How to easily manage bulk variations in WooCommerce: Complete Guide (2024)
While it’s important to offer an easy way for customers to browse through your WooCommerce products, you also need an easy way to manage all your products and product variations. WooCommerce easy variations management is essential for stores selling products with many variations. A bulk variations management plugin makes it easier to edit and manage product variation options, saving you heaps of time.
As it comes, WooCommerce doesn't provide an easy way to manage variations in bulk. Fortunately, you can achieve this by installing a WooCommerce bulk variations manager plugin on your site.
In this complete guide, we’ll dive deeper into why you need WooCommerce easy variations management for your online store. We’ll also show you how you can manage bulk variations in WooCommerce. This includes selecting multiple variations at once in order to apply bulk changes to details such as the price, variation image, and more.
What are WooCommerce variations?
WooCommerce by default lets you display different options or variations for your products. Here’s what it looks like:
You can add multiple product variations to each product and set prices and variation images (or variation swatches) for each one. Adding product variations in WooCommerce is great for selling products that come in different colors or sizes.
For instance, if you sell apparel items such as t-shirts or shoes, you can have variations based on size and color product attributes. Similarly, if you sell stationery items such as ball pens or chart paper, you can create multiple product variations based on colors and brands.
Customers can select the product variant they want and add the desired quantity to their shopping cart, without having to go through multiple shop pages.
Adding WooCommerce variations is also great for restaurants that want to offer different meal portions e.g. Small, Medium, Large, or Super Size. It’s a great way to enhance the shopping experience and increase the average order value.
Additionally, you can also offer build-your-own products or custom products on your ecommerce store by adding WooCommerce variations. For instance, you can create a “Food Plan” that lets customers select food items that they want to include in their food bundle. You can add the food items as product variations and charge the desired price for each food item. This encourages more people to order and allows you to offer a unique shopping experience.
Why are variations so difficult to manage?
WooCommerce makes it very difficult to manage bulk product variations, especially if you have a lot of variations for each product.
This makes editing your WooCommerce product variations a nightmare as the whole process is time-consuming and tedious.
For instance, do you have multiple product variations for a specific product and want to add a common thumbnail for each variation in your e-commerce platform? Amazingly, you have to manually add the product image individually for each product variation 😫
Adding and editing product variations - the slow way
Here’s how you normally create variations in bulk from within the WordPress admin:
- Navigate to the product’s edit screen. Click on the Variations tab from the Product data meta box to configure variation settings. This is the default variation management tab in WooCommerce.
- Click on the variation you want to edit and set the price for each variation. WooCommerce also lets you set the Regular Price for all variations. However, this might not work for you if you want to charge a different price for each variation.
- Similarly, if you want to add a variation image (or variation swatches), you have to find and select the variation and click on the Image button.
- Make sure to click on the Update button to save changes on the front end.
As you can see, the process is very tedious if you have more than a couple of variations. It takes a lot of time if you want to customize product variations for hundreds of options on your WooCommerce site. This is because WooCommerce doesn’t offer the functionality to bulk edit variations.
Store owners who want to change common data that is similar across all variations of a product are forced to do it one by one.
This is not ideal for most store owners as it’s so time-consuming. It also increases the chances of making errors in setting product prices or adding the correct featured images for each variation. This is especially true for wholesale stores that want to offer multiple product options per product that have similar attributes.
The faster way to easily manage bulk variations in WooCommerce
While WooCommerce itself doesn’t come built-in with bulk variation management, the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin adds easy variations management to WooCommerce. It's an all-in-one solution for WooCommerce easy variations management.
This robust WooCommerce variations manager plugin makes it easy to take care of all your WooCommerce variable products. And if you like, then it can also display WooCommerce better variations on the front end of your online shop. That's right, it improves the way that you edit and display variations in bulk.
2 ways to manage bulk variations
- Bulk variations management. For starters, you can add and manage WooCommerce bulk variations using the default product edit page, an interface you’re already familiar with. This lets you apply bulk actions to specific or select product variations and customize prices, images, and manage stock status in bulk for all “similar” product variations.
- Bulk variations order form. The WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin also lets you display and add variations in a bulk order form. For instance, you can display all attributes, product options, stock quantity information, and prices in an attractive table-style layout. Customers can quickly add multiple products to their cart and select the product options. This is much faster than forcing customers to select and add each variation to their cart one by one.
This WordPress plugin lets you list variations in two different modes: a variations order form and a variations price matrix layout. As a result, this gives you a better way to showcase best WooCommerce product variations and make more sales. I recommend using the order form to allow customers to order variations in bulk. On the other hand, use the sale price matrix to display your variation prices alongside the default easy variation dropdowns.
Or if you simply need a quicker way to edit easy variations, then use the bulk management features without changing anything on the front end.
How to set up easy variations management in WooCommerce
As we have seen, the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin makes it really easy for store owners to manage product variations in bulk. Here’s how you can do that on your WooCommerce site.
First, install the plugin
After installing WooCommerce Bulk Variations on your WordPress site, navigate WooCommerce → Settings → Products. Click on the Bulk variations link to configure the plugin’s settings.
Select your desired Grid Options and choose how to display images for product variations using the dropdown menu next to Variations images.
You can also set default attributes for all new variable products you add to your WooCommerce site. Once you’re done, remember to click on the Save Changes button to continue.
How to manage bulk variations in WooCommerce
Now, with the WooCommerce plugin fully set up, you can start bulk editing product variations on your WooCommerce site. To do this, go to the product’s edit page.
You can use the Filters field to filter out the product variations you want to bulk edit.
This will only select the product variations you want to edit and not all product variations for your product. Now, select Set thumbnail using the dropdown menu above.
Next, select a common image for all the selected product variation options. Click on the Select Image button to continue.
Make sure to click on the Update button to save changes.
To sum up, the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin offers an easy way to manage all product variations in bulk. It lets you edit product attributes in bulk and makes it easier to customize multiple product variations at once. This way, you save time and make it easier to manage all variable products on your WooCommerce site.
Bonus: Display product variations better
As an online store owner, you want to make the buying process as easy as possible for your customers. One way to achieve this is by using the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin, which not only allows you to update multiple variations for a single product but also provides an intuitive table-style layout for customers to buy product variations in bulk. By using this feature, you can make it easy for customers to purchase multiple variations of a product without having to navigate through individual product pages.
The bulk order form or grid provided by WooCommerce Bulk Variations allows customers to add multiple variations of a product to their cart quickly. Customers can view the different options available in a table format, with each column representing a different attribute such as size, color, or quantity. They can then select the desired variations and add them to their cart in one go, instead of having to select each variation individually.
If you don't want to change how variations are displayed in the front end, then you can skip this section. Alternatively, here’s what you need to do to enable the bulk variations order form:
- First, enable a grid-style layout for product variations. You can do this on the plugin’s settings screen. This will enable the grid for all variable products, replacing the standard variation dropdowns. If you prefer, then use steps 2-4 to enable it (or customize it) for specific products only.
- Using the product’s edit page, scroll down to the Product data meta box and click on the Bulk Variations tab.
- Select the Override the global settings for this product and the Enable the bulk variation grid for this product checkboxes and choose your display options.
- Finally, make sure the Disable purchasing is unchecked before clicking on the Update button.
Customers can select their desired product variation options using the variations matrix layout and quickly add multiple products to their cart from a single page.
As a result, you enhance the single product page’s user experience and encourage more people to purchase from your online store.
Can I bulk update variations for multiple products at once?
The WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin is a helpful tool that allows you to update multiple variations of a single product at once. This plugin can be used on the "Edit Product" screen for a particular product, and it makes it much easier to make changes to multiple variations without having to go through each one separately. By using this plugin, you can quickly and easily update the prices, stock levels, and other attributes for all the variations of a particular product.
However, if you need to update the variations for multiple products at once, there are other services that you can use. One such service is Setary, which provides a spreadsheet-style interface for bulk editing WooCommerce products. With Setary, you can easily make changes to the variations of multiple products at once, without having to go through each one separately. This makes it a valuable tool for businesses with a large inventory of products with multiple variations.
The Setary interface is user-friendly, and it allows you to edit various product attributes, such as prices, stock levels, SKUs, and descriptions. You can also use Setary to create new products and variations or delete existing ones. The tool saves time and effort, as you can quickly make changes to a large number of products and variations with just a few clicks.
Where to get the bulk WooCommerce variations manager
WooCommerce makes it easy to sell simple product types. But if you sell products with more than one or two variations, then you need a bulk variations manager plugin.
In conclusion, the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin lets you:
- Add or edit product variations options in bulk on your WooCommerce store.
- Save time and effort in bulk editing similar product variations. Stop wasting time manually editing each variation one by one!
- Display your product variations better.
- Make it easier for customers to buy products.
Ready to set up WooCommerce easy variations management? Get WooCommerce Bulk Variations today!