Articles About WooCommerce

Want to replace the default search in your online store with WooCommerce advanced search? Keep reading to learn how.

The product search that comes with WooCommerce out of the box is pretty limited. It doesn’t let customers search for products by category, price, or attributes. Smart advanced search is all about helping customers find products quickly and easily, especially in larger stores.

So, instead of expecting customers to know exactly which search queries to run, you can help them narrow down their search to quickly find the exact products they’re looking for.

With this in mind, in this article, we’ll talk about how to:

What is smart WooCommerce search?

The search functionality that comes with WooCommerce is pretty basic:

This means that customers will have a difficult time finding what they’re looking for in your online store.

The solution is to use a WooCommerce advanced search plugin that can build on the default search with AJAX and advanced search logic. This way, you’ll be able to deliver a better user experience to customers - without refreshing the page.

You can add a WooCommerce search bar on its own but for best results, we recommend using it alongside a filtering plugin. A WooCommerce filter plugin lets customers narrow down their search and gives them a clearer idea of the types of products you sell.

Keep reading to learn how to add advanced search to WooCommerce, along with advanced filtering - the perfect combination.

How to set up WooCommerce advanced search

While regular WordPress sites can benefit significantly from implementing advanced search, WooCommerce stores are a beast of their own. As an online store owner, you need to add advanced search and product filter widgets to your WooCommerce store.

This is particularly useful for stores that sell dozens or hundreds of products such as grocery stores, clothing stores, cookware stores, hardware stores, and arts and crafts stores.

Here’s what you need to do to improve search on your WooCommerce store:

Step 1: Add a WooCommerce search bar to your store

First, you need to install an advanced WooCommerce search plugin. We recommend the YITH WooCommerce AJAX Search plugin.

It adds a predictive search engine to your WooCommerce store making it easier for customers to find the products they’re looking for. The search results load in real-time so customers won’t have to wait for a page refresh.

In addition to this, this advanced search plugin lets users search within specific product categories or tags as well as search by SKUs.

Get the YITH WooCommerce AJAX Search plugin and install it on your WordPress site.

Go to YITH → Ajax Search from the WordPress admin panel to configure the plugin’s settings.

General settings

You can set the WooCommerce advanced search input label and submit label here. The plugin also lets you set the minimum number of characters required to trigger autosuggest. For example, if you set it to 3, the plugin will start showing results to customers after they’ve entered three letters in the search box. You can also set the maximum number of results to show in the autosuggest box.

Search settings

The search settings tab lets you refine how the search functionality works on your online store. You can set which element types to search when a customer runs a search query and which metadata to search. For example, you can choose to have the plugin search in titles, excerpts, product categories, product tags, and content.

In addition to this, you can also show items for multiple-word searches, hide out-of-stock products from search results, and much more.

Output settings

The output settings tab lets you configure how the search results appear to customers on the front-end. You can choose where to show the product’s thumbnail, show or hide the product price, including product variations in search results, and more.

Once you’re done setting it up to your liking, preview the shop page on the front-end. The WooCommerce advanced search bar will look something like this when you run a search query:

Step 2: Add filter widgets

As mentioned earlier, online stores can benefit from having both a WooCommerce advanced search and filter widgets. They work together to help customers find what they’re looking for.

This gives customers the option to run a search query if they know exactly what they want or use the filter options to narrow down their search if they’re looking for a specific type of product. For example, customers looking for t-shirts within $20 to $50 can use a price filter widget to narrow down their search.

Install and activate the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin

Get the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin and install and activate it on your WordPress site.

You’ll receive the plugin files along with the license key in a confirmation email. Head over to WooCommerce → Settings → Filters from the admin panel. Enter your license key.

Finally, click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen to validate your license key.

Create filters and group filters

The next step is to create filters and group them together in a logical way.

To do this, head over to WooCommerce → Settings → Filters from the WordPress admin panel and click on the Filters tab. Fill in the details to create a new filter.

Set the name, filter by, filter type, and assign to group options. Repeat this step to create as many filters as you’d like. Depending on the types of products you sell, you might want to create:

• Categories filter
• Attributes filter
• Colors filter
• Tags filter
• Custom taxonomy filters
• Price filter
• Ratings filter
• In stock filter
• On sale filter

Once you’ve created all of the filters you need, structure the individual filters into logical groups. This makes it easy to add a widget for a group of filters on your WooCommerce site.

WooCommerce Product Filters also lets you choose the filter style. You can display the WooCommerce category filters as dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, labels, or images. Think about which types of filter will work best with the WooCommerce advanced search field so that customers can easily find what they need.

Add filters to the page

Finally, it's time to decide whether to display the product filters in your store.

There are two options, so think about which location(s) will look best under the WooCommerce advanced search:

• Filter widgetsThese can appear in any sidebar area, for example the left or right column of the WooCommerce Shop page. To add filter widgets, go to Appearance → Widgets in the WordPress admin and add
• Horizontal filtersThese filters appear below the advanced search field and above the list of products. On the plugin settings page, you can select which filter group you want to display above the products in the store.

It's time to add advanced search and filters to WooCommerce

Setting up smart advanced search for your store involves adding an advanced search bar and filter widgets to your WooCommerce website.

This way, customers can choose to search for products using the search bar if they know exactly what they’re looking for and also narrow down their search using filter options. That way, they can quickly narrow down the results by factors such as price and attribute.

To recap, we recommend using the following plugins to set up smart, advanced search in WooCommerce:

• YITH WooCommerce AJAX Search to add predictive search to your store.
• WooCommerce Product Filters to add filter widgets that help customers narrow down their search.

Ready to set up an advanced WooCommerce search on your online store? Get WooCommerce Product Filters today!

With online shopping the most convenient it's ever been, a WooCommerce store should be as organized and user-friendly as possible. Keep reading to learn how to make it easy for your customers to find what they want and increase your revenue. All you need is WooCommerce plus the best product filter plugin to allow customers to filter by attribute and other criteria.

If you sell multiple types of products, you'll know that it's ideal to let shoppers search for what they want - it should be fast and easy for them to find things to buy.

However, there are plenty of products a customer might like, but they might not know how to find it or won't even know it exists yet. This is where product filters and attributes come in!

What is an attribute filter and why do customers love them?

A product filter (also known as faceted search) is a tool on a shop page to help customers discover new products by searching by any criteria. This means that if a customer is looking for a blue T-shirt, they can apply "T-shirt" and "Blue" on a product filter to find every blue T-shirt in the store.

Most WooCommerce stores use attributes to store data about their products. This might be size, color, brand, and so on. As a result, WooCommerce product attribute filters are an excellent opportunity to help customers to find products using this important data.

Product attribute filters benefit stores in a variety of ways:

Adding attribute filters to your shop page allows customers to find items that match their personal preferences faster. This is how they can find all kinds of great new products.

The problem with attribute filters in WooCommerce

However, unfortunately the attribute filters that come with WooCommerce aren't very good! This causes problems if you have a huge catalog of product variations.

If you use the default WooCommerce product filter to offer filtering by attribute, here’s what would happen: When a customer tries to filter based on an attribute, it will show all variable products having that attribute. This is a terrible customer experience!

The solution - the best WooCommerce attribute filter plugin

Fortunately, there's a beginner-friendly WordPress plugin that lets you add professional-level WooCommerce attribute filters to any shop page. The best all-in-one product filter plugin on WordPress is WooCommerce Product Filters. It's the perfect mix of full customization power, plus an easy-to-manage back end with drag-and-drop options and straightforward settings.

If you want to add attribute filters to WooCommerce, then there are 6 professional-looking filter styles to choose from:

• Dropdown - The product attributes are listed in a dropdown/select list. Customers can select one at a time.
• Checkboxes - Attributes are listed as a series of tick boxes. Customers can select as many attributes as they like, e.g. red, green and blue.
• Radio buttons - The product attributes are listed as radio buttons, where the customer can select one at a time.
• Labels - Attributes are displayed as text labels, similar to a tag cloud. This is a nice visual way to display a small number of attributes, for example 3-5 size options.
• Images - For an even more visual way to add attribute filters to WooCommerce, you can display them as images. Select an image on the edit page for each attribute term, and they will appear in the filter. Customers click on an attribute image to filter by that. They can filter by as many attributes as they like. You can choose whether to show the image on its own, or with the name of the attribute term as an overlay.
• Color swatches - Finally, you can display color attributes as square blocks of color - either with or without labels. Customers click on all the color attributes that they wish to see results for.

The filters are also 100% mobile friendly, so customers can easily filter by attribute from any device!

And there's more!

As well as having a choice of styles for your WooCommerce product attribute filters, you have full control over how the filters behave:

Custom product attribute filters can be easy to set up and manage even without any technical experience. We'll show you how to set up product filters for any WooCommerce store in just 5 minutes, and how to filter by product attributes in a cleaner, user-friendly manner.

As you can see, using WooCommerce Product Filters is a powerful plugin that would take you a long time to code from scratch. That's why you can save a lot of time and money compared to coding a WooCommerce product filter programmatically.

How to add your own WooCommerce product attribute filters

Now we get to the tutorial part of our article. First, I'll give you the super-fast way to add WooCommerce attribute filters plus a video where you can copy us setting it up. Below, I'll provide a more in-depth step-by-step tutorial.

How do I filter by attribute in WooCommerce?

1. Install and activate the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin.
2. Go to Products → Filters and add a new filter group.
3. Add one or more attribute filters to the group.
4. Go to Appearance → Widgets and add the 'Product Filters' widget to your sidebar.

Start with your basic WooCommerce store

Before we add filters, you'll need to have a WooCommerce store. Simply install the WooCommerce plugin on any WordPress website, then add some products to start.

At this point your customers will see all the items you have available in the WooCommerce default product layout, without filters. You'll have a main shop homepage, plus a separate page for each category.

However, displaying WooCommerce products by category is only the very beginning. As we saw earlier, you need attribute filters to help customers to find products more easily.

Next, let’s take a look at how you can enable this plugin and apply custom filters in your website in minutes with or without any experience. We will:

1. Install the product filter plugin
2. Create filters so that customers can filter by attribute
3. Place product filters anywhere on your site

1. Install the best WooCommerce product filter plugin

First, buy the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin. Download the plugin from your Order Confirmation page or confirmation email, then install and activate it on WordPress.

The setup wizard will open, asking you to enter your license key and choose the main settings for your product filters. Here's a summary of some of the most important settings for your attribute filters:

Filter mode

• Button - You can choose to let users manually apply their filter options by clicking a button with your custom text. When "Button" under Filter Mode is selected, a text box will appear where you can input your own button text.
• Instant / AJAX - To add an automatic product filter to WooCommerce, select "Instant" under Filter Mode. 
  • What is an AJAX product filter? - An AJAX product filter is a filter that will apply each selection immediately — no other clicking required.
  • Should you use an instant filter or button? - A WooCommerce AJAX product filter can be beneficial to your store because it decreases the amount of clicks for a customer as well as the time it takes to see the products they want. When a selection is made, items will be filtered automatically with no extra refresh time, making this option generally more user-friendly.
    However, in some cases, it's best to have the manual button available — for example, when there are a lot of filters on one page, and it could take a while for a shopper to select all the product attributes and filters they want to apply before they are ready to browse products.

Filter visibility

• Display on shop pages or archive - All of your filter groups are automatically available in this dropdown. Simply pick one to display above the product area on your shop pages, or leave this blank if you'd rather manually place filters in other places in your shop.
• Hide filters by default - As a 100% mobile-friendly product filter, WooCommerce Product Filters offers this option that allows filters to be minimized right when the page loads. This means that a customer will need to click on a button to view them. By default, this will be enabled on mobile and disabled on desktop, but you can choose whether to hide your filters on both or neither.

Here's a great example of what hidden filters can look like on mobile:

Play around with these options until you're happy, and then click 'Save changes.'

Other options

• Product count - Display the number of products within each filter option. Knowing how many items are in each option can be helpful for the customer. Or you can hide the product count by un-checking the box.
• Button text - There are several options for changing the button text that appears in your filters. Change it to whatever you like, in your language.
• Toggle filters - If this option is enabled, customers can click to manually open or close each option in your filters. A plus (+) icon will appear on the right side of each filter option.
• Default status - You'll see this option if Toggle filters are enabled. 'Open' will show all filter options when a page first loads. When 'Closed' is selected, customers will need to click on filter headings to see what options are available.

Play around with these options until you're happy, and then click 'Save changes.'

Once you've done that, you're just a few minutes away from having live product attribute filters on your store!

2. Create WooCommerce attribute filters

Now that the WooCommerce product filter plugin is set up, it's time to make your first attribute filter! You can easily create a few simple filters or tons of totally unique filters. Whatever the needs of your store - it can be done right here.

1. Start at Products → Filters.
2. Click on the default filter group or create a new one.
3. Use the 'Add new filter' form on the left side of the page to enter your filter's information:

   • 

     Filter name - Add any name for customers to identify this filter. For example: "Drinks" or "Filter by color".
   • Filter by - Let shoppers filter your products by one or more of the following filter options:
     • Categories
     • Product Attributes (you'll want to choose this if you're creating a WooCommerce attribute filter)
     • Colors
     • Tags
     • Custom taxonomy
     • Price
     • Ratings
     • In stock
     • On sale
     • Sort by
   • Filter type - You'll see this field if you've selected to filter by categories, attributes, taxonomies, or tags. These types of filters can be displayed as:
     • Dropdown
     • Checkboxes
     • Radio buttons
     • Labels
     • Images (available for categories, attributes, or custom taxonomies)
   • When you create WooCommerce attribute filters, some additional options will appear. These let you choose whether to automatically display filters based on the attributes of the current page, or whether to select a specific attribute (e.g. color or size). If different products have different attributes then I recommend the automatic option.
   • Finally, click the 'Add new filter' button.
4. Repeat step 3 to make as many filters as you want!

3. Place product filters anywhere on your site

Every store layout has different places where a product filter will look and perform best. Of course, you should be able to put your filters anywhere you want to, and you absolutely can!

Once you have your groups and individual filters, easily put them anywhere on your site. The options are to automatically display a filter group on all your store pages, or to add filters using a sidebar widget or shortcode.

On your shop pages

To display horizontal filter dropdowns above all your shop pages, select a filter group on the plugin settings page (Products → Filters) or in the setup wizard.

Attribute filter widgets

You can add the Product Filters widget to a page sidebar. Similar to other widgets, find it in Appearance → Widgets in WordPress and drag the Product Filters widget to where you want it.

Shortcode placement — anywhere!

Display your default filter group anywhere using this shortcode:

[wpf-filters id=1]

Display the filter group of your choice by following these steps:

1. Go to Products → Filters, then the 'Filter Groups' tab.
2. Find the group you want on the right side of the page. Click the 'Copy' option next to that group.
3. Finally, paste its shortcode anywhere you want your group to show up!

It's time to test your attribute filters!

Now that the WooCommerce attribute filters are set up, it's important to test them out on your WordPress site. Click around your shop to make sure that:

1. The filters are in the perfect locations.
2. Types of filters and filter behaviors are to your liking. For example, if you’ve created an attribute filter, make sure all your product attributes are correctly named and added and are being displayed accurately.
3. Your products are organized by the correct filters.

WooCommerce product filters that work with Elementor and Divi Builder

Page builders like Elementor and Divi Builder make it possible to construct a website completely visually, with or without any coding experience. Tools like these create an accessible space for pros and total beginners alike to design the websites of their dreams. While Elementor and Divid are the most popular WordPress page builders, there's a surprising number of WooCommerce plugins that are not compatible with them.

With the option to display any filter group as a shortcode, WooCommerce Product Filters is the best and most flexible WooCommerce product filter for Elementor and Divi. Use it with either to create a space where you can fully design a WooCommerce store with custom product attribute filters by using mostly visual and drag-and-drop methods.

Bonus: Display product attributes in a table for faster orders - perfect for wholesale and more

In some cases, it's more convenient for certain customers to see a list-style catalog instead of viewing each product individually. Showing filtered results in a table streamlines the purchasing process even further, saving time for buyers. The efficient WooCommerce Product Table is ideal for situations like wholesale transactions, order forms, and restaurant ordering.

How it works

Choose to show users any product data you want including product attributes, custom fields, taxonomies, SKU, videos, and more. Showing the same information on both the product attribute filter and product table brings a feeling of consistency to your whole shop.

This product table also allows shoppers to make multiple selections at once, eliminating wasted time for them while also automating the ordering process for you. It's a win-win!

You can choose to display product attributes as product details or as product variations - depending on your business and audience. Use our comprehensive guide to understand the top 2 ways to display product attributes in table format.

Here's what one happy WooCommerce Product Table user has to say:

Set up your custom product filters to filter by attribute for WooCommerce in just 5 minutes

WooCommerce is a truly flexible e-commerce platform with a wide variety of custom options and plugins for any store. Overall, WooCommerce Product Filters is the best plug-and-play answer for store owners with a variety of products to show off. Enjoy increased revenue and loyalty from customers who know how to navigate your shop every time.

It's fast, easy, and totally customizable for beginners and pros alike. Your WooCommerce store is now more user-friendly than ever!

Next steps

In this article, we explored the most important aspects of custom attribute filters:

If you’re looking for a WooCommerce product filter with 100% custom options, that allows you to add filtering by attributes and more anywhere on your website, with collapsible product filters for mobile friendliness - WooCommerce Product Filters is perfect for you!

Your customers will love it as much as you do. Get your store the best WooCommerce store filters available →

Do you know what’s the single BIGGEST factor influencing customer purchasing decisions? It’s the product price. That's why you need to add a WooCommerce price filter to your store.

Studies show that pricing has a significant impact on the buying behavior of consumers. Yet, the price filter in WooCommerce itself isn’t good enough to help customers find products within their budget. It lets customers sort the product catalog in two ways: Price High to Low or Price Low to High.

As a consumer, I’m sure you can understand how this isn’t nearly as user-friendly as a price filter that lets customers set a price range i.e. minimum order amount or maximum price value.

Keep reading to discover the best way to add a WooCommerce price filter to your online store.

Why do all online stores need a WooCommerce price filter plugin?

A customer browsing your product catalog should be able to sort it by price. This way, they can quickly see items sorted by their product price – either low to high or high to low. It makes it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for.

Think about the last time you visited a major e-commerce store to buy something. If you’re like most people, I’ll bet the first thing you did was sort all products by price.

According to Prisync, 60% of consumers consider pricing to be the very first criteria on their buying decision. And the most important store features driving the purchase decision (80%) is competitive pricing.

The problem with filtering products by price in WooCommerce

The WooCommerce plugin provides a price widget out of the box. However, it’s not really fit for purpose because:

In addition to all of this, the other filters that come with WooCommerce are also very limited. For example, you can’t display a category filter above your WooCommerce price filter. It makes sense to plan all your filters together to create the best possible experience for customers, so this is a big limitation.

The perfect WooCommerce price filter plugin

WooCommerce Product Filters is a price filter plugin that lets you create individual price filters, structure them into logical groups, and display them anywhere on your online store.

Key features

It’s an advanced price filter that lets you display a price slider. Customers can use it to set a low and high price to filter the product catalog by. This way, they can set a price range (minimum price value and a maximum price value) to quickly find products within their budget.

Unlike the WooCommerce price widget, the price filter can appear either above the list of products or in a left (or right) sidebar on the page.

You can choose between two different filter behavior options: instant AJAX or button click. If you go with the AJAX option, the product catalog will update without a page refresh when the customer sets the price filter to show relevant products only. On the flip side, if you choose the button click option then the user will have to click the Apply Filters button to see the filtered list of products.

And it's not just a price filter plugin!

WooCommerce Product Filters also lets you add a Product sort dropdown to your shop pages. This allows users to sort the product catalog by price. The product sort dropdown can appear above the list of products or in the sidebar.

In addition to a robust price filter, the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin also lets you create filters for categories, attributes, colors, tags, custom taxonomies, ratings, stock status, and on-sale products. This way, you can let users filter products in a variety of different ways.

Combining a price filter widget with other filter types (like dropdowns, checkboxes, or radio buttons) makes it easier for customers to find exactly what they’re looking for and get to the correct product page faster. For example, if someone is looking for a red t-shirt between $15 to $25, they can quickly filter products to see only those products that fit those specifications:

• Category: T-shirts
• Colors: Red
• Price: $15 to $25

Related: Best cost calculator plugin for WordPress. 

Tutorial: how to add a WooCommerce price filter to your store

Here, we'll show you step-by-step how to add a price filter to your online store using the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin.

Step #1: Install the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin

Get the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin and install it on your WordPress site. You'll receive a license key and the plugin files in a confirmation email. Activate the license key in the plugin setup wizard and configure how you want the filters to behave.

Click the Save changes button to continue.

Step #2: Create a price filter

To create a price filter, head over to Products → Filters. Click on the filter group that you want to add the WooCommerce price filter to, and fill in the information on the Add new filter form.

You can set a filter name, select the data the filter will use, select the filter type (dropdown, checkbox, radio button, etc...), and assign it to a group. The WooCommerce Product Filters plugin lets you create as many filters as you'd like. So, you can combine the price filter with other filters such as product categories, attributes, tags, colors, ratings, stock status, and more.

Step #3: Add the price filter to a page

The WooCommerce Product Filters plugin comes with an option that lets you automatically a selected filter group above the products on your main shop pages. You can select this in the setup wizard or in Products → Filters → Settings.

This will show all filters in a horizontal layout above the list of products on the shop page and archive pages. To use the price filter, customers open the 'Price' dropdown and use the slider to select a low and high price.

Alternatively (or as well), you can use the Product Filters widget to display the price filter in your store's sidebar.

Each filter group also has a shortcode which you can use to insert the price filter (and other filters) anywhere in your store. This is useful if you create custom lists of products. Examples of this might include pages built using Elementor or Gutenberg.

Related tutorial: How to charge custom prices in WooCommerce. 

Bonus: list products in a table view with price filter

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin lets you list products in a neat and organized table layout that works just like an order form. Customers can add multiple products and variations to their cart in one click.

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin also lets customers find products with instant product search and sort. It’s the perfect addition to WooCommerce Product Filters. You can use both of these plugins on your WordPress site to create the best possible price filtering experience for customers. For example, you might create a WooCommerce price list complete with price filters.

You can use WooCommerce Product Table to create one-page order forms so that customers can view and select products quickly and use WooCommerce Product Filters to add stylish price filters which refine the products in the table by price.

This is especially useful for stores that sell lots of products (like wholesale stores) as well as stores that sell products that are better suited to a table layout (like restaurants or hardware stores).

With WooCommerce Product Table, customers can also click on the price column in the table to sort products by price in either ascending (i.e. price low to high) or descending order (i.e. price high to low).

As a store owner, you can use the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to insert lists of products anywhere on your WordPress site, complete with a robust WooCommerce price filter. So, it’s not just for the shop and category pages.

WooCommerce price filter plugin

Price has (and probably always will have) a significant impact on the buying behavior of consumers. Since the price widget that comes with WooCommerce out of the box is pretty limited, you’re better off using a WooCommerce price filter plugin like WooCommerce Product Filters.

WooCommerce Product Filters lets you:

In addition to this, you can combine the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to list products in a one-page order form layout with price filters. It works seamlessly with just about every WordPress theme and page builder including Elementor.

Ready to add an advanced WooCommerce price filter to your online store? Get WooCommerce Product Filters today!

Not sure how to set up advanced faceted search on your WordPress site? Not even sure what faceted filters are? Although WordPress comes with a basic search out of the box, it doesn’t pull up the most relevant results. Keep reading to discover how to supercharge your store's search and filtering.

WordPress sites are a unique world of their own. You might publish all sorts of content - posts, products, and so on. However, visitors hardly ever know what to search for. What if they type the wrong thing and don't find what they need?

The solution is to set up smart search options, such as advanced faceted search and filtering. The right search features are more attuned to online shopping and anticipate your customer's needs, helping them to find what they want more easily.

In this complete guide, I’m going to explain what WordPress faceted search is and why it can make such a huge difference to sales in your store. I’ll also share the best WordPress faceted search plugin, both for filtering products or any other type of information.  Finally, you'll learn step-by-step how to set it up.

What is WordPress faceted search?

Faceted search enables users to filter what they’re looking for by different criteria. They can narrow down their selection and quickly find specific items in your online store or website.

Think of facets as categories or attributes that the information on your WordPress site can be grouped into and filtered by. Here are a few examples:

• Computer hardware stores that sell products like SSDs might have different facets for platform support, capacity, connection type, and compatible devices.
• A WordPress blog might have facets to help users to find the type of posts they're looking for.
• Stores that sell clothes often have facets for color, fabric, occasion, and size.
• Stores that sell cookware have facets for material, price, and color.
• A WordPress consultants directory might have faceted filters to help users to find a consults with the skills they require.

This way, customers can quickly make their selection and find exactly what they’re looking for.

Facets vs filters vs search: what’s the difference?

The problem with a regular search bar is that users often don’t know what to search for. This is especially true if this is their first time visiting your website.

In addition to this, search results don’t offer support for typos, errors, or common keyword synonyms. For example, a customer might want to purchase a red t-shirt from your e-commerce store. But, if you’ve named the product Crimson T-shirt, it won’t appear in the search results.

Filtered search is when customers can use a filter dropdown or other types of filter to narrow down their search results. So, following our example, a customer might select T-shirts using the category filter to view all t-shirt products.

Faceted search is similar to filters but they’re different search methods. With faceted search, customers see a logical interface that helps them quickly find what they’re looking for. Following our example from above, customers could set the Type facet to T-shirt and the Color facet to Crimson.

These are the main differences between facets and filters:

• Narrowing down search results. Regular filters let users narrow down search results one at a time. Faceted filters use multiple filters that can be applied at once. This way, users can quickly find what they’re looking for.
• Filtering results based on different attributes. With faceted filters, you can create filters based on different product attributes. This is also a great way to use keywords in your faceted search.
• Improving website structure. With faceted filters, users are more likely to find exactly what they’re looking for rather, even if you have a huge site. For example, if you sell hardware goods like nuts and bolts of different sizes, faceted filters will improve the product catalog structure and make it easy for customers to find the exact product quickly.

To sum it up, faceted filters let users narrow down search results based on the exact information they're looking for. Unlike basic filtering, WordPress advanced faceted search lets users select multiple pieces of data. These drill down the results, only displaying relevant items.

Which WordPress sites need advanced faceted search?

Before we get into which types of WordPress sites need advanced faceted search, let’s quickly step through some important statistics.

Research conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group concluded:

Users notice and complain in the rare cases when facets are absent. These days, ecommerce sites without faceted search are the exception, rather than the rule.

The same study found that 27% of search failures were a result of not being able to find suitable items on stores, even though at least one matching product was available.

The Nielsen Norman Group also reports that in 2000, only 64% of all in-site searches were ultimately successful. In 2011, this increased to 74% and, in 2017, a whopping 92% of all in-site searches were successful.

While the statistics are particularly significant for e-commerce stores, the same principles apply to any type of WordPress site. Basically, if you have lots of data for users to sift through, then you need a WordPress advanced faceted search plugin.

What about faceted filters in WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is the world's biggest e-commerce plugin, but surprisingly few stores use facets for their in-site search. That's because the filters that come with WooCommerce out of the box are pretty basic.

A WooCommerce faceted search plugin is essential for stores that sell dozens, hundreds, or thousands of products. Customers will benefit from being able to select specific product attributes to narrow down their selection.

Let’s look at some examples:

• Clothing stores. Stores that sell apparel can set up facets for type, fabric, size, fit, color, and price.
• Hardware stores. Stores that sell products like fasteners, nuts and bolts, screws, locks, hinges, power tools, and plumbing supplies can use facets for availability, department, dimensions, and ratings.
• Furniture stores. Furniture stores might consider creating facets for attributes like color, price, width, height, and type.

As you can see, faceted filters make it easy for customers to narrow down the options and find what they’re looking for. Stores that sell a medium or large number of products can benefit from speeding up the browsing experience.

What is the best WordPress advanced faceted search plugin?

Next, it's time to discover the best plugins for adding advanced facets to WordPress. I recommend a different plugin depending on whether you're adding faceted search to a WooCommerce store or to a general WordPress site:

• Adding faceted search to a WooCommerce store - Without doubt, WooCommerce Product Filters is the best advanced faceted search plugin for e-commerce stores. It comes with a huge range of facet styles and types, and everything else you need.
• Adding facets to a general WordPress site - If you're adding facets to any other type of website content (resources, blog posts, members, etc.) then Posts Table Pro is the plugin for you. It takes any type of information from your website and displays in an instant table - complete with advanced faceted search filters, AJAX-powered keyword search, and more.

Best for e-commerce: WooCommerce Product Filters

WooCommerce Product Filters is the best advanced faceted search plugin for WooCommerce. As well as having all the faceted filters you could need, it has clever logic built-in to avoid frustration and ensure that customers always see results.

This is achieved by never showing empty filter options. In other words, customers will see faceted filters for available products only. The plugin also provides the option to display the number of products within each option so that customers will naturally stop choosing options when the number of results gets too low.

Types of filters to include in the faceted search

Now that we’ve chosen an e-commerce faceted search plugin, the next step is to plan the sort of data that you want to help customers search by.

The faceted search plugin gives you the following options:

• Categories - Essential for stores that sell lots of different types of products. Customers can select the facet for the type of product they’re looking for e.g. Tops, Dresses, Pants, or Shoes.
• Attributes - Product attributes – like size, weight, dimensions – are important for stores that sell products like hardware goods or furniture.
• Colors - Stores that sell apparel, furniture, or cookware can help customers quickly find products by color using this facet.
• Tags - Depending on how you’ve set up product tags, you might want to let customers select tag facets to narrow down their search.
• Custom taxonomy - You can use the custom taxonomy facet if you’ve created custom taxonomies to better organize your products. For example, if you sell products by different brands, you can make it easy for customers to find the exact product they’re looking for.
• Price - A price facet is beneficial for almost every type of e-commerce store. It lets customers set the price range and filter out less expensive (or more expensive) items.
• Ratings - Setting up a ratings faceted filter on your store makes it easy for customers to find high-quality products. It’s also a good way to use social proof on your online store.
• In stock - This is perfect for stores that sell out quickly. For example, hardware stores and furniture stores often have some products in stock while others are on backorder or temporarily out of stock. This faceted filter lets customers only view the products that are in stock.
• On sale - Customers can select this facet to only view products that are on sale.

What the faceted filters look like in your store

Once you've installed the plugin, it only takes a few minutes to add advanced faceted search filters to your store. The end result will be something like this on desktop:

And either this or this on mobile, depending on how you set it up for mobile users:

Either way, it's the perfect way to add advanced faceted search to an e-commerce store!

How to add WordPress faceted filters to your store

Here’s what you need to do to set up advanced faceted filters search:

Step #1: Install Product Filters

Get the Product Filters plugin if you haven’t done so already. Install and activate it on your WordPress site.

Step #2: Configure the faceted filters

The setup wizard will open next. Enter your license key and choose how you want your faceted filters to behave. Here's some more information about the main settings.

Filter behavior and content

You can set the Filter mode option to either Instant or Button click. By default, it’s set to instantly update the list of products using AJAX as soon as the customer selects an item from any of the filters. Use this if you want AJAX faceted filters in your store.

The Product Filters plugin also gives you the option to display the total product count next to each option. You can set this using the Product count option.

Filter visibility

Use this option to show selected filter groups on the shop page, category pages, and product tag archives. Optionally, you can disable this option if you want to add filters to pages manually or display them in a sidebar.

The plugin lets you hide all faceted filters by default. If you enable this option, customers won’t see the filters when the page first loads. They’ll need to click a button to view the faceted filters and refine their search. This is perfect for hiding filters on mobile devices.

Finally, you can change the Show filters button text and display faceted filters in a slide-out panel instead of directly on the page.

Toggle filters

This option lets you add a an open/close arrow to the right of each filter heading. Customers can click it to open/close faceted filters. If you have a small number of filters, you should leave this option set to Open. However, if you have tons of filters on the page, you should set it to Closed to save space on the page.

Step #3: Create faceted filters

WooCommerce Product Filters lets you create all sorts of faceted filters for your online store. Depending on the types of products you sell, you can use any combination of the available filters to enhance the search and browsing experience of your store.

Think about the best way to present each filter on your product catalog pages. You can use dropdowns, radio buttons, color swatches, images, or checkboxes. The aim is to make things as easy as possible for customers so that they intuitively select the options they want and perform an advanced faceted search without having to think.

Next, go to Products → Filters in the WordPress admin. You'll see a default filter group containing some popular facets. Either edit this, or great your own.

Whichever you do, fill in the details to add a new filter. You can set the name, filter by, filter type, and assign to group options. Repeat this step to create as many facets as you’d like.

Best advanced faceted search plugin for other types of website content: Posts Table Pro

So far, we've discovered the best faceted search plugin for e-commerce. But what if you want to add faceted search for other types of information on your website, instead of products? That's when you need Posts Table Pro.

Posts Table Pro is a dynamic WordPress table plugin which creates instant tables of any type of information from your website. This might be your normal WordPress pages and posts, or any custom post type (consultants, members, articles, resources, audio files, videos, etc.).

The table makes it super-simple for your users to find the information they're looking for. For example, it has:

• Advanced faceted search filter dropdowns, which appear above the table. Users can select information from multiple dropdowns to drill down their search and combine multiple facets.
• AJAX-powered search box to the top right of the table. With this, users can enter a keyword and search for absolutely anything.
• Easy column sorting so that users can re-order the list by any column.

Types of faceted search available in Posts Table Pro

The faceted filter dropdowns which are built into Posts Table Pro look like this (depending on your theme):

And if you want other types of facet, such as filter widgets and checkboxes, then you can use Posts Table Pro with the FacetWP plugin. This adds filter widgets alongside the table, like this:

Tutorial: How to set up advanced faceted search with Posts Table Pro

It's easy to install Posts Table Pro and start adding facets:

1. Install Posts Table Pro.
2. The setup wizard will open. Follow the steps to choose how you want your tables to look and behave.
3. On the filtering page, follow the instructions to add filter dropdowns to the table.

Alternatively, if you want to use Posts Table Pro with the FacetWP plugin, then you can read the documentation on how to use the two plugins together. Either way, you'll be adding advanced faceted search to your WordPress site in no time!

Where to get the plugins

Implementing seamless in-site search becomes significantly easier with faceted filters. It's super-quick for users to find what they're looking for based on the information they're interested in. This saves them time, making them more likely to convert - whether you want them to buy your products, subscribe to your blog, or something else.

Which is the best WordPress advanced faceted search plugin depends on the sort of information you want to filter by:

• Use WooCommerce Product Filters to add faceted search to your online store and give customers plenty of options to narrow down their search.
• Or use Posts Table Pro to add advanced facets for any other information on your WordPress site.

Ready to set up an advanced faceted search solution? Get the plugin today!

Imagine a supermarket with no sections and no organization whatsoever. There are chips next to milk next to a mop next to a guitar. Wouldn't you just skedaddle out of there? Well, a WooCommerce online store without product filters is exactly like that!

The best WooCommerce products filter plugins help customers find products easier and faster. Adding personalized and relevant product filters to your store can automatically increase conversions and sales!

There are WordPress plugins out there that can make adding product filters a piece of cake. With so many options available, it can be difficult to choose the best option. In this post, we’ll reveal 10 of the best WooCommerce filter plugins for your online store.

We'll explore the different options and compare the top plugins to help you find the one best suited to your needs – an easy-to-use, feature-rich but no-nonsense product filter.

Why use product filters?

Product filters can help customers sift through hundreds and thousands of products and zero in on the ones that match their needs and interests.

Think of it this way: if customers have the option to narrow down their search, they'll be able to find the products they're looking for much faster. This means they can add them to the cart and proceed to the checkout page instead of spending hours browsing your product catalog.

In other words, filtering can improve the user experience, increase product views, and ultimately, boost conversions in your store.

Not a fan of reading? Watch the video we made about these plugins instead!

12 best WooCommerce product filter plugins

Here, we’ll walk you through some of the best options available for filtering your WooCommerce products and enhancing the user experience on your online store.

If you’re in a hurry, you can look at the WooCommerce product filter plugins feature comparison table below:

Plugins compared

1. Barn2 WooCommerce Product Filters
2. Barn2 WooCommerce Product Table
3. HUSKY Products Filter for WooCommerce
4. BeRocket WooCommerce AJAX Products Filter
5. YITH WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter
6. UpFilter Product Filter for WooCommerce
7. WooCommerce.com Product Filters for WooCommerce
8. XforWooCommerce Product Filter for WooCommerce
9. Themify WooCommerce Product Filter
10. Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter
11. Super WooCommerce Product Filter
12. Etoile Ultimate WooCommerce Filters

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Choice of vertical or horizontal filters
Display products in an order form layout
Category, attribute, tags, rating & price filters
Custom taxonomy filters
Checkboxes
Dropdowns
Radio Buttons
Color swatches
Image filters
Text/label filters
‘In stock’ filter
‘On sale’ filter
Sort dropdown

At a glance, the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin offers the highest level of product filter functionality out of the list. The only thing missing is the order form layout, which you can get by using it together with WooCommerce Product Table 🚀

Keep reading to learn about each product filter plugin in more detail.

#1. WooCommerce Product Filters by Barn2

The WooCommerce Product Filters plugin is the best WooCommerce product filter plugin for store owners. It lets you create individual filters for products and then structure them into groups.

This is easily the best WooCommerce products filter plugin. It has everything your customers need to find products quickly and easily.

Features

One of the best features of the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin is that it only shows valid and relevant filter options. For example, if you sell t-shirts and all blue t-shirts are out of stock, the Blue option won’t appear in the filters. This helps you deliver a good user experience and avoid disappointment for your customers.

This WooCommerce products filter plugin is easy for beginners to use, while also being developer-friendly and easy to customize. You can add different filters to different parts of your store, structured into groups to save you time.

#2. WooCommerce Product Table by Barn2

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin offers a professional solution for displaying WooCommerce products in an attractive and responsive product table. This lets customers quickly add multiple products to their cart. At the same time, they can see important product information without clicking through to single product pages.

Filterable product tables are ideal for stores with large numbers of products. The product table view makes it much easier to find, compare and select products.

Features

The main feature of WooCommerce Product Table is that it displays products in a quick order form. This robust plugin also comes with two (or three!) types of product filter:

• Filter dropdowns above the table. Add filter dropdowns for categories, tags, attributes, or even custom taxonomies.
• Sidebar filter widgets alongside the table. These look like the filters that come with WooCommerce itself. You can add WooCommerce filter widgets for attributes, star rating, or price.
• Finally, you can get advanced filters by using WooCommerce Product Table together with WooCommerce Product Filters. (Our #1 best WooCommerce products filter plugin featured above.) This gives you the best of both worlds as you get the benefits of the product table layout, with the most sophisticated product filters on the market.

#3. HUSKY – Products Filter for WooCommerce

HUSKY - Products Filters for WooCommerce is a product filter plugin for WooCommerce. It lets you offer customers an easy way to filter WooCommerce products on your store.

Features

• Filter products by categories, product tags, products custom taxonomies, attributes, and price.
• Add filters anywhere on your website using a shortcode.
• Display product filter options using dropdown menus, checkboxes, radio buttons, and a multi-dropdown menu.
• AJAX filters let users quickly find the products they’re interested in without having to refresh the page.

The plugin offers some useful features, but is not as well coded or as nicely styled as most other WooCommerce filter plugins on this list. This means it doesn’t look very professional on the front-end of your WooCommerce site. It's also difficult to use in the back end. This filter plugin also has some missing advanced filter functionality - such as filtering products by SKU, color filters, image filters, quick search, and adding a meta filter to WooCommerce.

#4. WooCommerce AJAX Products Filter

WooCommerce AJAX Products Filter is designed to effectively and easily filter products on your online store.

Features

• Create filters by product attributes, custom taxonomies, price, tags, and product categories.
• Choose a layout for displaying product filters on your WooCommerce site. This means you can select from different layouts including sliders, images, and colors.

WooCommerce AJAX Products Filter is a popular plugin that offers some great features and a nice selection of different types of filters. However it’s missing some of the features you get in WooCommerce Product Filters. These include advanced filtering options to display filters above the list of products, hide filters within toggles, filter by stock status, sale status, and create SEO-friendly filter URL's.

#5. YITH WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter

The YITH WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter plugin offers an easy way to let customers conveniently look for products. It helps make your WooCommerce site more user-friendly.

Features

• Set up powerful filters on your WooCommerce product pages.
• Customers can use the filters to decide what they want to see.
• Create unlimited sets of filters and display filters on custom WooCommerce pages.

The YITH WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter plugin is one of the better WooCommerce filter plugins available. This is because it has lots of features and a professional design. However, it does have some missing features such as choosing the order of filters or toggling filters open and closed to save space. You also cannot show filters as radio buttons or use color swatches with images to better identify textures or patterns. In contrast, WooCommerce Product Filters has all of these features.

#6. UpFilter - Product Filter for WooCommerce

UpFilter is an excellent solution for businesses with WooCommerce powered sites looking for an advanced and efficient product filtering plugin for WooCommerce. It is a WooCommerce Ajax Filter plug-in that enables buyers to quickly and efficiently find exactly what they are looking for.

With UpFilter, customers can filter products by taxonomy, attributes, price range, size, and more in order to receive the most accurate search results with minimal effort. UpFilter is the best Product Filter for WooCommerce!

Features

This WooCommerce products filter plugin gives customers a comprehensive selection of features to quickly and easily find what they're looking for:

• Streamline searching with an advanced AJAX filterNarrow down your search with a user-friendly AJAX filter, which includes taxonomies, attributes, sorting options, a search field, and price range.
• Enable or disable the default AJAX filterYou have the power to turn on or off this feature at any time.
• Make the filter option accessible anywhereWith the integration of shortcodes and widgets, you can easily add filter options in any location.
  

  

• Filter by various options at a timeNarrow down your options quickly by filtering through various criteria.
• Lots of styles to choose fromYou can also customize how taxonomic/attribute terms are displayed using checkboxes, radio buttons & selectors while organizing them in hierarchical structures if that works best for you. By using both the radio and select forms, you can display a range of sorting choices.
• Create a captivating search iconMake your search icon stand out by customizing its color, and set the primary and secondary colors for price ranges to make them more appealing.
• Showcase the precise product quantityDisplay the number of products associated with a selected taxonomy and attribute terms.
• Organize the taxonomies/attributesArrange the taxonomies and attributes into a hierarchical order for easier navigation.
• Eliminate empty taxonomy and attribute termsYou can hide the taxonomy terms and attribute terms that have no products associated with them.

Like other good filter plugins, UpFilter helps unlock the potential of your online store. Enhance your customers' shopping experience through AJAX filtering. This helps to deliver accurate search results.

#7. WooCommerce.com Product Filters for WooCommerce

Product Filters for WooCommerce is a simple-to-use filter plugin that lets your customers easily find products on your online store.

Features

• Offers AJAX functionality for displaying filter results.
• Lets users filter products by categories, attributes, tags, taxonomies, prices, and stock status.
• Add adaptive filter options and product counts as well as adaptive product thumbnails.

It’s always nice to buy official extensions from woocommerce.com and this plugin claims to be developed by the team at WooCommerce rather than a third-party author, so this plugin is worth a mention.

However, it’s only rated 2.5/5 and users have reported many problems - despite it being the official WooCommerce filter plugin. Users claim that the plugin has compatibility issues and offers little to no customer support after you purchase the plugins. There are various performance complaints, which would be a problem if you have many products or slow hosting. The plugin is also presented very vaguely with a few screenshots and offers no demo. This way, it’s hard to know or tell what you’re buying.

#8. XforWooCommerce Product Filter for WooCommerce

The Product Filter for WooCommerce plugin lets you set up product filters on your WooCommerce site.

Features

• Using the one-click product filter demos, you can quickly set up and start letting customers filter WooCommerce products on your online store.
• Display stock status filters for variable products on your WooCommerce store.
• Add product variation images to your filters.
• Users can filter products on your WooCommerce store thanks to AJAX support. This helps them quickly find what they’re looking for using the flexible filters.

The Product Filter for the WooCommerce plugin was originally published back in 2014. While it has been getting regularly updated and maintained, the plugin still uses older technologies and techniques behind the scenes. You will get more modern filters with a newer WooCommerce filter plugin like WooCommerce Product Filters.

#9. Themify WooCommerce Product Filter

The Themify - WooCommerce Product Filter is a free plugin designed to make your WooCommerce store more user-friendly by creating product filters.

Features

• Uses modern AJAX technology to display live search results to customers who quickly need to find the products they’re interested in.
• Lets you create a search form using a drag and drop builder. This is great if this is your first time creating one and you don’t know how to code.

This plugin is a great option for you’re looking for a free WooCommerce product filter plugin with no premium version that has a nicely designed filter on the front-end. However, it does have some usability issues in the back-end which explain the plugin’s 3.5/5 star rating. The documentation is quite good for a free WooCommerce product filter plugin.

#10. Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter

The Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter plugin offers an all-in-one solution for creating and managing WooCommerce product filters on your online store.

Features

• Display all available product filters using a single widget and let customers filter the search results.
• Built-in caching system.
• Display filters for product variations on your WooCommerce site.

The Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter plugin is a robust plugin but lacks some functionality compared to other product filter plugins. For instance, you cannot add on sale, in-stock, or rating filters to your WooCommerce pages. In addition to this, you’re limited with SEO functionality which doesn’t let you create “clean” URLs for your WooCommerce product pages.

At the time of writing, this plugin was being advertised for sale and is likely to have been acquired by the time you read this. If you are considering this plugin then I recommend researching the new owner to make sure it is being maintained by a professional WordPress plugin company.

#11. Super Woocommerce Product Filter

Experience a revolutionary way to discover your favorite products with the Super WooCommerce Product Filter. This filtering tool reshapes your shopping experience, guaranteeing precision in every product search. Whether you're narrowing down by category, setting a price range, or filtering based on specific attributes, this system is designed to deliver precisely what you seek.

Dive into a better online shopping experience with the Super WooCommerce Product Filter. Forget long scrolls and enjoy a faster, smarter way to find what you want. This tool makes shopping easier, accurate, and more satisfying.

Features

• 10 different field display types with multiple styles.
• Easy drag and drop - Choose your preferred layout, color scheme, typography, layout preferences and display options.
• Product count and search filter.
• Filter products by category, price range, attributes, and more.
• AJAX-based filtering to eliminate page reloads and speed up the browsing experience.
• Shortcodes for seamless integration on any page.
• Designed to seamlessly integrate with any WordPress page builder.
• Ensure consistent styling and functionality across different theme environments.
• Customize the filtering experience for individual products by establishing rules that enable or disable filters based on the category or tag.
• Slider choices for users to set their desired price ranges.
• Sort products by customer ratings and feedback.
• Filter products according to available stock.
• Effortlessly set up intricate rules to display products that satisfy multiple conditions at once (AND) or products that fulfill at least one condition (OR).
• Crafted for diverse language compatibility, our plugin guarantees a smooth experience for users viewing your online store in various languages.
• Tailor filters using specific attributes like size, color, or brand.
• Efficient codebase for peak performance.

#12. Etoile Ultimate WooCommerce Filters

Etoile Web Design's WooCommerce Filters plugin lets you add flexible filters to WooCommerce product pages.

The sales page of the plugin suggests that is is very basic and is missing a lot of essential features. The documentation is also very sparse. As a result, I only recommend this plugin if you are willing to do a lot of investigation and customization yourself.

Tutorial: How to set up a WooCommerce product filter

Here, we’ll explain step-by-step what you need to do to set up a product filter on your online store. We'll be using WooCommerce Product Filters because as we have seen, it is the best WooCommerce products filter plugin available.

Step #1: Install the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin

If you haven’t done so already, get the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin and install it on your WordPress site.

You’ll receive a license key in a confirmation email. Activate the license key in the setup wizard.

Step #2: Create filters

The WooCommerce Product Filters plugin lets you create as many filters as you’d like. You can choose from categories, attributes, colors, tags, custom taxonomy, price, ratings, in stock, on sale, and sort by options.

Go to Products → Filters in the WordPress admin panel and open or create a new filter group. Next, fill in the information on the Add new filter form.

You can enter a filter name, select the data the filter will use, choose a filter type, and assign to groups. Structuring filters into groups helps you better display filters on the front-end. Once you’re done, click the Add new filter button to proceed.

Repeat these steps to create as many filters as you’d like.

Step #3: Add filters to a page

Use the Display on shop/archive pages option on the plugin’s settings page to automatically display selected filter groups on your online store.

By default, WooCommerce Product Filters displays the filter groups in a horizontal layout above the list of products on your shop page, product category pages, and archive pages.

Alternatively, you can display a filter group by adding the 'Product Filters' widget to the sidebar in Appearance → Widgets. The plugin also comes with a shortcode which you can use to display filters on pages that you build using other methods, such as Gutenberg blocks, Elementor, and so on.

Tips and tricks to set up product filters

Here are some tips and tricks you can use to set up product filters in WooCommerce:

Use personalized filters instead of popular ones

Our first pro tip is to use personalized filters instead of using popular filters. The idea is to personalize product filters for the types of products you sell instead of using the same filters everyone else is using.

For example, let's say you sell pre-built computers, laptops, and computer parts. A gamer looking for a laptop would appreciate a filter for RAM or Processor. Similarly, if you sell clothes, your customers might be more interested in filters like Bestselling, Color, and Size.

Speak your customer's language

Avoid using complicated words and jargon when simple terms will do just fine.

For example, if you're selling the same dress in multiple colors, you might internally have them stocked with names like Cerulean or Mauve. However, it might be better to use the terms Blue-Green and Light Purple on the front-end for customers.

Show relevant filters

Customize your product filter settings to only display the filters that are relevant to the products in view instead of an exhaustive list of store-wide filters on every page.

Let's say you sell crockery. If a customer is viewing the Dinnerware product category page, they should only see product filters that are relevant to dinnerware. There's no reason to show product filters for drinkware, serving bowls, or table linens on the Dinnerware product category page.

Make sure the filters are easy to find

Since unseen filters are about as good as non-existent filters, it's important to make them as conspicuous as possible. Make sure your filter options are displayed so visitors can see them at first glance. You can display them in the sidebar or across the top of the page.

The best way to filter WooCommerce products

With so many options available, it can be challenging to choose the best WooCommerce product filter plugin. As a store owner, you want to choose one that fulfils your business requirements perfectly and lets you create more user-friendly WooCommerce product pages.

There are many plugins out there that do similar things but they may not have all the features of WooCommerce Product Filters. Most importantly, the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin lets you create customized, powerful product filters that will improve customer experience and, hence, conversions.

In short, are you ready to start offering WooCommerce product filters on your online store? Get WooCommerce Product Filters and WooCommerce Product Table today!

Product sampling marketing is a major strategy which businesses use to boost conversion rates and brand awareness at face-to-face events. But did you know that you can do it in your WooCommerce store too?

Are you looking for an effective way to acquire new customers in your WooCommerce online store? In that case, you may want to consider offering your store visitors free samples of your product. Product sampling marketing gets products in a prospective buyer's hands at no cost to them.

When shopping, most people prefer to buy familiar products to minimize the risk of making a bad purchase decision. If you're a completely new brand, getting the buyer to try out your product can be very difficult. This is particularly true if there's a lot of competition in your industry.

To help buyers overcome this fear, marketers use the product sampling marketing technique to give them a feel of their product. This strategy has proven highly successful over the years. According to a Product Sampling Study report, 35% of the people who tried out a product bought the product that same day.

Product sampling is not only good for new businesses looking to increase sales and brand awareness. Established brands can also use it to get people who have heard about their products to commit to a purchase.

In this article, we'll cover everything you need to know about using product sampling marketing in WooCommerce. We'll bring it to life using some e-commerce product sampling marketing examples. You'll discover how to bring it to your store using the WooCommerce Product Sample plugin. At the end, you'll have everything you need to create a free sample marketing strategy to take your sales to the next level.

Can product sampling form part of your online e-commerce strategy?

Traditionally, marketers are more familiar with offline product sampling, especially at face-to-face events and activities. In this case, businesses employ store sampling experts and brand ambassadors who ensure that passers-by or invited guests get a great feel of their product. It could be as simple as offering a scoop of a dairy product. Or as intriguing as inviting a window shopper to test-drive a luxury car.

As a WooCommerce store owner, you'd be delighted to learn that you can use these same successful product sampling marketing techniques too. Online product sampling is an experiential marketing strategy that is becoming increasingly popular. In fact, it has the potential to generate more results than offline product sampling due to the increased market size.

Unlike offline sampling, setting up an online sampling procedure doesn't require significant capital commitment. Once the sampling experience has been added to WooCommerce, you won't need to deal with staffing issues or negotiate with physical shopping centers or supermarkets. This is highly cost-effective and results in a higher return-on-investment (ROI).

E-commerce product sampling also has a better tracking system that you can use to measure your products. An effective product sampling strategy backed by top-notch site analytics provides you with important insights to improve your business. Similarly, you can advertise your sampling campaign on multiple platforms like social media, influencer markets, and Google AdWords.

Related tutorial: The complete guide to selling and giving away WooCommerce sample products.

Why is product sampling marketing so effective?

When marketing a new product, getting desired results often requires more than conventional marketing techniques. One of the most effective ways to beat the competition is to allow consumers to try your products. The psychology behind this technique leverages typical consumer behavior to create a win-win situation for you and the buyer.

Here are some of the reasons why product sampling marketing is so effective:

No doubt, there are lots of conversion and brand awareness opportunities in online product sampling marketing.

But how can you bring these benefits to your WooCommerce store?

Introducing WooCommerce Product Sample

Are you looking for the best way to get your products into the customer's hands and boost acquisition? WooCommerce Product Sample is the best WordPress product sampling marketing plugin on the market. It adds product sampling marketing to your store, making buyers much more likely to purchase the full product.

Using this plugin, you can either offer completely free products or let the customer get samples at a discounted price. You can also choose to charge a delivery fee or ship the sample for free.

Here are some of the key features that make WooCommerce Product Sample so powerful:

• Free and paid samples for all or some of your productsOffer your customers samples of your products at either a discounted or zero cost. You can enable these samples for individual products, product variations, product categories, or all products sitewide.
• Full control over your product sampling campaignDetermine the price of the WooCommerce free samples, their shipping and tax classes, and also manage unique stock for samples only. You can also decide where to place the 'Order Sample' button on your shop, product, and category pages.
• Set a maximum order quantity for samplesSet a sample order quantity threshold to prevent customers from emptying your inventory. This helps your business to maintain profitability.
• Send follow-up emails to remind your customers to buyAfter getting a feel of your product, customers become more open to making a real purchase. This plugin is the only WooCommerce product sample plugin sends automated emails reminding your customers to get the full product.

Before we show you how to use WooCommerce Product Sample, let's share a few product sampling examples.

Product sampling marketing examples

To get an idea of how businesses use product sampling marketing techniques online, we'll briefly share 3 use cases we've seen in the past:

• Boosting awareness during new product launchesAccording to PowerReviews research, 72% of the customers of online grocery stores are more likely to buy a product that has reviews. One of the easiest ways to generate these reviews for a new product line is to offer free samples. This technique also works efficiently for products in other categories too.
• Generating fresh reviews from new and existing customers Reviews aren't useful for new products only. Google and other search engines love fresh content. You can always boost your product pages' SEO ranking by using product sampling to drive an organic flow of content consistently. The report referenced above also reveals that sampling programs have the highest review completion rate in any industry—86%.
• Moving a seasonal product's inventorySelling products that will only be available for a limited period can be challenging. You can combine product sampling with your other marketing techniques to move a particular product's inventory faster.

As you can see, each of these product sampling marketing examples works excellently in nearly any e-commerce niche. It's ideal for consumer products like fashion and apparel, entertainment, personal care, homeware, electronics, and other industries too.

If I allow free sampling online, will I lose out on postage?

You do not have to lose out on postage when you allow free sampling online.

When offering free sampling in your WooCommerce store, the Product Sample plugin allows you to decide who pays for shipping. You set the price for product samples separately from the shipping cost. You can set a shipping cost for the products by assigning them to a shipping class.

In terms of product pricing, you can choose to either offer the product for free or charge a discounted fee. Similarly, you can charge the customer for postage only or offer them free shipping.

Charging for delivery allows you to maintain your capital advantage over offline product sampling where customers get the product in person.

In general, it's important to adopt a model that works best for the type of product you're selling and your business's profitability.

How to enable product sampling marketing in WooCommerce

You can enable product sampling marketing on your WooCommerce site by following these 4 simple steps.

Step 1: Install and activate WooCommerce Product Sample

To launch your first product sampling marketing campaign, you can get your copy of the WooCommerce Product Sample plugin here.

Once you've completed your registration, you'll receive a license key and download link in your email. Next;

1. Log into your WordPress backend and go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
2. Here, click Choose File and select the ZIP file you downloaded earlier. Then click Install Now followed by Activate Plugin.
3. Upon activation, you also need to enter the license key and click Activate.

Hooray! WooCommerce Product Sample is now active and ready for use.

Step 2: Configure the plugin global settings

Now, it's time to set up a product sampling marketing campaign. You can do this by navigating to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product sample.

On this page, you'll be able to tweak all the global options available using the plugin.

If you want to offer free samples for all your store products by default, check 'Enable samples for all products'. If you uncheck this box, samples will only be available for the products and product categories you configure individually.

On the same page, configure other elements like the sample price, button text, maximum sample quantity, shipping class, and a sample label. This label will be displayed before the name of the product when it's in the cart.

By default, the sample order button text is 'Order sample: {price}'. {price} is a placeholder for any value you enter in the 'Sample price' field above.

You can edit both the text and price fields as you wish. To offer completely free samples, add your text without the price placeholder.

Step 3: Adjust sample settings for individual products or categories

In certain cases, you may want to override the global settings for a particular product, product variation, or category. To do this, navigate to product or category settings.

For example, you can go to Products and select the product you want to edit.

Next, scroll down to the 'Product data' section and open the 'Product samples' dropdown. Then select 'Configure the settings for this product individually'.

Now, you'll be able to enter a unique sample price. Otherwise, you can also disable samples for the product.

You can follow a similar procedure to override the global settings for a product variation or category.

Step 4: Customize the follow-up emails

The last step you want to take is to set up follow-up emails to remind your customers to buy the full product after testing out the sample.

To do this, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Emails.

Click Manage next to 'Product sample follow-up'. Edit the necessary fields and click Save changes.

The 'Email delay' allows you to sent the number of days after which WooCommerce will send the reminder email automatically.

Where to get the plugin

Product sampling marketing is a powerful marketing strategy which WooCommerce store owners can use to efficiently drive sales, brand awareness, and customer acquisition. The technique is so effective because it helps customers overcome the initial fear of trying an unfamiliar product.

In this article, we've shown you how to use WooCommerce Product Sample effectively in WooCommerce. We've looked at some product sampling marketing examples and learned how to create a free sample marketing strategy.

Not it's time to install the plugin and put it into practice.

This amazing plugin allows you to:

Ready to launch your first product sampling marketing campaign in WooCommerce? You can start by getting your copy of WooCommerce Product Sample.

Did you know that you can increase conversions for your online store by auto-filling the customer’s address? All you have to do is set up Google address autocomplete in WooCommerce.

So, when customers start entering their address at the WooCommerce checkout, the autocomplete address form will provide auto-populate suggested results based on the user’s input. This can speed up checkout form completion by up to 30%!

By replacing the standard checkout with the WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin, you can boost conversions by allowing customers to review their selections and checkout in a popup cart without leaving the page. And, instead of entering their billing or shipping address manually, they can complete it with Google address autocomplete.

What is Google address autocomplete?

If you shop online, you’ve probably come across checkout forms that autocomplete your address as soon as you start typing it. It fills out the street address, city, zip code, state, and country fields automatically.

This is a feature of the Places library in Google’s Maps JavaScript API. As a result, it gives you access to addresses all over the world. In fact, it’s the type-ahead-search behavior of the Google Maps search field.

The WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin integrates with Google autocomplete to save customers even more time. Instead of manually entering their address and filling out all address fields, they can simply pick from the suggestions provided when they start typing their address.

It’s incredibly intuitive and speeds up the checkout process for customers too. And even better, customers are already familiar with Google address autocomplete.

What is WooCommerce Fast Cart?

The WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin adds a popup cart and checkout to your online store.

This makes it easy for customers to review their orders when they’re done shopping and place their orders without leaving the page. In addition to this, they can change quantities, remove items, and redeem discount codes from the popup cart.

The WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin supports WooCommerce’s product recommendation engine by displaying related products based on the products customers have added to their cart. This helps you increase the average order value and cross-sell to customers.

You can display the checkout within the mini popup cart and enable customers to checkout without leaving the page. In fact, this is the easiest way to speed up the checkout flow for your store. To take things to the next level, you can enable Google address autocomplete in WooCommerce to automatically fill out the address fields.

The WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin can be configured to display the popup cart either as a side cart on the right of the screen or in a larger lightbox in the middle of the screen.

Tutorial: how to set up WooCommerce autocomplete

Here’s what you need to do to set up Google address autocomplete in WooCommerce:

Step #1: Install the WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin

Get the WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin. Log into the WordPress admin area and then install and activate the WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin. Head over to WooCommerce → Extensions to activate the plugin’s license key.

Click the Save changes button to continue.

Step #2: Enable Google address autocomplete

1. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Fast cart to configure the plugin’s settings.
2. Enable the Allow fast checkout option and then tick the Enable address autocomplete checkbox which appears underneath it.
3. A text field called Google API key will apper underneath the checkbox. You need a Google API key to use Google address autocomplete in WooCommerce. This will allow your website to access the address data from Google’s API.
4. Check out our tutorial on how to get your Google API key for step-by-step instructions.
5. You can select other WooCommerce Fast Cart options as needed from the same screen. Here are some suggestions:
6. You can enable the Direct Checkout option if you want to skip the cart completely and allow customers to checkout without having to go through a cart stage first.
7. In addition, you can choose to auto-open the fast cart and checkout so that customers are prompted to complete their purchase without having to click on a floating cart icon first.

Step #3: Test the Google address autocomplete

Finally, test the fast cart feature on your WooCommerce store. First, make sure you’re not logged in. If you are logged in to your WordPress site, WooCommerce might already have your address stored which means it won’t need to use the Google address autocomplete feature.

Add a product to your shopping cart, open the popup checkout, and start typing your address.

Like magic, the Google address autocomplete will do the hard work for you and fill out the address fields!

Where to get the plugin

With Google address autocomplete in WooCommerce, you can speed up the checkout process on your store and minimize cart abandonment rates.

WooCommerce Fast Cart makes it incredibly easy to offer the fastest checkout experience complete with Google address autocomplete and direct checkout.

Ready to set up Google address autocomplete in WooCommerce? Get WooCommerce Fast Cart today!

Want to set up WooCommerce email notifications for customer orders and send them to multiple recipients?

Improving email communication for your business is crucial for nurturing leads. It enhances customer service and improves brand loyalty. The best way to do this is by using a WooCommerce email notifications plugin.

In this post, we’ll show you how to supercharge your WooCommerce email setup by:

Why should you use email notifications for your WooCommerce site?

WooCommerce offers some basic email functionality out of the box. It automatically sends customers an email when their order moves from one order status to another.

Transactional emails are essential for communicating with customers about their orders. For instance, customers will automatically receive an email notification for any processing order or when the order has been shipped from your warehouse.

As a store owner, you also increase your business’s profitability by automating repetitive tasks such as sending customer order notifications. A WooCommerce email notifications plugin lets you automatically send order notifications to the appropriate contacts, team members, and suppliers. This way, everyone stays in the loop and knows what’s going on with the order.

Email notifications also play a huge role in protecting and recovering orders that would otherwise get lost. For instance, you will receive a notification when a customer cancels their order. This will prevent your team members from shipping out the order.

In addition, it helps stay in touch with leads and customers. This allows you to nurture them to convert and become a loyal audience. Since you know more about shoppers’ behavior, you can work towards delivering better user experiences.

Email notifications also offer a great way for you to engage with your customers and keep them interested in your product offerings. Therefore, this results in more sales and helps you generate more revenue for your business.

How to set up and customize email notifications

As we have seen, WooCommerce out of the box lets you set up and customize email notifications for your online store. These include emails for new orders, canceled orders, failed orders, refunds, processing orders, completed orders, and more.

Here’s a quick tutorial describing how to configure the standard WooCommerce email settings:

1. Install the WooCommerce plugin on your WordPress site.
2. Navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Emails tab from the WordPress admin panel.
3. Click on the Manage button next to the email you want to edit and enter the recipient address.
4. You can also customize Email sender options to customize to sender information and the Email template. Email sender options include “From” name and “From“ address.
5. Click on the Save changes button to continue.

This is a pretty bare-bones email notifications system. Thankfully, there are lots of other ways you can improve your WooCommerce email and send advanced notifications.

What are WooCommerce email customizer plugins and why should you use them?

A WooCommerce email customizer plugin is a great way to make your email notifications more sophisticated. These plugins allow you to customize your emails in different ways - for example, to add additional email recipients to your customer order emails. This is useful especially if you have a team or you want to share the order details (like the order number, status, contents, or shipping class) with someone else.

However, with so many options available, it’s important to choose the right WooCommerce email customizer plugin. Let’s go over some of the best options available for WordPress websites:

1. WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients

WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients offers an all-in-one solution for managing and customizing email notifications for your online store. This means that you don’t have to worry about manually forwarding WooCommerce order emails to customers on time or suppliers. Instead, the plugin does all the work for you.

The WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients plugin also lets you control and customize the recipients for all email notifications in your store. You can:

The best part about the WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients plugin is that it lets you choose which notification emails to send to the additional recipients. This is a great way to ensure that email notifications are automatically sent to the correct person, store, or supplier.

The WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients plugin is also incredibly easy to configure and get started with. Here are step-by-step instructions explaining what you need to do:

A: Install and activate the WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients plugin

Get the WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients plugin and install it on your WooCommerce site. Once that’s done, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Products and click on the Multiple email recipients link.

Enter your license key and click on the Check button to validate it.

B: Configure plugin settings

You can set the number of customer email addresses allowed per customer using the text field next to Customer email addresses and enter the labels using the text fields below.

Click on the Save changes button to continue.

To add the additional emails per customer, simply navigate to the user edit page and add email addresses to the text fields. The plugin also adds the fields to the account page and checkout page where customers can enter multiple email addresses themselves.

You can also choose which emails to send to the additional customer addresses. To do this, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Emails and select the email you want to add extra recipients to. You can enable the extra recipients for the built-in customer emails, plus emails added by third party plugins. This includes emails created by WooCommerce Wholesale Pro, WooCommerce Subscriptions, WooCommerce Memberships, AutomateWoo, etc.

This will give you a more detailed customizer page, compared to the default one:

C: Edit WooCommerce email templates

So far, we have learned how to send WooCommerce email notifications to multiple customer addresses. Next, we'll learn how to add extra recipients to the admin emails which notify you of new orders received.

Like before, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Emails and select the email you want to add extra recipients to. However, this time select an admin email rather than a customer email:

You can set up multiple email recipients and send advanced notifications to specific recipients based on the product or category of the new order.

2. YITH WooCommerce Email Templates

YITH WooCommerce Email Templates is designed to customize the default emails in WooCommerce and give them a more professional look and feel. It works for both HTML and plain text email types. For example, you can add your store’s logo to the email header.

The plugin lets you style all default WooCommerce emails and gives you full control over how emails look to customers. You can start from four attractive pre-designed layouts including Default, Informal, Elegant, and Casual. In addition to this, you can also assign different templates for each kind of email and preview the template before finalizing it. It’s also a good idea to send a test email to a team member to make sure it looks fine in the inbox.

To sum it up, YITH WooCommerce Email Templates is a great plugin for changing the design of the built-in WooCommerce emails. The best part is that it’s fully compatible with the WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients plugin by Barn2. This way, you can customize emails and add multiple email recipients for your emails using WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients.

3. YITH WooCommerce Coupon Email System

The YITH WooCommerce Coupon Email System plugin lets you create custom WooCommerce coupons and send them directly to customers based on specific events. For instance, you can send a discount coupon if the customer exceeds a certain amount of new orders for a month or send a discount code to customers on their birthday.

This is a great way to build a loyal customer base and encourage them to make purchases from your store. Using the plugin, you can also send coupons to your customers after their first purchase, send coupons to newly registered users, or when users purchase a specific product from your store and let users redeem coupons on the checkout page of your WooCommerce site.

4. AutomateWoo

AutomateWoo is a WordPress plugin designed to automate your WooCommerce store management. Among its many features is powerful automation of your email notifications. You can use it to automate your WooCommerce email notifications to customers.

It's particularly useful for sending different emails to customers based on which products or categories they ordered. For example, if you have a WordPress membership site then you might want to send a 'Welcome' email when customers buy your 'Membership' product. Alternatively, you might want to send a set up follow-up emails to onboard new customers after buying your highest value product. Each email can contain instructions to the relevant product, targeted upsells to other related products they might be interested in, or anything else you want to say.

5. Mailchimp & MailOptin

Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform that offers one of the best solutions for creating and managing email marketing campaigns for your business.

You can use the MailOptin plugin to integrate Mailchimp email marketing campaigns onto your WooCommerce site. This way, Mailchimp works as an SMTP plugin for WooCommerce. It also lets you display opt-in forms anywhere on your website based on customer behavior and send automated emails based on events triggered by customers on your WooCommerce store.

The best part is that you won’t have to find a separate SMTP plugin for your e-commerce store.

6. Flow Notify

Flow Notify is a powerful email notification plugin tailored for WooCommerce stores. As eCommerce platforms are shifting towards more user-centric approaches, Flow Notify prioritizes giving store owners the flexibility to create personalized email notifications that resonate with their audience.

One of the significant advantages of using Flow Notify is its intuitive drag-and-drop editor. It offers store owners the freedom to design emails that align with their brand's aesthetics without any coding necessary. Whether it's incorporating brand colors, custom images, or tailored content, the possibilities with Flow Notify are vast.

Beyond aesthetics, Flow Notify integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce, ensuring all transactional emails, from order confirmations to shipping alerts, are sent promptly and accurately. Moreover, the plugin provides valuable insights, tracking open rates, click-through rates, and other essential metrics to continuously optimize email performance. If you're aiming for an enhanced email notification experience that matches your brand's identity and provides actionable analytics, Flow Notify for WooCommerce is an excellent choice.

Tips to ensure your emails are always top-notch

Once you have all the plugins you need to automate your email marketing campaigns and manage email notifications better, all that’s left is to create your emails!

Let’s go over a few tips to ensure your emails are always up and running and are sending correctly. By following these tips, you can avoid the most common problems store owners run into with emails.

6 quick tips to send better WooCommerce emails

• Send a test email. You always want to make sure your emails are delivered to the recipient. A great way to do this is by sending your team members a dummy or test order confirmation email. After that, they can confirm that the emails are being delivered properly and as intended.
• Make sure emails are landing in the inbox. You also want to take note if your emails are landing in the inbox and not in the spam folder due to spam filters. This will prevent email providers from accidentally misplacing any emails from your WooCommerce store and ensure the recipient receives the email. In addition to this, you can also use an email with a different domain as your recipient address to ensure there’s no problem in sending the emails.
• Test out payment gateways. Another important thing to check is the payment gateway functionality of your WooCommerce site. However, you need to make sure the payment gateways are working perfectly and your website supports them.
• Enable transactional emails. It's important to enable transactional emails in WooCommerce. This will prevent emails from generating after a WooCommerce order is created on your store.
• Purge your email list. Purge your email list regularly and only send emails to leads and customers that are interested. This also saves you time in chasing leads that are not actually interested in purchasing your product.
• Make sure emails aren’t being blocked. Best practices suggest you should make sure your WordPress web host (hosting provider), plugins, or email servers are not blocking emails from being sent from your WooCommerce site.

Troubleshooting WooCommerce email setup problems

The most common problems come from your WooCommerce email setup. WordPress itself isn't great at sending emails. That's because it's a website platform rather than a platform for sending emails. Sure, it can send emails using the built-in PHP Mail function. However, this isn't ideal because it's not optimized for deliverability.

If you find that your emails aren't sending, then there are several steps you can take to troubleshoot this.

The first step is to improve your WooCommerce email setup by sending the emails through your actual email account rather than PHP Mail. With PHP Mail, WordPress is basically pretending that it's sending the emails from your address. However, the emails are actually coming directly from your WordPress site and not through your email account. Naturally, this makes them look less trustworthy and makes them more likely to get spammed.

It can be hard to tell whether an email has been spammed. Of course, the intended recipient can check their spam folder. However, that won't contain any emails which were spammed at the server level and never reached your mailbox.

To improve deliverability, you should use a third party email service like MailOptin, Mailgun, or a free plugin like WP Mail SMTP. Any of these will route your WordPress emails through your actual email address, making them much more deliverable.

Once you have improved your WooCommerce email setup in this way, re-test that the emails are sending reliable. If not, then it's time to troubleshoot further. For example, HubSpot have provided a useful guide on how to fix WordPress emails not sending.

Perfect your WooCommerce email notifications

Setting up and managing WooCommerce email notifications is essential if you’re looking to engage buyers and convert them into brand-loyal customers.

WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients is the perfect plugin for sending email notifications to multiple people. It lets you add multiple recipient emails per customer and gives you the functionality to customize the default WooCommerce emails.

Ready to easily start setting up and managing WooCommerce email notifications on your WooCommerce site? Get WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients today!

Are you manually managing products in your WooCommerce inventory? If so, then you’ll benefit from having a solid WooCommerce inventory management system. Not only will it make it easier for you to manage your store in real-time, but it can have a positive impact on your bottom line.

The truth is that having a solid inventory management system can save you a lot of time and energy. Energy that can be redirected to other areas of your business. As an online store owner, that should be music to your ears!

At this moment, there’s a global strain on the supply chain ecosystem, impacting businesses at the inventory level. It’s important, now more than ever, to set the right expectations with your customers when it comes to the availability of your products.

This article will highlight the different WooCommerce Inventory Management plugins available to you. As well as show you how you can manage and enhance your inventory process with them.

Why do you need better inventory management?

If you’re handling your current inventory within the standard WooCommerce out-of-the-box package, you might run into some limitations. With the right WooCommerce inventory management system in place, you’ll gain some of the following benefits.

Save time spent on repetitive tasks

With a WooCommerce inventory management system, you can easily edit in bulk. This will shave hours off having to make changes and edit thousands of products manually.

You’ll be able to change your product’s prices (plus its variations) and add discounts in just a few clicks. Save yourself the repetitiveness and the countless product page visits!

Improved shopping experience

With a complete inventory management system, you can give your customers visibility of their favorite product’s stock status. They’ll have an easier time making a purchasing decision when they know exactly when their product will land at their front door. You’ll take the guesswork away and reduce their need to contact you for more information.

Reduced losses from bad inventory control

If you’re managing your inventory manually, you have a higher chance of making mistakes. A single mistake can snowball and create a huge dilemma for your store. If a stock level wasn’t set properly, it might take you hours to fix on top of it being a costly mistake.

Forecast and regulate inventory requirements

With an inventory management system, you can easily forecast your stock level so that you know exactly when you need to contact your vendors to make orders. You’ll have a better handle on your inventory requirements and foresee any challenges coming ahead of time.

What are the default options available for inventory management in WooCommerce?

Since we’re going to compare different plugins (and their features) to help you better manage your inventory. It’s probably a good idea to take a look at what your current default options are. You can then decide if you want/need the additional functionalities for your WooCommerce inventory.

From your WordPress dashboard, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Inventory to see the default settings.

Here you can see all your available options for better inventory control. You can:

• Set up notifications.
• Manage pending orders.
• Set up stock status options (out-of-stock, low stock, back-ordered).
• Set up expectations for order deliveries.

You’ll notice that the WooCommerce inventory doesn’t allow you, for example, to add a lead time for back-ordered products.

If you’re looking for such functionality, it’s best to use a WooCommerce inventory management plugin.

Which are the top inventory management plugins and which is the best?

As with any other plugin, there are countless options out there on the market. How do you know which one is the best fit for your WooCommerce inventory needs? We’re here to help you with that!

Here are the top WooCommerce inventory management plugins we recommend

WooCommerce Lead Time

The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin is designed specifically to give your customers the vital information they need before they make a purchase from you.

You can display the stock status and lead time for all your products globally or at the category/product level. You can choose to show the lead time for in-stock, out-of-stock, or back-ordered items with this plugin.

Here are some of its other features:

• Full control over setting your lead times (static and dynamic).
• Automatic lead time calculations.
• Customize the lead time text on a product.
• Works with product tables.

Pricing: Starts at $49/yr

Setary

Setary has a unique approach to WooCommerce inventory management because it's not a WordPress plugin. Instead, it's a spreadsheet-style bulk product editor outside of your WordPress site. That's great because you can manage your inventory in bulk without weighing down your site.

As well as managing stock in bulk, you can update all your other product data with Setary. This includes bulk editing prices, product names, categories, SKU's, and more.

WooCommerce Out of Stock! Manager

WooCommerce Out of Stock! Manager will let you add threshold rules for your stock levels, with additional custom warnings so you’re alerted when a certain product stock falls below your assigned threshold. If you have a team managing the store, you can add them to be alerted of the warning.

Here are some of its other features:

• First glance dashboard for better inventory overview and management.
• Compatible with WPML.
• Ability to customize the text on out-of-stock product pages.
• Email notifications when your stock level is low.

Price: $16

ATUM

ATUM is a free inventory management plugin that provides you with all the information you need at first glance to make decisions. It comes with an integrated dashboard so you can see the number of products you have in store, their prices, and so much more. You’ll have full control of your WooCommerce inventory which you can manage directly from the dashboard.

Here are some of its other features:

• Advanced search capability with auto-fill.
• Compatible with WPML.
• Can make bulk product changes.
• Export your inventory in PDF format.

Pricing: Free

Smart Manager for WooCommerce

The Smart Manager plugin for WooCommerce is an inventory management plugin that lets you edit your products, orders, variations, and coupons in bulk with just one click. You can also control your online store’s stock level in an easy-to-use spreadsheet-like system for a more seamless and efficient process.

The pro version of this plugin gives you the additional functionality of batch updating, duplication of records, and the ability to edit multiple inline records in one click.

Here are some of its other features:

• Advanced search capability.
• Preview your images.
• Sticky header for data management.
• Export all your posts in CSV format.
• Infinite scrolling.

Pricing: Free Version (Pro $149/yr)

For maximum impact, we recommend you combine the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin with one of the other plugins mentioned above. This is because they offer different features and provide you with a complete WooCommerce inventory management solution.

How to use WooCommerce Lead Time to provide better inventory information to customers

The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin is the only plugin that allows you to easily display the lead time for a product so that your customers know when it will ship.

There’s nothing more important to a customer than knowing exactly when to expect delivery. Having a clear indication of that on your product page might be the deciding factor for their purchase.

The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin is the perfect solution for the following scenarios

If your online store houses some of the following types of products, then the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin is what you’re looking for.

Custom, made-to-order products

If you sell made-to-order, custom, or handmade products, then it’s useful for your customers to know exactly how long it will be until their product is ready. They might click away from your store for another alternative if they see an out-of-stock sign, as that would be the default option with your standard WooCommerce inventory options.

Show them the lead time on product, checkout, and category pages. You can set the processing time globally or at the product/variation/category level for a more specific target. You also don’t have to use the words “Lead Time” as you can customize to your business’s needs.

Non-stock products

If you have products that are non-stock items because you don’t keep track of their quantities, then you can skip setting the quantity level but still have them show up as available in the store for customers to purchase.

Out-of-stock products

For out-of-stock products, you’ll be able to display a message immediately when your product sells out. You can arrange for a separate lead time option for products that are in-stock, out-of-stock, or back-ordered as they all have different requirements.

To provide your customers with the best possible experience, let’s set up your WooCommerce inventory management system.

Installing and using the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin for your inventory management needs

You can get the plugin from the Barn2 website and then download the files to your computer.

Here are the steps you need to take to get started.

1. Go to your WordPress Dashboard → Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
2. Select the files from your computer and click on Install.
3. Now that you’ve uploaded them, click on Activate.
4. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Lead Time so you can input your license key (should be in your email confirmation).
5. Click on Save Changes.

Let’s go to the plugin’s page now to add and display the lead times for your products.

Add Lead Times to your products

First, you need to decide where you want to display your lead times.

Go to the Products tab at the top of the screen, and then click on the ‘Lead Time’ link right below the tabs. You’ll see the following options.

• Single product page
• Cart
• Checkout
• Order details

You can select the specific product areas where you want a lead time text to be shown.

Next, let’s go through the various stock status options.

Display lead times for types of products

Keep in mind that if you only check one of these, then the lead time will only show for products associated with that selection. So, if you check ‘out-of-stock products’ only, then only products that are out-of-stock will display the lead time.

• In-stock products
• Out-of-stock products
• Product on backorder
• Discontinued products

If you want to keep it simple, you can show the same lead time for each product regardless of its stock status. If you want more control, then you can set a lead time per stock status. You can do this by checking the ‘Display a different lead time depending on the product’s stock status’ box.

By doing so, you’ll get more options to set a different global lead time for each stock status. Additionally, for each stock status you’ve enabled, you can set the lead time at the category, product, and product variation level.

Global lead time settings

If you want to have the same lead time shown on all your product pages, then you can set that up here in the global lead time field on the same Products tab and ‘Lead Time’ section. If you want to set the lead time for each individual product, then you can leave the global lead time field blank.

You can override the global lead time (if you set one) with a different one for specific products. In any case, if there’s no lead time set at the category-level or at the product-level, then the global lead time will take precedence.

Global lead time format

You have the option to choose between a dynamic lead time or a fixed text one. Here are the differences between each option.

Dynamic lead time

For this option, open up the calendar and select the date when your products will be coming in. The lead time will be automatically calculated for you and displayed on the product pages you selected to have a lead time shown. Your customers will see the number of days or weeks until they can expect the product.

As an FYI, this should be used only if you’ve ordered stock for all of your products and they’re coming in on the same day.

Static lead time

Here you set a fixed and exact text, such as ‘7 days’ for the product pages you’ve selected to show a lead time on. This is a good option if all your products have the same lead time.
You’re also able to override the global lead time format for specific products or categories should you choose to.

If you set the global lead time for ‘7 days’, you can also set up a dynamic lead time for an individual product if you know what day it’s coming in.

Customize the lead time display

There are two customizations you can make related to the display of the lead time. One is for the wording of the lead time and one for the text color. For example, if you don’t want it to say ‘Lead time’, but you’d rather have it show ‘Waiting time’ then you can make that change in the ‘Lead time prefix’ field.

You can also change the lead time text color so it matches with your brand or theme color. Simply change the ‘Lead time text color’ hex code.

Additional lead time options to consider

The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin has more to offer. With the newest feature in place, you can actually set lead times at the category and product/product variation level.

Category level lead time

If you want to add a lead time at the category level, here’s what you do.

Go to your WordPress dashboard → Products → Categories.

In this area, you can choose ‘Static’ or ‘Dynamic’ under the ‘Lead Time’ field. The difference between static and dynamic is the same as mentioned above (under the Global Lead Time Format section).

If you do set up a lead time at the category level, then all your products within that category (and sub-categories) will inherit the text. You can choose to override this for individual products should you want to.

Also, keep in mind that the category-level lead time will override the global lead time setting (as well as for individual products that do not have a set lead time).

Product level lead time

To set up a lead time at the product level, you’ll follow a similar process.

Go to your WordPress dashboard, then click Products → Edit Product.

In the Product Data area, there’s an inventory tab where you’ll find designated fields to set the lead time at the product level. Similarly to the category-level lead time, you can now set a ‘static’ or ‘dynamic’ lead time at the product level.

If you do set a lead time in this area, it will override any settings you have at the category level and global level. Your product level lead time will always take precedence.

Also, keep in mind that products that don’t have a designated lead time will fall under the category-level lead time.

For both of these, the category-level and product-level settings, your lead time will only show up for the selected stock status options you selected at the beginning in the ‘Display lead times for’ section.

Why should you use WooCommerce lead time?

The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin stands out in multiple ways as it’s packed with features to help you manage your WooCommerce inventory. If you want to keep your customers informed, display product lead times, and have control over static and dynamic lead times, then you’re in the right place.

Here are some of its top features that everyone is raving about

Integrates into your theme

You don’t have to code anything extra when you set up this plugin. The styling for the lead time text is automatically inherited from your theme so it matches the look and feel you already have.

The plugin is lightweight

Your website won’t be bogged down when you download and install this plugin. It uses little resources so you can be sure that your online store is still loading up at an optimal speed.

Stock status control

You’ll have control at the smallest level over your product stock statuses. You can easily show static or dynamic lead times depending on the product, category, variation, or storewide stock status.

Highly rated customer support

This plugin comes with an expert support team to guide you along the way. If you’re stuck, have a question, or need more hand-holding, you’re covered.

Additional inventory management benefits

Should a product go out of stock, you want to make sure that your customers know when the product will be back in stock before they reach the checkout page. This visibility will greatly improve customer loyalty as they won’t feel disappointed when they’re ready to checkout.

Additionally, if you want to let your customers know how long it will take between their order and delivery, you can manage this as well with the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin.

Managing discontinued products

If you want to manage discontinued products, we highly recommend Barn2’s Discontinued Products plugin, which seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce Lead Time. When one of your products reaches the end of its shelf life and won’t be available again, your standard WooCommerce setup is limited in options.

With the WooCommerce Discontinued Products plugin, you’ll be able to quickly mark any products as discontinued without impacting their SEO value, which is highly valuable in and of itself. You’ll have the ability to either show them as discontinued or to hide them from your store, with either option making it easy for the customer to browse through.

For more details and information on the benefits of this plugin, you can go here.

An easy way to manage your WooCommerce Inventory

Having the right WooCommerce inventory management system will save you a lot of time down the line and make your life easier as an online store owner.

If you’re looking to add more functionality to your store, and flexible options for your custom and non-stock products, then the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin is the right fit for you, complementary to other inventory management plugins.

You’ll have the flexibility and control to manage your inventory lead time at the global, category product, and product variation levels. Give your customers the best possible shopping experience as you’ll take the guesswork and frustration away from them.

Download and install the plugin today!