How to Remove Related Products in WooCommerce

WooCommerce’s related products feature aims to boost sales by suggesting items customers might also like. However, sometimes these suggestions aren’t relevant or even detrimental to your sales strategy. This article will guide you through several methods to effectively remove related products in WooCommerce, giving you greater control over your product displays.

Understanding WooCommerce Related Products

Before diving into removal methods, it’s crucial to understand how WooCommerce displays related products. The platform uses a variety of factors, including categories, tags, and even purchase history, to suggest similar items. While often helpful, these suggestions can become problematic if:

• The suggestions are irrelevant to the main product.
• They compete directly with the main product, cannibalizing sales.

They clutter the product page and detract from the main offering.

Fortunately, WooCommerce offers multiple avenues to manage and even entirely disable these related product suggestions.

Methods to Remove Related Products in WooCommerce

1. Using the WooCommerce Product Page Settings

The simplest method involves directly modifying the product settings. This is ideal for individually removing related products from specific items.

1. Navigate to the product you want to modify: Go to your WooCommerce dashboard, then Products > All Products. Select the product.
2. Access the “Related Products” tab: Look for the “Linked Products” or “Product Data” meta box, find the “Related Products” section.
3. Remove related products: Uncheck the checkbox next to each product you wish to remove from the related products list. Save your changes.

Note: This method is effective for individual products but becomes cumbersome when dealing with many products needing related products removal.

2. Disabling Related Products Globally (using a Plugin or Child Theme)

For a more comprehensive solution, consider globally disabling the related products feature. This requires more technical expertise and could involve either a plugin or customizing your theme’s code (strongly recommended using a child theme to avoid losing customizations during updates).

• Using a Plugin: Search the WordPress plugin repository for plugins that manage or disable related products. Carefully review user reviews and plugin documentation before installation.

Modifying the Theme (Child Theme): This requires coding skills. You would need to locate the code responsible for displaying related products within your theme’s files (usually in the `single-product.php` file) and comment out or remove the relevant section. Again, use a child theme to prevent data loss upon theme updates.

3. Customizing the Related Products Query (Advanced)

For advanced users, modifying the related products query directly allows for fine-grained control. This involves working with WooCommerce’s functions and hooks. This is the most technical solution and requires a strong understanding of PHP and WooCommerce’s architecture.

Conclusion

Removing related products in WooCommerce offers a valuable way to customize your product pages and enhance the customer experience. Choosing the right method depends on your technical skills and the scope of your needs. While individual product editing offers simplicity, globally disabling or customizing the query provides greater control, albeit with a steeper learning curve. Remember to always back up your website before making any significant code changes.