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Malleus Martialis crafts high-quality swords and equipment for Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA). Founded 11 years ago by master craftsman Rodolfo Tanara, the company launched their e-commerce site four years ago to keep pace with growing demand. But managing bespoke products online came with an unexpected challenge - one that nearly forced them to scale back their customization offerings.

The challenge: drowning in product variations

For Sergio Grillo, who manages the website backend, every new product meant hours of tedious work. With 17 grip colors, multiple blade lengths, and various customization options, a single sword could generate more than 50 variations in WooCommerce.

"I was spending hours on end every time a new product was coming out, just filling up the variations," Sergio explained. "We were actually thinking of reducing some of the customizations we wanted to offer just because we couldn't keep up on the website side."

Stock management compounded the problem. Each variation needed manual updates, turning what should have been a streamlined operation into a time-consuming nightmare.

The solution: WooCommerce Product Options

After researching alternatives, Sergio discovered WooCommerce Product Options. The plugin transformed how Malleus Martialis manages their custom products.

It's really easy to use. It was a lifesaver for me. I really recommend it.

Sergio Grillo

Instead of creating dozens of variations per product, the team now tracks stock on just a couple of base variations and handles all customization through product options. The conditional options feature proved especially valuable, allowing specific options to appear only for relevant product configurations.
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Orden en casa is a Spain-based ecommerce store that sells a wide range of home organization products for the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, lounge, and more. They’ve used our WooCommerce Product Filters plugin to help customers narrow down their search using product filter options.

How our plugin solved their problem

Orden en casa have over 2,000 products. They were looking for a way to make it easier for customers to navigate their large product catalog and narrow their search for the home organization products they were looking for.

They used the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin to show product filter options on their store’s category pages.

When a customer lands on the product category page, they see all the products in that category as well as product filters in the left sidebar. They can sort the products, filter by price, select sub-categories, and apply additional filters, e.g., see only products on sale. Customers can use as many product filters as they want to narrow their search.

The filters make it easy for customers to browse the product catalog more efficiently and narrow down their search in a few clicks. This helps Orden en casa deliver a better customer experience and improve product visibility.

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Mandalafy is a print-on-demand store where customers create personalized mandala designs and print them on products like t-shirts, mugs, and home decor. Dan, the creator of Mandalafy, needed customers to visualize their creations on real products. This case study shows how WooCommerce Live Preview transforms customizable product stores.

The challenge: making custom products feel tangible

Dan developed a mandala design tool that lets customers create personalized patterns. However, he needed a solution to bridge the gap between digital creation and physical product.

"I wanted clients to have that feeling like I'm making this product," Dan explained. "I wanted it to feel really streamlined. I didn't want it to be clunky."

Before discovering Barn2, Dan experimented with other preview plugins but found them limiting.

The solution: WooCommerce Live Preview delivers

Dan discovered WooCommerce Product Options and WooCommerce Live Preview, which provided exactly what he needed.

I realized I wasn't limited in terms of what products I could offer as long as I can create the image. That wasn't exactly something that I could have articulated until I found it.

Dan, creator of Mandalafy

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If your organization deals with a large volume of documents, having an efficient system to organize and present them is essential. This case study will help you understand how SKA, an organization that needed to transition from Joomla to WordPress, found the perfect file management solution with Barn2’s Document Library Pro plugin.

The challenge: finding a WordPress-compatible document management system

Since 2011, SKA had been using Joomla as their content management system, relying on DocMan to manage their extensive library of PDFs, including annual reports, financial statements, and newsletters. When the organization decided to migrate their website to WordPress, they faced a key challenge: finding a robust document management system that could handle their large volume of files efficiently.

Gurdip Singh, who led the website transition, initially considered using the WordPress version of DocMan due to his familiarity with the platform. However, after careful evaluation, he decided to explore other options. This led him to conduct an extensive review of various WordPress-based document management plugins, examining their features, user experience, and ease of setup.

After testing several options, Document Library Pro emerged as the best choice for SKA’s needs.

The solution: why SKA chose Document Library Pro

SKA selected Document Library Pro because it provided an intuitive, feature-rich, and professional way to organize and display their documents.

Key benefits that made Document Library Pro the ideal solution:

• Instantly professional appearance: “It looks great right out of the box.”
• User-friendly setup: “It’s easy to learn and set up.”
• Powerful filtering options: “The filters work seamlessly.”
• Featured image extraction: The ability to automatically extract the first page of a document as a thumbnail was also an exciting addition they hope to implement soon.

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Scared Cat Music is a royalty-free music subscription library that offers a wide range of authentic soundtracks, with new tracks added every month. They’ve used our WooCommerce Product Filters plugin with WooCommerce Product Table to make it easy for users to find music tracks.

How our plugin solved their problem

Scared Cat Music have hundreds of tracks listed on their website. They needed a way to make it easy for users to filter through their large collection of music tracks and find exactly what they were looking for.

To do this, they used the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin on their music library page.

When a user lands on the All Music page, they see a neat and organized table that lists all of the tracks Scared Cat Music offers. The table consists of four columns – Name, Preview, Download, and Info. Users can click the play button next to each track to listen to the preview and click the Read more button to learn more about it.

By default, the table shows 25 tracks at a time. Pagination options directly below the table let users see more tracks. In addition to this, users can sort the columns in the table to see all the tracks in alphabetical order or reverse alphabetical order.

In addition to this, there’s a Filter button directly above the table. When a user clicks this button, a sliding menu opens up from the right with multiple filter options. Users can apply as many filters as they’d like to narrow down their search. The different product filters let users filter music tracks by Categories, Tempo, Mood, Feeling, and Duration.

When users click the Apply Filters button, the product table updates to show only music tracks that match the user’s criteria.

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The Schumacher Institute is a UK-based charity and think tank with around 270 fellows worldwide - from senior academics to early-stage researchers. The organization needed a clean way to share its growing library of discussion papers, research and policy documents. Document Library Pro gave them exactly that.

Replacing a clunky system with a professional document library

Before switching to Document Library Pro, the Schumacher Institute relied on a basic plugin that felt limited. Ian Roderick, who manages most of the website, went looking for something better - and the plugin's interface stood out straight away.

"The interface of Document Library Pro looked good. It seems to do the job nicely," said Ian. Setup was straightforward too. "It was up and running straight away," he added, noting that the transition was also a good opportunity to audit existing files and clear out anything outdated.

It was up and running straight away. It's also quite a good time to have a bit of an audit and clear out stuff you don't need and start afresh.

Ian Roderick

A document hub for fellows and the public

Today, the institute uses Document Library Pro to organize discussion papers, research and policy documents across multiple pages. Fellows and visitors can browse and download content with ease, and filtering options help them find what they need. For a charity managing contributions from hundreds of fellows, having a professional document hub makes a real difference.

Ian would also recommend the plugin to other organizations in a similar position. "I would recommend it if people were looking for something like that," he said. "I've never had any problems or hiccups with it."

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Sweet Nothings Perfumery is a Maryland-based online store that sells handmade bath, body, and skincare products. They’ve used our WooCommerce Product Filters plugin to let shoppers filter products by collection.

How our plugin solved their problem

Sweet Nothings Perfumery were looking for a filter plugin that would let them display filter dropdowns at the top of their main shop page instead of only in the sidebar. They wanted a filter plugin that had a minimal and clean feel.

They used our WooCommerce Product Filters plugin to create a filter dropdown for their main shop page. The filter dropdown lets customers shop by collection.

When a user clicks on the Shop by Collection filter dropdown, they can see a list of the different collections the online store sells along with the number of total products in that collection. Customers can click on a collection to instantly view all products in that collection.

The filter dropdown works seamlessly with the sorting dropdown. This enables customers to see products in a specific collection and sort them by popularity, average rating, latest, or price.

To see all products again, customers can simply click the Clear filters option on the top right-hand side of the screen.

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Village of Manchester is an online community website that publishes village meeting minutes, newsletters, and forms as well as local events. They’ve used the Document Library Pro plugin to list large numbers of documents in a neat and organized way.

How our plugin solved their problem

Village of Manchester needed a way to list large numbers of documents (meeting minutes, newsletters, and forms) in an organized way on their website.

They used our Document Library Pro plugin to create a Document Library page on their website. When a visitor lands on the page, they’re able to see the documents structured into collapsible folders.

The Document Library page has instructions for visitors explaining how to use the document library to find what they’re looking for. It also contains four document folders Minutes, Forms, Newsletter, and Village.

Site visitors can click on the folders to preview and download a document. The documents are listed in a neat and organized table layout. The table includes sortable columns for Title, Summary, Link, and File Size. The document library also has a search field that site visitors can use to locate specific documents. All of the documents in the document library are PDF files.

Add a free document library with collapsible folders to your site today!

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Bamboo Haus is an Australian-owned business which sells bedding products like bedsheets, pillows, pillowcases, and mattress toppers. They’ve used our WooCommerce Product Filters plugin to filter and show product variations on their shop page.

How our plugin solved their problem

Bamboo Haus were looking for a way to add product filters to their shop page that would let customers narrow down their search and find the exact product variations they were searching for. This involved adding product filters for different product attributes on their main shop page.

They used the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin to create and display three product filters on the shop page – Product Category, Colour, and Size.

When a customer lands on the Bamboo Haus shop page, they can use the product filter dropdowns to see all products that match their criteria. For instance, if a customer is looking for all bedsheets for their king-sized mattress, they can use the Size product filter dropdown to select King and see all products and product variations for a king-sized mattress.

Similarly, if customers want to see all products that are pink, they can use the Colour filter dropdown to select the Pink Rose option. Once customers find what they’re looking for, they can use the Clear filters option to view all products or set different filters.

In addition to this, Bamboo Haus also use Hotjar to analyze how their customers are using the product filters. This allows them to consider how they can improve the styling, positioning, and other settings to maximize their usage.

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