Appearance > Widgets.
3. On the list of available widgets on the left, look for the ones that start with 'Product Table'. Drag one or more widgets to your sidebar area on the right.
4. Choose the options to configure your product filter widget(s) as needed.
5. Click 'Save' for each widget.

Now view the page with your product table. Test the WooCommerce filter widgets and watch the list of products in the table update with the filters you choose.

Bonus: Add even more advanced filters to your product tables

Update: Since adding the above filters to the WooCommerce Product Table plugin, we have released a brand new plugin - WooCommerce Product Filters. This builds on the filters in WooCommerce Product Table and lets you add even more impressive filters to your store. It either works with the default store layout, or - you guessed it - with the product table view.

By using the two plugins together, you can filter by absolutely any type of product data. The filters can appear either above or alongside the list of products. And even better, you can choose from a wide range of styles for them. This includes filter checkboxes, radio buttons, images, color swatch filters, and more.

Here's an example:

Where to get the filters

If you're already using WooCommerce Product Table, you can update to the latest version via Dashboard → Updates in the WordPress admin. The new version comes complete with the new WooCommerce product filter widgets. Add them by following the instructions above.

If you haven't got WooCommerce Product Table, buy the plugin today and start creating your product tables with filter widgets.

And if you like the plugin, sign up as an affiliate! We offer a generous 30% commission for reselling it, so it's a good chance to earn some extra pocket money.

I'd love to hear about how you use WooCommerce Product Table with the new filters. Please try it out and add your comments below, ideally with a link to your site!

GET THE PLUGIN HERE

As the number of WooCommerce websites continues to grow, more and more people are using it for large product directories. A WooCommerce directory plugin lists products on a much bigger scale than typical online stores. Products are listed in a logical structure with extra data to help customers find what they're looking for.

In this article, I'll explain the main features needed in a WooCommerce directory plugin. I'll then provide full instructions on how to use WooCommerce Product Table to create an online store directory.

Your WooCommerce directory will include all the features you need to display large numbers of products. This includes searching, sorting and filtering to help customers find your products more easily. I'll show you how to display different types of product data including all the standard WooCommerce data, plus custom fields and taxonomies. Customers will be able to click from the directory listings to the single product page and/or buy straight from the table.

Create a complete WooCommerce directory with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

How to create a product directory in WooCommerce

1. Plan a logical WooCommerce directory structure
2. Add products to the directory
3. Set up WooCommerce Product Table
4. Launch & promote your WooCommerce directory

What makes a good WooCommerce directory plugin?

There are several things that make WooCommerce directory sites different from other types of e-commerce store. Directories need some extra features to list products in a suitable layout, often with extra information.

Essential directory features

• Table-based product layout WooCommerce product directories list many products per page in a less visual way than traditional online stores.
• Extra product data Directory databases list various product information. Most WooCommerce stores just list basic data such as name, image and price. A WooCommerce directory can display far more product data. This can include descriptions, embedded audio/video, custom fields, product attributes and variations, prices, reviews, stock and more. You can even include extra options created with the WooCommerce Product Options plugin.
• Easy to search & filter With a WooCommerce directory plugin, customers aren't forced to scroll through many pages of products to find what they need. Instead, should be able to use advanced search, sort and filter options to find products matching their criteria.
• One-page ordering A lot of product directories function as a one-page WooCommerce order form. This means that customers can view all the directory listings and add products to the cart from a single page. Some WooCommerce directories will disable the add to cart buttons and let customers click to the single product page in order to view more information and purchase. However, one-page ordering is an important feature for many directory sites.
• Ability to handle large numbers of products A directory-based e-commerce store may have 100's or even many 1,000's of products. A WooCommerce directory plugin needs to be able to handle large amounts of information without server crashes or performance issues.
• See information quickly without multiple page loads Many online directories are frustrating to use because you have to visit a separate page for each product. It's better to be able to view extra information in a quick view lightbox, without being taken away from the directory listings. You can do this by using WooCommerce Product Table with its sister plugin, WooCommerce Quick View Pro.

What sort of websites need a directory structure?

WooCommerce bookstore

Many WordPress websites sell large numbers of books. A good directory plugin can be used as a WooCommerce bookstore plugin.

Books for sale can be listed in a table with relevant data such as title, author, publisher, date, price and add to cart buttons. It's even possible to display a small image of the front cover in the book directory listings.

You can sell both printed books and digital e-books in WooCommerce. By adding each book to the directory as a variable product, each version can be sold at a different price. Customers can choose from the directory results page and buy one or more books.

WooCommerce audio directory

If your WooCommerce directory plugin supports embedded audio players then you can use it as a music or audio directory.

Lots of audio stores display 100's or 1,000's of CD's or audio products. Since large images aren't relevant to selling music online, the best layout is a table-based directory view. Many more products can be displayed per page. Customers can use the keyword search, sort options and product filters to quickly find the music products they're looking for.

The best WooCommerce directory plugins support embedded audio players. This is a good opportunity to sell more music by including audio samples, embedded directly into the music directory. You can include sample tracks alongside other information about each product such as CD name, track name, artist, length and more.

If you sell physical CD's and downloadable versions of your audio products then you can add each one as a variation. The variation options can be listed a dropdown on the directory page, or customers can click to the single product page to view the options and buy online.

WooCommerce business directory

Like all WordPress sites, WooCommerce is hugely popular as a business directory. This is less common than a more generic business directory in WordPress because not all business directories need to sell online. However, this is an option with a WooCommerce directory - for example, if you need to sell products for each business via the directory.

(Tip: If you want to create a WordPress business directory without the ability to buy online, check out our other plugin Posts Table Pro. This lets you create a custom post type for your businesses and display these in a tabular directory structure with search, sort and filters.)

Directory of telephone numbers

Directory structures are excellent for selling data-base products such as phone numbers. For example, Numbergroup uses WooCommerce Product Table to create a telephone number directory. Customers can browse the phone numbers and buy using WooCommerce.

You can search the directory for a specific number, change the number of products per page, and sort by telephone number or price. Once you've found the number you want, you can add it to the shopping cart and buy through the usual WooCommerce checkout.

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin is perfect for creating any type of directory like this. Check out our demo of a WooCommerce book directory in action!

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How to create a WooCommerce directory to sell absolutely anything!

As you can see, there are lots of reasons to use a WooCommerce directory plugin. Next, I'll show you how to use WooCommerce Product Table to create a directory selling books, music or other types of product.

1. Plan a logical WooCommerce directory structure

The first step is to plan your WooCommerce directory. It's worth doing this beforehand to make sure it's logical and intuitive to navigate.

These questions will help you to plan your store's directory structure:

• Will you have a central directory page listing all the products?
• Would you be better off with multiple pages, each listing different products based on their category, tag or custom taxonomy term?
• Will each page of directory listings contain a single table of products? Or will you add multiple tables to each page, listing different products?
• Is your server powerful enough to support the number of products per page in the directory? Later, I'll tell you about the lazy load plugin option which boosts performance for large WooCommerce directories. However, if you want to list 100's of products on a single page without pagination, performance could be an issue and you'll need a fast server.

2. Add products to the directory

Next, you need to add the content for your WooCommerce store directory:

1. Install the free WooCommerce plugin and run the Setup Wizard. Use the plugin documentation to configure store settings such as tax and postage.
2. Add all your products to the directory in WooCommerce. You can do this manually via Products → Add New. Or if you have a large product directory, use a WooCommerce listing plugin such as Product CSV Import Suite to import products from CSV to WooCommerce.

3. Set up WooCommerce Product Table

Now you're ready to display your WooCommerce products in a directory structure. You'll need the WooCommerce Product Table plugin for this:

1. Get WooCommerce Product Table and install and activate the plugin.
2. Go to Products → Product Table → Add New, or just use the table builder which opens automatically on activation.
3. Choose the settings for your WooCommerce directory as required.
4. Either choose which shop page templates you want to display the directory listings on, or opt to add the directory to a page manually. If you choose to add it manually then you can then choose which products to include.

If you selected to show the directory on shop pages then you don't need to do anything else. If you chose the manual method then add a page and either insert the shortcode from the final page of the table builder, or insert a 'Product Table' Gutenberg block.

This will create a basic directory listing your WooCommerce products in a table-based grid layout.

Use the product table knowledge base to customize your directory. It's hugely flexible and there are many different personalization options. Here's a summary of the main options you're likely to use to perfect your WooCommerce directory plugin.

Choose the product data & directory headings

WooCommerce Product Table supports all the standard product data such as name, short and long description, price, dimensions, stock, reviews, and attributes. It also supports custom data via WooCommerce custom fields and taxonomies.

You have full control over which columns appear in the directory. It's also possible to rename or remove the column headings - just click on the pencil icon.

Turn your directory into an order form with add to cart buttons, variations & quantity selector

Transform the store directory into a one-page WooCommerce order form by letting customers order straight from the directory page. You can do this by including an 'Add to Cart' column in the table.

Choose between 3 styles of add to cart buttons, including standard boxes and multi-select check boxes. It's also possible to display variable products and a quantity selector directly in the table. Customers can select variations, choose quantities and add multiple products to the cart without having to visit the single product page. You can even disable links to the single product page - to do this, edit your table and then using the advanced options to disable the link for each column.

And if you're using the WooCommerce Product Options plugin, then you can also display your add-on options in the product directory. For example, you might want to add checkboxes or text fields to your products and have them appear on the directory page.

Search, sort & filter

You can choose how customers can interact with the WooCommerce directory to find products quickly and easily. Customers can click on a column heading to sort by that column. You can also add product filters so that customers can narrow down the directory listings by category, tag, price, custom taxonomy, etc.

One plugin that can be particularly useful for adding advanced product filtering options to your directory is the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin. With this plugin, you can add a range of different filters, including categories, attributes, tags, custom taxonomies, price, ratings, and stock status, and display them as dropdown lists, checkboxes, radio buttons, labels/tag cloud, images, or color swatches.

By adding these advanced filters, you can help customers quickly and easily find the products they're looking for in your directory, which can ultimately lead to increased sales and customer satisfaction. Plus, with the ability to customize the placement and appearance of the filters, you can create a user-friendly browsing experience that encourages customers to spend more time exploring your product offerings.

Lazy load/AJAX option for large WooCommerce directories

As your WooCommerce directory grows, the plugin needs to grow with it. Fortunately, WooCommerce Product Table has a lazy load option to boost performance as your store grows.

By default, all the product listings in your directory load straight away. This is fine for small directories but can cause a performance hit if you have many products. With lazy load, only 1 page of the directory is loaded at a time. This means that you can have an unlimited number of products in the directory. Even if you have many thousands of WooCommerce products, lazy load keeps everything running smoothly without slowing down your site.

There are further options to boost performance, such as setting a limit for the number of products in the directory. This is available on the plugin settings page. You can also change the number of products shown on each page of the directory.

Embed audio & video in the directory

WooCommerce Product Table supports embedded audio and video. If you're creating a music or video directory then customers can watch or listen straight from the directory listings page. This is ideal if you use audio or video snippets to convince people to buy your products.

Add multiple tables to your directory

Most WooCommerce directories list all their products in a single directory, with easy search options such as the keyword search and filter.

If you prefer, you can add multiple directories to your WooCommerce store. For example, you might want to create a different directory table for each product category.

The plugin supports adding as many directories as you like. Simply create multiple tables at Products → Product Tables and display different products in each one. You can quickly do this by duplicating an existing table. For each one, you can then choose which products to include based on category, tag, ID, custom taxonomy term, custom field, date, etc.

Create an A-Z directory

You can also use a directory planning to create A-Z listings. Simply use the tabs that come with your theme or a plugin such as Shortcodes Ultimate to create a tabbed layout with a tab for each letter. Include a separate product table to each tab containing a directory of products for that letter.

You may also like: WordPress Member Directory Plugin Tutorial with Searchable Table & Profiles

Add extra information in a quick view lightbox

If you use WooCommerce Product Table on its own, then customers can click through to the single product page to view more information about each product.

That's fine if you only expect each customer to buy one product. But most WooCommerce directory websites want to increase the value of each sale. And that requires buying more than one product.

That's why you can significantly increase revenue by adding the WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin. This lets you add a 'quick view' column to the WooCommerce directory (which you can rename to anything you like). Customers use this button to view more information about each directory product in a handy lightbox popup.

You can choose what information to show in the lightbox. This might be more product images, variation and add to cart options, the short description, meta information such as categories and tags, or something else.

This is a perfect way for customers to learn more about each products without being taken away from the main WooCommerce directory listings. That way, there's no chance they'll get lost. They remain on the list of products at all times. As a result, they spend longer browsing the products in the directory, and are likely to buy more and more.

4. Launch & promote your WooCommerce directory

Your store directory is now complete and ready to launch:

1. Test everything thoroughly to ensure your WooCommerce directory is running smoothly. You need to be certain that customers can order from you from different browsers, mobile devices etc.
2. Follow our go-live checklist to make sure the launch goes smoothly.
3. Plan and implement a marketing strategy to make sure people can find your website and buy from you. Our WordPress SEO packages can help you with this.
4. Continue improving your WooCommerce directory with our top 10 tips on using product tables to optimise conversion rates.

It's time to build your WooCommerce directory!

I hope this tutorial has provided everything you need to create a fully functioning store directory using WooCommerce Product Table. The plugin comes with full support from our UK WordPress experts at Barn2 Media.

Get in touch if you have any questions about how it works that aren't covered in the knowledge base, or if you need any advice on setting it up to create the perfect directory. Or if you like the plugin, sign up as an affiliate and we'll pay you 30% commission for reselling it!

I'd love to know which method you use for your own product directory. What do you sell in your WooCommerce directory? Please leave your comments below.

'WooCommerce is great for selling all kinds of products. That's why it powers over 41% of all e-commerce websites. If you're a photographer selling photos online then you can benefit from a WooCommerce gallery plugin.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to use the Product Table plugin to create a professional-looking WooCommerce image gallery.

Your customers can search, sort and filter the table to quickly find the images they like. They can select product variations or other options, and add photos to the cart directly from the WooCommerce gallery. You can display any information you like about your products, all within the image gallery view. And if you implement the bonus tip later in this article, then you can also display the full product image gallery in a quick view lightbox. It's the perfect way to sell more photos.

Are you a photographer wanting to securely sell photos to specific clients? Check out our WooCommerce for photographers tutorial.

Why do I need a WooCommerce gallery plugin?

A WooCommerce image gallery is perfect for any website with highly visual products. If images are essential to your sales then a product gallery is a great way to show them off.

Most WooCommerce stores have a layout that consists of a grid of images with the product name, price, reviews and add to cart button. This may not be the best way to appeal to your customers. For example, if you sell variable products then customers have to click through to the single product page to choose options and add to the cart.

With a photography product, you don't really need the single product page as there's no text-based description. It's better to display all the data you need in the WooCommerce gallery where customers can make quicker buying decisions.

Here are some examples of websites that would benefit from a WooCommerce image gallery.

WooCommerce photography website

If you're selling photos or other images on a WooCommerce website then you can display them in a WooCommerce gallery. The gallery can include all the information you want to provide about your images. This might include name, price, variation options, dimensions, frame options etc.

By displaying all this information on a single page in a WooCommerce gallery, customers can choose all the photos they want without clicking elsewhere. Ideally, they should be able to select multiple photos and add to cart in a single click. This helps to increase the value of each sale - simply by having a gallery of products.

Graphic designer website selling images online

A graphic designer might sell image files using WooCommerce. This could be photos, icons, vector graphics, illustrations, PSD's or logos.

Displaying images in a WooCommerce gallery is a great way to showcase your work while providing all the data your customers need. You could include a big column for the image preview, plus information such as image size, file format, options, price and add to cart button.

Any WooCommerce website where images are important

So far, I've focussed on the most obvious uses for a WooCommerce gallery. However a table layout with images can benefit any WooCommerce website where photos of your products are important.

You can choose the size of the images in the table view, and what other information you want to display. By presenting your products in a one-page WooCommerce gallery layout, customers can see everything at a glance. This helps them to find what they want and reduces your bounce rate and lost sales.

Whether you need a one-page order form with photos or a WooCommerce product catalogue, a WooCommerce gallery view can make a big difference.

How to create a WooCommerce image gallery

1. Install WooCommerce

First, create a WooCommerce website as usual. If you don't know how to set up WooCommerce, here's a link to the official documentation. This covers a huge range of topics such as adding products and categories, payment options and shipping.

2. Install WooCommerce Product Table

Once you have an e-commerce website set up, it's time to install the Product Table plugin for your WooCommerce gallery layout.

1. Get WooCommerce Product Table, download the plugin files and copy your license key.
2. In the WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New. Upload, install and activate the plugin.
3. Go to Products → Product Table → Add New. Now you're ready to create your first product gallery!

3. Create your WooCommerce product gallery

Use the table builder to set up the product gallery in WooCommerce. There are plenty of gallery options and it will walk you through the process step-by-step.

For example, you can:

• Change your columns WooCommerce Product Table can display most types of product data in the image gallery. You can choose which columns display in the table view. For a product gallery, you might want to display product descriptions, categories, tags, attributes or extra data as custom fields or taxonomies.

  

• Disable links to the single product pageYour WooCommerce gallery should include all the information that customers need about your photos, as well as the image itself. This means that you may not want them to be able to access the single product page. By default, the gallery image and product name in the table will link to the single product page. To disable these links, click on the pencil icon for each column and disable the links.
• Let customers choose the quantityEnable quantity fields on the 'Add to Cart' step to add a quantity selector dropdown next to the add to cart button. This lets customers buy multiple copies of each photo, which can increase your sales. For example, if you're a school photographer then this can encourage customers to buy a copy for each family member.

  

• Change the image sizeFinally, go to Products → Product Tables → Settings. Here, I recommend adding 300x300 (or similar) to make the images bigger. By default, your photos will appear quite small in the WooCommerce gallery. Set the number of pixels to enlarge them.

3. Create a page for your WooCommerce gallery

1. In the Pages section of WordPress, create a page for your WooCommerce gallery view. You can skip this step if you used the table builder to enable the gallery view globally on your main shop page templates.
2. Either add a 'Product Table' block if you use the block editor, or get the shortcode from Products → Product Tables and add that to the page.
3. Save the page and view it. You will see your products displayed in a WooCommerce gallery table with columns for image, name and add to cart button.

Top 10 Tips - How to use product tables to optimize your WooCommerce conversion rate.

Bonus - Add a WooCommerce quick view gallery

With WooCommerce Product Table, you can list products in a table-based gallery. If you'd like to show multiple images for each product, then you can do this by using it with its sister plugin - WooCommerce Quick View Pro.

When you use both plugins together, customers can click on a product image, title or quick view button to view the full WooCommerce product image gallery in a lightbox popup:

By default, the WooCommerce gallery lightbox shows thumbnail images. Customers click on the thumbnails to navigate between the gallery images. If you prefer, then you can switch to bullet navigation and slide between the images. It's also possible to add product information, variations and add to cart buttons to the gallery.

Adding quick view to your WooCommerce gallery is the perfect way to sell more photos. It increases the value of each sale because customers remain on the list of images, and are not taken to a separate page for each product. This encourages them to buy more images from you, increasing your profits.

Once you've installed WooCommerce Quick View Pro, it's easy to add quick view buttons to the WooCommerce product gallery. Just edit your table at Products → Product Tables and add a 'Quick View' column.

See the WooCommerce product gallery in action

If you'd like to test drive the WooCommerce image gallery that I created for this tutorial, check it out here.

Which WooCommerce gallery plugin do you use?

WooCommerce Product Table is a neat way to create WooCommerce galleries, with a grid of product images alongside other data and buy buttons.

Do you use galleries in WooCommerce on your website? I'd love to know what method you use. Please leave your comments below.

This article has been kindly written for us by Jamil, SEO specialist from CloudWays.

According to a recent report by eMarketer, global retail e-commerce sales are expected to reach $4 trillion by 2020. These trillions explain how online shopping is ready to take over the traditional retail stores.

There are a number of e-commerce platforms and WooCommerce tops this race with a market share of over 40%. Part of the reason lies in the simple fact that WooCommerce is so customisable, ideal for small to large online businesses and startups. As I write this, WooCommerce has been downloaded 45K to 50K times per day, and has more than a million active users.

It seems that the internet is flooded with tricks for boosting your WooCommerce store. Here is my selection of WooCommerce tips to help you stay on top of the fierce online shopping game.

Use an eye-catching WooCommerce theme

The first impression is often the last impression and the first thing that a visitor sees on your online store is the theme and the layout. Based on the theme, the visitor makes a snap decision about whether to continue with the purchase or close the tab!

Web visitors expect an eye-catching store with a very intuitive UI/UX. My advice is that the design should be visually appealing yet simple, so that the widest range of users can interact with the store without thinking twice.

For WooCommerce store owners, themes fall into three options: Free, Paid and Custom. Pick the option that suits your pocket but keep one thing in mind; the theme should be attractive enough to make sure that the visitor enters the sales funnel! If you're looking for an affordable WooCommerce option with a choice of good themes, check out Barn2 Media's MySimpleSite and MySimpleStore services.

A friendly user-experience

According to many experts, a friendly experience is the key to more sales and popularity of the store. Visitors should feel at ease while shopping at your store. Navigation plays a huge role in providing a precise and relaxed environment for your visitors.

Visitors always need to know three important pages: the one they were on, the one they are on and the one that they will go to after clicking a particular link on your store. This can be achieved via breadcrumb links and intuitive navigation menus.

An important plugin to use for your store is WooCommerce Product Table. This plugin presents your product descriptions in separate boxes on the store, along with other information such as product name, price, reviews, attributes, variations and even add to cart buttons. This really helps the shoppers get instant information about the products so they can make quicker buying decisions.

Discover 10 ways to use product tables to optimise your WooCommerce conversion rate.

A fuelled-up web store

Any e-commerce business depends upon reliability and speed. Most customers will not wait around for slow loading online stores. Thus it is vital that you continuously monitor the load time of the store to ensure a high speed website.

Picking the right WooCommerce hosting is the best way of ensuring the speed of the store. When shopping for a host for your store, you should look for reliable and persistent performance and availability of (free and paid) plugins and themes that help in making your web store blazing fast.

P.S. You should always keep an eye on plugins and themes that could slow down your web store.

Security above all

Security is the ultimate requirement for any web store. An insecure web store simply means no sales.

Online stores are a goldmine of customer information including personal information and credit card numbers. Even the rumour of a breach could permanently destroy the reputation of an online store!

You have to make sure that your WooCommerce store is secured with an SSL certificate. Other ways to secure your store include setting up a complex password for the site’s administrator account, updating the WooCommerce store to the latest version and regular backups of the store.

Engaging and clear product descriptions

Visitors can be converted into customers through clear and engaging product descriptions. The product description is a selling pitch, so it should be unique and attractive.

Another important thing to remember is that you should never mislead your visitors about a product. This is because they will not visit your store again after a bad experience. In fact, this could often result in a vicious social media campaign.

To avoid this situation, your product descriptions should perfectly reflect the products. Research the popular trends and check out your competitors' product descriptions for inspiration. Remember that SEO-based descriptions help in getting your product rank higher in Google.

Impressive product images

The right picture gives customers the right vibe about a product.

Customers do not buy products after reading the engaging product descriptions. Rather, they look at the images to check out the quality of the products. Therefore, your product images should be of top quality and should attempt to capture all details of the product.

Your images should show different aspects of your product. The good thing about WooCommerce is that it supports 360-degree images which offers a very detailed visual description of the product.

Create product videos

Today, the Internet is all about videos. Product videos are the latest trend in the e-commerce industry.

Potential customers always check out product videos because a one-minute video can provide the information that hundreds of pictures simply can’t.

The good thing about product videos is that you can produce a video once and then promote it on several platforms such as Youtube, Snapchat, and WhatsApp.

Focus on store SEO

Optimising your WooCommerce store for search engines is one of the most effective practices of generating more traffic and sales. Always make sure your online store integrates the latest trending keywords to get your pages and products listed on the very first page of Google.

Your store’s interlinking structure should be stable as Google looks for the authority of your store. A sitemap is an essential aspect of the SEO strategy for a WooCommerce store. Each page should be optimised individually. Similarly, using keywords in product descriptions is good.

However, remember that excess of everything is bad. Google penalises web stores filled with keywords.

Live chat

The customer is the king, and customer support is the key to success for any web store. You should provide your customers prompt pre- and after sales services and work toward resolving their queries promptly. If your customers feel valued, they are more likely to return for more shopping and recommend you to others.

Live Chat is a premium WooCommerce plugin that helps in improving customer experience. It saves customers' time because they can contact your store immediately without much waiting. There are also several other plugins that integrate live chat capability straight into your WooCommerce store to make your web store more reachable.

Sell to existing customers!

It's all well and good trying to attract new customers. But it's well documented that your efforts will get the best value for money by focussing on getting repeat business from existing customers. Users Insights have written a good article about how to increase your WooCommerce sales from returning customers.

Refund policy and/or money-back guarantee

This tip relates to all e-commerce stores in general, as well as WooCommerce shops. A well-defined refund policy means that customers at your store can feel easy about their purchases. If they do not like the product, they can easily return the product without any issues.

Similarly, if you feel confident enough, you could offer a money-back guarantee at your store. This is the ultimate offer you could make, but remember that you have follow through and be good for your words.

Customize your checkout page

As an online store owner, your goal is to deliver a seamless shopping experience to your customers. One way to achieve this is by creating a frictionless checkout process.

You can customize your WooCommerce checkout page to make it easier for your customers to make purchases. If shoppers have to click through multiple pages to buy products, they’ll likely end up abandoning their shopping cart in favor of another store.

Another feature to include is allowing your customers to easily add multiple products to their shopping cart. This makes it simpler for them to choose product variants without having to click through to the single product page.

A secure checkout is one of the most important factors in delivering a great shopping experience. You want to be able to let customers know that their contact and billing information is safe. One way to achieve this is by offering a secure (and popular) payment gateway at checkout.

Read more about customizing your check out page.

Final thoughts

WooCommerce is a wonderful platform for e-commerce stores. If you implement the above WooCommerce tips and tactics in your store, you can see a significant increase in revenues and customer base.

Consider every point of the marketing sales funnel. Each step of the journey should be designed to increase your store sales.

How about saving some money? Use the coupon code "BARN2MEDIA" to get free hosting credit of $10 for Cloudways, a managed cloud hosting platform. If you want your Woocommerce store to perform at optimum speed, you can try Cloudways.

About the author

Jamil is an SEO Specialist at Cloudways, a managed cloud hosting platform. A Digital Marketer, HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certified. Loves WordPress, cricket and sprinting.

This ultimate guide contains everything you need to know about WooCommerce login for your customers. We'll look at the different ways you can let customers log into a WooCommerce online store, and why.

I'll tell you how to set up a WooCommerce login straight out of the box, with or without compulsory registration and social login. I'll also share some handy login plugins to create a hidden or private WooCommerce store that only logged-in customers can access. You will learn how to:

Read on, or watch this video to see how each login method works.

Importance of a customer login for WooCommerce

1. Personalized user experience: WooCommerce customer login allows you to provide a personalized experience to your customers. They can easily access their order history, saved payment methods, and shipping details, which can save them time and effort.
2. Increased security: With a WooCommerce customer login, you can secure customer data by allowing access only to registered users. It also allows you to monitor and track user activity to prevent any fraudulent or suspicious activity.
3. Targeted marketing: A WooCommerce customer login feature allows you to track customer behavior and preferences, which can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns. You can also offer personalized discounts and promotions to customers based on their purchase history.
4. Improved customer engagement: WooCommerce customer login feature can help you create a loyal customer base. You can send personalized emails, update them on new products or services, and gather feedback on their experience.
5. Simplified checkout process: When WooCommerce customers log in, they can save their payment and shipping details, making the WooCommerce checkout process faster and more convenient. This can increase customer satisfaction and encourage repeat business.

What are the different types of WooCommerce login?

By 'WooCommerce login', I'm talking about the process where customers log into your online store. It's quite a vague term and there are several ways to set it up. Which one you choose depends on how you want your store to work.

1. Public WooCommerce store with guest checkout - This is the most common WooCommerce setup. Anyone can browse your products and there is no hidden WooCommerce content. Customers can buy products as a guest without having to log in, or they can optionally create a WooCommerce account during checkout.
2. Public WooCommerce store with mandatory user accounts - Lots of WooCommerce stores can be browsed by anyone, but customers must register or log in to their WooCommerce account in order to purchase.
3. Customer portal with protected product categories - Instead of (or as well as) individual customer accounts, you can password-protect parts of a WooCommerce store or restrict them to specific users or user roles. Anyone can buy from the public areas of your shop, while only customers with the right credentials can access your protected categories. Once a customer logs into your protected categories, they can view and buy the hidden products inside.
4. 100% private WooCommerce store - Some websites want to hide a whole WooCommerce store from public view so that customers must log in or enter a password to access it.
5. WooCommerce auto-login links - Let customers log in more easily by clicking on a personal login URL. No more usernames or passwords!

With nearly 2 million using WooCommerce sites according to the latest WooCommerce stats, there are plenty of people looking for all these login options.

Related: Complete guide to setting up a paywall in WooCommerce.

Which type of customer login is best for my WooCommerce store?

I've created a quick quiz to help you with this. Answer the simple questions about your requirements, and the quiz will recommend the best WooCommerce customer login plugin for your website.

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Option 1 - Public WooCommerce store with guest checkout

Most WooCommerce stores let anyone view and buy their products, whether or not they're logged in.

How to enable guest checkout in WooCommerce

1. Log into the WordPress dashboard and navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Checkout.
2. You'll see a box with the label 'Enable guest checkout'.
3. Tick this box and customers will be able to purchase without logging in or creating a user account.

How to prevent user account creation in WooCommerce

If you like, you can prevent customers from creating user accounts at all. To do this, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Accounts. Untick the boxes to enable registration on the Checkout and My Account pages. This will prevent customers from registering for your site at all, so you don't need to provide a login page.

Check out this free Helpie WooCommerce FAQ plugin which helps to create an FAQ section on your WooCommerce product page to easily answer customers' questions about the products.

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Option 2 - Public WooCommerce store with mandatory user accounts

How to add a Register/Login page to WooCommerce

When you first install WooCommerce and run the Setup Wizard, there's an option to automatically create all the essential pages for your store. Do this, and you'll see a 'My Account' page in your list of pages (along with other new pages for shop, cart, and checkout).

The WooCommerce login shortcode [woocommerce_my_account] will appear on the page. You can use this page as your register/login page, for example by linking to it from your header or sidebar.

The WooCommerce login/register form works as follows:

• Guest users will see the WooCommerce login form, possibly with a registration form. To include the registration form on the login page, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Accounts and tick 'Enable registration on the "My Account" page'.
• Logged-in users will see their Account page, with their order history, profile, and other information.

You can add the WooCommerce login shortcode[woocommerce_my_account] anywhere else on your website to create extra login forms. There are other plugins available to do this such as Sidebar Login and Woocommerce Login / Signup Lite. These let you create more complex WooCommerce login forms. However, you only need an extra plugin if the built-in WooCommerce login shortcode isn't suitable for you.

Tip: If you want to control where users are redirected after they log in, try Peter's Login Redirect. It's easy to set up and we've used it on lots of our client's websites.

How to force WooCommerce customers to log in or register before they buy

1. In the WordPress dashboard, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Checkout.
2. Untick the 'Enable guest checkout' box. This will force users to create an account when they buy from your WooCommerce store.

You can further configure how user accounts are created in WooCommerce → Settings → Accounts. This WooCommerce page has several settings such as whether to include a registration form on the checkout page and whether to automatically generate WooCommerce customer login usernames and passwords.

There's also a box to display a login reminder on the checkout so that existing customers can log in. This is really useful if guest checkout is disabled, as you need to make it easy for customers to log in.

Note: If a customer completes checkout without logging in then an account will be created for them behind the scenes. They will receive the login details by email so that they can log in the next time they purchase from you.

WooCommerce social login

As well as the standard WooCommerce login facility, you can let customers log in with their social media accounts. With WooCommerce's social login, you create a public store as usual so that anyone can browse your products. As part of the checkout, they can log into your website using their social media accounts.

You might offer social login in addition to - or instead of - the option to register directly on your WooCommerce website.

Research suggests that over 77% of customers prefer to log into WooCommerce or other websites using social media. This is hardly surprising given that it saves them the hassle of creating a new WooCommerce account for your website and remembering their logins. (And of course, WordPress insists on secure passwords these days so they can't just log in with an easy-to-remember password!)

Back in 2014, I wrote about a 'deadly embrace' caused by WordPress social login plugins. At the time, the available plugins conflicted with built-in WordPress user accounts. Things have improved since then but if you're considering social login then I recommend you use the official WooCommerce extension. This offers the best chance of creating a user-friendly WooCommerce social login for your website.

How to add social login to a WooCommerce store

To add social login to your WooCommerce website, I recommend the official WooCommerce Social Login plugin. Once you've purchased the plugin, follow the instructions in the knowledge base to enter your license key and set it up.

Given the issues I previously identified with social login, I recommend thorough testing before it goes live. Make sure your WooCommerce login process works seamlessly. In particular, test the following aspects of the login process:

• First time WooCommerce logins using each social network.
• Repeat logins using the same social network.
• Repeat logins using a different social network. (i.e. what happens if a customer forgets which social network they logged in with previously?)
• Register using social login and then try logging in directly on the website using the Lost Password link.

Basically, try to break it and send a support request to WooCommerce if you discover any problems. Social login is a great idea but needs thorough testing to get right, as customers may forget how they previously logged into your WooCommerce store.

Get WooCommerce Social Login

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Option 3 - Login portal with WooCommerce protected categories

Options 1 and 2 are about letting customers log in to a public WooCommerce store. They might have to log in to purchase, but anyone can browse the store and see the products. You can also create a WooCommerce login system where customers have to log in or enter a password in order to see your products or other store content.

The WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin creates a login portal where different customers can see different products. It locks down one or more of your product categories so that no one else can see them. Customers must log into WooCommerce with the correct credentials to see the products inside their portal.

You can create separate categories for different groups of customers, and you can even create customer-specific products. Each customer logs in and views the restricted products that they have access to.

Who needs protected product categories?

You can use WooCommerce Protected Categories in several ways:

• Show products from protected categories in the public areas of your store. When someone clicks a protected product, they must enter the password or login to view the single product page or purchase. This lets you display all products in the public store, while only pre-approved customers can buy protected ones.
• Hide protected categories and products from the public store. Alternatively, you can hide protected WooCommerce categories and their products from public areas of your store. Authorized users can log in and be directed to the correct hidden category. This is perfect WooCommerce wholesale stores or customer-specific products where you sell different products to each customer.
• Hide your entire WooCommerce store. Finally, you can put ALL your products within one or more protected categories. This way, customers have to log in before they can view your products or buy. (Tip: While it's possible to hide your whole store with this plugin, you might prefer Option 5, below. Both plugins let you create a WooCommerce hidden store)

How to create protected categories in WooCommerce

You can read full setup instructions in the plugin knowledge base. Here's a quick guide to get you started:

1. First, get WooCommerce Protected Categories.
2. Install and activate the plugin.
3. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Protected Categories and enter your license key.
4. Change any settings such as customizing the text on the password WooCommerce login page, and hide protected categories from the public areas of your store.
5. Now, go to the product category that you want to hide behind the WooCommerce login page. You'll find this in Products → Categories. The plugin has added a new 'Visibility' section with options to password protect the category or make it private. Choose 'Protected' and either password protect the category, or restrict it to specific users or roles.
6. Repeat step 5 for all the categories you want to protect.

Finally, test your WooCommerce protected categories from different customer login scenarios. For example, try it when you're logged in and out of the website. Also, try it before and after you log in to a category.

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Option 4 - Create a login-only store

WooCommerce Private Store forces customers to log in to your WooCommerce store before they can see your shop page, products, categories, or any other store content. It's a simple but effective plugin to hide WooCommerce from public view, without affecting the public parts of your site.

By logging into their user account or entering a simple password on the WooCommerce private store login page, customers can unlock the store and access the products and other content inside. Your public users won't even know you have a WooCommerce store unless you decide to link to the WooCommerce login page. (In which case, they will be able to see the WooCommerce login page but none of the content behind it.)

How to hide your whole WooCommerce store behind password protection or a user login form

The plugin knowledge base contains full setup instructions for WooCommerce Private Store. I've also provided details below. Setting it up literally just takes a few minutes:

1. Buy the plugin from https://barn2.com/woocommerce-private-store.
2. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Private Store.
3. Enter your license key and change any settings such as customizing the WooCommerce login form text. Either choose a password to password protect WooCommerce, or tick the 'Logged In Users' option to automatically unlock it for logged-in users or specific roles.

Once you've saved the settings page, your whole e-commerce store will be protected. Customers will have to log in or enter the password before they can see ANY WooCommerce content such as the main shop page, products, categories, etc. Your WooCommerce content will also be blocked from search engines, so it's a simple yet secure way to make WooCommerce private.

WooCommerce Protected Categories or Private Store?

I realize that the plugins mentioned in options 4 and 5 are quite similar. You can use them in similar ways but they can also be used very differently in terms of WooCommerce login options. Check out my article and quiz on which WooCommerce protection plugin to use.

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Option 5 - WooCommerce auto-login by URL

Finally, you might want an easier way for your WooCommerce store's customers to log in.

WordPress and WooCommerce auto login plugins provide a dynamic link that automatically logs customers into their accounts. This saves customers from having to remember or store usernames and passwords. All they need is their personal auto-login URL.

You can use this option with options 1, 2, 4, and 5 listed above.

For full instructions, check out our separate step-by-step tutorial on how to set up WooCommerce auto-login URLs.

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What type of WooCommerce login do you use?

As you can see, there are many types of WooCommerce login designed for different types of stores. I hope this guide has helped you to choose the right login method for your WordPress site and to set it up properly.

How do you allow customers to log in to your site? Are there good WooCommerce plugins I've missed? What pitfalls did you come across and what would you advise other WooCommerce users? Please add your comments below.

With more and more people using our bestselling WooCommerce table plugin, we're enjoying seeing all the innovate uses that people are finding for it. Here are 3 very different examples of how real customers are using the WooCommerce Product Table WordPress plugin.

1. The first example uses it as a WooCommerce wholesale plugin, with the table view only available to approved trade users.
2. The second example adds WooCommerce tables to the single product page. The table lists kitchen parts, letting customers mix and match to order a complete kitchen.
3. The final example uses WooCommerce tables to create a music store, with embedded audio samples to listen to before buying the music online.

Learn how to improve your WooCommerce conversion rate with WooCommerce Product Table. 

1. Davora - WooCommerce Wholesale Store

Davora are an e-commerce website selling ethnic and minor season greetings cards. As well as their public WooCommerce store, they use Wholesale Suite's 'Wholesale Pricing' plugin to display wholesale prices in a separate trade area. This lets them control how products are sold to wholesale users, for example with separate trade pricing and minimum order quantities.

When you log into the trade store, you can navigate to a product category. The products in each category are listed in a searchable, sortable table created using WooCommerce Product Table. WooCommerce Product Table is fully compatible with Wholesale Suite's pricing plugin so they can be used together.

It's very similar to the advice in our tutorial on how to create a WooCommerce order form.

Davora have done some custom development work to automatically display product tables on category pages for trade users, while public customers see the normal category layouts. (The knowledge base includes some basic guidance on how to add product tables to category archive templates.)

Tutorial - WooCommerce Wholesale Plugins: The Ultimate Guide

2. First Kitchens - WooCommerce table for optional product add-ons

First Kitchens have a beautiful WordPress website with WooCommerce tables within the main description on the individual product pages. They use the tables to list the available add-ons for their kitchen parts. A product list offers a more structured way to display extra product options than using variable products or an Extra Product Options extension.

Until we saw the First Kitchens website, it hadn't occurred to us that anyone would ever add a product table to the single product page! After all, most WooCommerce sites only list 1 product on the individual product page! However when we saw the tables in action, we saw that it makes perfect sense and is an ideal way to sell kitchens online. A classic example of how people are using the WooCommerce table plugin in innovative new ways!

Tutorial - WooCommerce Product List View plugin: The Ultimate Guide

3. Dosado - WooCommerce Music Store

Dosado are a square dance website with a WooCommerce music store where fans can buy their music.

They use our WooCommerce table plugin to list their music products in a responsive jQuery table. The table has columns for name, SKY, price and add to cart. They have cleverly adjusted the column widths to add an expandable cross. This can be clicked on to expand the table to reveal 2 hidden columns. These contain the date and include an embedded audio file so that you can listen to a sample of the music before buying.

Dosado have multiple WooCommerce tables on their site. There's a separate table of products for each month, and also on other locations around the site. This has allowed them to create an entire WooCommerce website without any of the standard built-in category layouts. The result is much better suited to a music store.

Audio samples are an excellent way for music stores to improve conversion rates and increase sales. Dosado have achieved this in a subtle way that doesn't take up too much vertical space, while providing plenty of useful information in the WooCommerce table.

Tutorial - Create a WooCommerce Directory to Sell Music & More

Next steps

So, you've seen 3 innovative ways in which 3 websites are using WooCommerce table plugins. Here are some next steps for you to follow:

1. Get WooCommerce Product Table for your own website. Use the knowledge base to find your own innovative ways to use it.
2. Become an affiliate and earn 30% commission for recommending our plugins.
3. Already using our WooCommerce table plugin, or something similar? Add a link to your own website in the comments below. We'd love to see how you're using tables in WooCommerce!

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