How to Create a Custom Shop Page in WooCommerce: A Beginner’s Guide
WooCommerce, the leading e-commerce platform for WordPress, offers a fantastic starting point for online stores. But sometimes, you want your shop page to be more than just a standard product grid. You want it to reflect your brand, highlight specific products, or offer a more engaging shopping experience. That’s where creating a custom shop page comes in.
This guide will walk you through the process of creating a custom shop page in WooCommerce, even if you’re a complete beginner. We’ll break down the steps, explain the reasoning behind them, and provide real-life examples to help you create a shop page that truly stands out.
Why Customize Your WooCommerce Shop Page?
Imagine walking into a physical store. Some are cluttered and overwhelming, while others are well-organized and inviting. The same applies to your online shop! A custom shop page can:
- Enhance Brand Identity: Reflect your unique style and branding through colors, fonts, and imagery.
- Improve User Experience: Make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for with intuitive navigation and filtering.
- Increase Conversions: Learn more about How To Add Product Image In Woocommerce Highlight best-selling products, promotions, and special offers to encourage purchases.
- Differentiate Yourself: Stand out from the competition by offering a unique and memorable shopping experience.
- Using the WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg): This is the simplest option for beginners. You can use WooCommerce blocks like “Products by Category,” “Featured Products,” and “Best Selling Products” to build your page.
- Example: Add a “Featured Product” block to highlight a specific product, then add a “Products by Category” block to display products from different categories.
- Using a Page Builder Plugin (Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi): These plugins offer more advanced customization options and drag-and-drop functionality. They are often more user-friendly than coding.
- Example: Use Elementor to create a visually stunning layout with custom headers, banners, and product grids.
- Coding (For Advanced Users): If you’re comfortable with HTML, CSS, and PHP, you can modify the WooCommerce template files directly. This is not recommended for beginners.
- All Products: Displays all your products.
- Products by Category: Displays products from a specific category.
- Featured Product: Highlights a single product.
- Best Selling Products: Displays your best-selling products.
- On Sale Products: Displays products that are currently on sale.
- Hand-picked Products: Allows you to manually select which products to display.
- Image: Add a banner image to showcase your brand.
- Heading: Add headings to organize your content.
- Paragraph: Add text to describe your products or brand.
- Columns: Create a multi-column layout.
- Product Category Filter: Allows customers to filter products by category.
- Product Attribute Filter: Allows customers to filter products by attributes like color, size, or material.
- Price Filter: Allows customers to filter products by price range.
- Product Sorting: Allows customers to sort products by price, popularity, rating, or date.
- Check on different devices: Ensure your page looks good on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones.
- Monitor your analytics: Track your sales, bounce rate, and conversion rate to see how your page is performing.
- Gather feedback: Ask your customers for their opinions on your shop page.
- Make adjustments: Based on your testing and feedback, make changes to improve your page’s performance.
Think of a clothing boutique. They might feature a curated collection of outfits on the homepage, showcasing their latest trends. This is a form of shop page customization!
Step 1: Understanding the WooCommerce Shop Page
Before diving into customization, let’s understand how WooCommerce handles the shop page. By default, WooCommerce uses an “archive” page to display your products. This archive page is automatically generated and usually displays all your products in a grid layout.
The key is that you can’t directly edit this default archive page. You need to either modify the existing template files (which can be complex and risky for beginners) or create a completely new page and tell WooCommerce to use *that* as your shop page. We’ll be focusing on the latter, easier method in this guide.
Step 2: Creating a New Page in WordPress
This is the foundation of your custom shop page.
1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Pages > Add New.
2. Give your page a clear and descriptive title, such as “Shop,” “Our Products,” or “The Collection.”
3. Leave the content area blank for now. We’ll add content later.
4. Publish the page.
Step 3: Assigning the New Page as Your WooCommerce Shop Page
Now, you need to tell WooCommerce to use this new page as your shop page.
1. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products.
2. In the “Shop page” dropdown, select the page you just created (e.g., “Shop”).
3. Save changes.
That’s it! WooCommerce will now use the page you created as your shop page. If you visit that page now, it will likely be blank. Don’t worry, we’ll fix that.
Step 4: Building Your Custom Shop Page
This is where the fun begins! There are several ways to build your custom shop page:
Let’s Explore this article on How To Process Payment On Stripe Dashboard Intergrated With Woocommerce focus on using the WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg) for this guide.
1. Go to Pages > All Pages and find the page you created (e.g., “Shop”).
2. Click Edit.
3. Start adding blocks to your page. Here are some useful WooCommerce blocks:
4. Customize each block by adjusting the number of products displayed, the order, and the layout.
5. Add other blocks to enhance your page, such as:
6. Preview your page to see how it looks.
7. Update your page when you’re happy with the results.
Example: Creating a Simple Shop Page with Gutenberg
1. Add a Heading block: “Welcome to Our Shop!”
2. Add an Image block: Upload a Learn more about How To Clear Woocommerce Carts banner image of your products.
3. Add a Products by Category block: Select the “New Arrivals” category and display 4 products.
4. Add a Best Selling Products block: Display 4 of your best-selling products.
5. Add a Paragraph block: “Explore our wide range of products and find something you’ll love!”
Step 5: Adding Filters and Sorting Options
To improve the user experience, consider adding filters and sorting options to your shop page. WooCommerce offers several widgets you can use for this:
To add these widgets:
1. Go to Appearance > Widgets.
2. Drag and drop the desired widgets into your Shop Page Sidebar (or any other sidebar you want to use).
3. Configure each widget as needed.
Important Note: You might need to enable the sidebar for your shop page in your theme settings.
Step 6: Testing and Optimization
Once your custom shop page is live, it’s important to test and optimize it.
Conclusion
Creating a custom shop page in WooCommerce is a great way to enhance your brand, improve the user experience, and increase conversions. By following these steps and experimenting with different layouts and features, you can create a shop page that truly reflects your business and resonates with your customers. Remember to focus on creating a user-friendly and visually appealing experience that encourages visitors to browse and buy your products. Good luck!
