How To Create Custom Filter In Woocommerce

How to Create Custom Filters in WooCommerce: Enhance Your Customer’s Shopping Experience

Introduction

In the competitive world of e-commerce, providing a seamless and efficient shopping experience is crucial for attracting and retaining customers. WooCommerce, a powerful and popular e-commerce platform built on WordPress, offers a wealth of customization options to achieve just that. One key aspect of improving user experience is providing robust filtering capabilities. While WooCommerce offers some default filtering options, creating custom filters tailored to your specific product catalog can significantly enhance your store’s usability and help customers find exactly what they’re looking for faster. This article will guide you through the process of creating custom filters in WooCommerce.

Main Part

Creating custom filters in WooCommerce requires some coding knowledge, but the benefits far outweigh the effort. We’ll focus on using PHP and WordPress’s built-in functions to achieve this. There are typically two main approaches: using product attributes or creating custom taxonomies.

Using Product Attributes for Custom Filters

Product attributes are characteristics that can be assigned to products, such as color, size, material, or style. WooCommerce natively supports filtering by attributes, making this a relatively straightforward approach.

1. Create Product Attributes:

• Go to Products > Attributes in your WordPress dashboard.
• Create a new attribute (e.g., “Material”).
• Define terms for the attribute (e.g., “Cotton,” “Polyester,” “Wool”).
• Ensure “Enable archives?” is checked if you want to create archive pages for each attribute term.

2. Assign Attributes to Products:

• Edit each product and find the “Product data” meta box.
• Go to the “Attributes” tab.
• Select the attribute you created (e.g., “Material”).
• Choose the appropriate terms for that product (e.g., “Cotton”). Make sure “Visible on the product page” and “Used for variations” are not checked unless you are using the attribute for variations.
• Save your product.

3. Display the Attribute Filter:

• You can display the attribute filter using the WooCommerce “Product attribute filter” widget.
• Go to Appearance > Widgets.
• Drag the “Product attribute filter” widget to your desired sidebar or widget area.
• Configure the widget to display the “Material” attribute.
• Save the widget settings.

Creating Custom Taxonomies for Custom Filters

Custom taxonomies are a more flexible way to categorize products beyond the default categories and tags. This allows you to create highly specific filters.

1. Register the Custom Taxonomy:

• You’ll need to add code to your theme’s `functions.php` file (or a custom plugin) to register the taxonomy. Remember to back up your `functions.php` file before making any changes.

function register_custom_taxonomy() {
$labels = array(
'name'              => _x( 'Brand', 'taxonomy general name', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'singular_name'     => _x( 'Brand', 'taxonomy singular name', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'search_items'      => __( 'Search Brands', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'all_items'         => __( 'All Brands', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'parent_item'       => __( 'Parent Brand', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'parent_item_colon' => __( 'Parent Brand:', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'edit_item'         => __( 'Edit Brand', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'update_item'       => __( 'Update Brand', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'add_new_item'      => __( 'Add New Brand', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'new_item_name'     => __( 'New Brand Name', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
'menu_name'         => __( 'Brand', 'your-theme-textdomain' ),
);

$args = array(

‘hierarchical’ => true, // Set to false for tag-like behavior

‘labels’ => $labels,

‘show_ui’ => true,

‘show_admin_column’ => true,

‘query_var’ => true,

‘rewrite’ => array( ‘slug’ => ‘brand’ ),

);

register_taxonomy( ‘brand’, ‘product’, $args );

}

add_action( ‘init’, ‘register_custom_taxonomy’, 0 );

• Replace `’your-theme-textdomain’` with your theme’s text domain.
• Adjust the `slug` in the `rewrite` array to your desired URL structure. For example, if you want URLs like `/brand/nike/`, set the slug to ‘brand’.
• This code registers a taxonomy called “Brand.”

2. Assign Terms to Products:

• Edit each product. You’ll now see a “Brand” meta box similar to the category box.
• Assign the appropriate brand to each product.

3. Create a Filter Widget (Requires Coding):

• Unfortunately, WooCommerce doesn’t have a built-in widget for filtering by custom taxonomies. You’ll need to create a custom widget or use a plugin. A basic custom widget would involve:
• Extending the `WP_Widget` class.
• Retrieving the terms for your custom taxonomy.
• Generating a list of checkboxes or links for each term.
• Modifying the main product query to filter by the selected terms. This usually involves using the `pre_get_posts` action.
• Consider using a plugin like “FacetWP” or “SearchWP” for a more user-friendly and feature-rich solution without extensive coding. These plugins offer powerful filtering capabilities based on custom taxonomies, attributes, and other product data.

Important Considerations:

• Performance: Complex filters, especially with large product catalogs, can impact your site’s performance. Optimize your code and consider using caching.
• User Experience: Design your filters to be intuitive and easy to use. Use clear labels and logical groupings.
• AJAX Filtering: Implement AJAX filtering to avoid full page reloads when users select filter options. This provides a smoother and faster browsing experience. Many filtering plugins handle AJAX functionality automatically.
• Mobile Responsiveness: Ensure your filters are responsive and work well on all devices.

Conclusion

Creating custom filters in WooCommerce is a powerful way to improve your store’s usability and help customers find the products they need quickly and easily. While implementing custom filters requires some coding effort (especially for custom taxonomies), the increased conversion rates and improved customer satisfaction make it a worthwhile investment. Remember to choose the approach that best suits your needs and technical skills, and don’t hesitate to leverage plugins that offer advanced filtering features with minimal coding. By implementing well-designed custom filters, you can transform your WooCommerce store into a user-friendly and effective sales platform.