# How to Edit Your WooCommerce Shop Display Page: A Beginner’s Guide
WooCommerce is a powerful platform, but sometimes its default shop page needs a little tweaking to truly shine. This guide will walk you through editing your WooCommerce shop page, focusing on the basics and providing practical examples. Even if you’re a complete newbie to coding, you’ll find this easy to follow!
Understanding Your WooCommerce Shop Page
Before diving into edits, it’s crucial to understand what you’re working with. Your WooCommerce shop page is the heart of your online store. It’s the first impression many customers get, so it needs to be clean, organized, and visually appealing. Imagine a cluttered physical store – nobody wants to shop there! The same principle applies online.
The shop page displays your products, usually in a grid or list format. It includes features like:
- Product thumbnails: Small images representing your products.
- Product titles: The name of each product.
- Product prices: How much each product costs.
- Add to cart buttons: Allowing customers to purchase.
- Filtering and sorting options: Helping customers find what they need. (Often found at the top or side)
- Pagination: Breaking up large product lists into manageable pages.
- Change the number of products displayed per page: Instead of showing 12 products per page (the default for many themes), you might want to show 9 or 16 for a better visual layout. Experiment to find what looks best on your site.
- Choose the product catalog display: Select whether products are shown in a grid or list view. A grid is generally more visually appealing, but a list allows for more detail on each product without scrolling.
- Customize the shop page title: Use a title that clearly describes your products, like “Our Awesome Products” instead of the generic “Shop”.
- Product Grid Builder: Plugins like this allow you to easily customize the layout of your product grid. You can change the number of Explore this article on Estore Woocommerce – How To Change Order Status columns, add spacing between products, and control the order in which products appear. This gives you much greater flexibility than the basic WooCommerce settings.
- Filtering and Sorting Plugins: These add advanced filtering options for customers (e.g., filtering by price, color, Learn more about How To Sort Additional Information Tab Fields In Woocommerce size, brand). A well-organized shop is easier to navigate and boosts customer satisfaction. Improved user experience equals more sales.
- Altering the product loop: The `woocommerce_loop` hook allows you to modify how individual products are displayed within the loop. You could add custom elements or change the order of existing ones.
Editing Your WooCommerce Shop Page: The Easy Ways
Most shop page customizations can be made without touching a single line of code. Let’s look at some simple yet impactful changes you can make through WooCommerce’s built-in settings and plugins:
1. Using WooCommerce Settings
WooCommerce offers a surprising amount of control directly within its settings. Navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Display. Here you can:
2. Leveraging WooCommerce Plugins
Plugins extend WooCommerce’s functionality significantly. For shop page modifications, consider these options:
Editing Your WooCommerce Shop Page: The Code Approach (For Advanced Users)
For more extensive changes, you might need to edit your theme’s files. Caution: Modifying theme files can break your site if done incorrectly. Always back up your files before making any changes.
1. Child Themes: The Safe Way
It’s strongly recommended to use a child theme. This allows you to customize your theme’s appearance without losing your changes when the parent theme updates. If you don’t have a child theme, create one!
2. Modifying the `archive-product.php` file
The `archive-product.php` file is usually responsible for displaying the shop page. This is where you’d make more advanced changes, such as:
add_action( 'woocommerce_before_shop_loop_item_title', 'add_custom_element_to_product', 10 ); function add_custom_element_to_product() { echo 'This is my custom element!
'; }
This example Learn more about How To Change Product Thumbnail In Woocommerce adds a custom paragraph above the product title. This code should go in your theme’s `functions.php` file (or a child theme’s `functions.php`). Remember to always test your changes thoroughly.
Conclusion
Editing your WooCommerce shop page is essential for creating a positive shopping experience. Start with the simple methods outlined above. As you gain confidence, you can explore more advanced techniques. Remember to prioritize a clean, user-friendly design that reflects your brand and encourages sales!
