Level Up Your WooCommerce Store: A Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up Filters
WooCommerce is a fantastic platform for selling online, but as your product catalog grows, customers can easily get lost in a sea of items. That’s where product filters come in. Think of them as your online store’s personal shopping assistant, guiding customers to exactly what they’re looking for, leading to increased sales and happier customers.
Imagine you’re selling shoes. A customer is looking for red running shoes, size 9. Without filters, they’d have to scroll through *all* your shoes to find the right pair. With filters, they can select “Red” under color, “Running” under type, and “Size 9” – instantly narrowing down the selection. This article will walk you through setting up WooCommerce filters, step-by-step, even if you’re a complete beginner.
Why are Filters Important?
Before we dive in, let’s quickly cover why filters are so crucial:
- Improved User Experience: Customers can quickly and easily find what they need.
- Increased Sales: A better user experience means more conversions and higher revenue. If they can’t find it, they can’t buy it!
- Reduced Bounce Rate: Visitors are less likely to leave your site out of frustration.
- Better SEO: Well-structured filters can improve your site’s search engine ranking by allowing search engines to better understand your product offerings.
- WooCommerce Product Categories: Allows users to filter products by category.
- WooCommerce Product Attributes Filter: Allows users to filter by product attributes (like color, size, etc. – we’ll cover how to set these up shortly).
- WooCommerce Price Filter: Allows users to filter by price range.
- WooCommerce Product Rating Filter: Allows users to filter products by their average rating.
- WOOF – WooCommerce Products Filter: (Free and Premium) A powerful and highly customizable filter plugin.
- YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter: (Free and Premium) Another popular option with a user-friendly interface.
- Product Filter by WooBeWoo: (Free and Premium) A versatile filter plugin with various filtering options.
- Keep it simple: Don’t overwhelm your customers with too many filter options. Prioritize the most important attributes for your products.
- Use clear and concise labels: Make sure the filter labels are easy to understand (e.g., “Color” instead of “Product Hue”).
- Order filters logically: Group related filters together and order them in a way that makes sense for your products.
- Test your filters thoroughly: Make sure the filters are working correctly and that the results are accurate.
- Consider Mobile Responsiveness: Ensure your filters are easy to use on mobile devices.
Methods for Setting Up WooCommerce Filters
There are a few ways to set up filters in WooCommerce, and we’ll cover the easiest and most common methods.
1. Using WooCommerce’s Built-in Widgets: This is the simplest approach and often sufficient for smaller stores with basic filtering needs.
2. Using a WooCommerce Filter Plugin: Plugins offer more advanced filtering options, customization, and often better performance, especially for larger stores.
Let’s start with the built-in widgets.
Method 1: Using WooCommerce Built-in Widgets
WooCommerce comes with several filter widgets right out of the box. Here’s how to use them:
1. Navigate to Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress dashboard.
2. You’ll see a list of available widgets on the left and widget areas (like your sidebar or footer) on the right. The specific widget areas available will depend on your theme.
3. Look for these widgets:
4. Drag and drop the widgets you want to use into your desired widget area. For most stores, placing them in the sidebar of your shop page is the most common approach.
5. Configure the Widget (if necessary). For example, with the “WooCommerce Product Categories” widget, you might want to display the category hierarchy or hide empty categories.
Real-Life Example:
Let’s say you drag the “WooCommerce Product Categories” widget to your “Shop Sidebar” area. You set the “Title” to “Shop by Category”. Now, on your shop page, a list of your product categories will appear in the sidebar, allowing customers to easily browse by category.
Setting Up Product Attributes for Filtering
The “WooCommerce Product Attributes Filter” widget relies on product attributes. These are characteristics like color, size, material, style, etc., that describe your products. Here’s how to set them up:
1. Navigate to Products > Attributes in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Enter a Name for your attribute (e.g., “Color”). This is how it will be displayed in the admin area.
3. Enter a Slug (optional). This is a URL-friendly version of the name. If you leave it blank, WordPress will automatically generate one.
4. Enable Archives? Generally, you’ll want to leave this disabled unless you specifically want archive pages for each attribute term (e.g., a page dedicated to *only* blue products).
5. Select the “Default sort order”. This affects how attribute terms are ordered within the filter.
6. Click “Add attribute”.
Now, you need to add terms to the attribute. Think of terms as the *values* of the attribute. For example, for the “Color” attribute, the terms would be “Red”, “Blue”, “Green”, etc.
1. Click “Configure terms” Check out this post: How To Make A Subscription Website Using Woocommerce under the attribute you just created (e.g., “Color”).
2. Enter a Name for the term (e.g., “Red”).
3. Enter a Slug (optional).
4. Add a Description (optional).
5. Click “Add new Color”.
6. Repeat for all the terms you want to add (e.g., Blue, Green, Yellow).
Real-Life Example:
You’re selling t-shirts. You create an attribute called “Size” with the terms “Small”, “Medium”, “Large”, and “X-Large”. Now, when you edit a t-shirt product, you can assign it the appropriate size from these terms.
Assigning Attributes to Your Products
Now that you’ve created your attributes and their terms, you need to assign them to your products.
1. Go to Products > All Products and edit the product you want to assign attributes to.
2. Scroll down to the “Product data” meta box. Make sure the product type is set to “Simple product” or “Variable product.” We’ll cover variable products momentarily.
3. Click on the “Attributes” tab.
4. In the “Custom product attribute” dropdown, select the attribute you want to add (e.g., “Color”).
5. Click “Add”.
6. In the “Value(s)” field, select the terms that apply to this product (e.g., “Red”, “Blue”). You can select multiple terms.
7. Make sure the “Visible on the product page” checkbox is checked if you want the attribute to be displayed on the product page.
8. Most importantly, check the “Used for variations” checkbox if you are going to be making variations of the product based on the attributes (covered below).
9. Click “Save attributes”.
10. Update the product.
Variable Products: Taking Attributes to the Next Level
If you sell products that come in different variations (e.g., a t-shirt that comes in different sizes and colors), you’ll need to create a variable product.
1. In the “Product data” meta box, change the “Product type” to “Variable product”.
2. Go to the “Attributes” tab and follow the steps above to add your attributes and terms. Make sure “Used for variations” is checked for any attributes you want to vary.
3. Go to the “Variations” tab.
4. Select “Create variations from all attributes” from the “Add variation” dropdown and click “Go”. This will automatically generate variations for each combination of your attribute terms (e.g., Red/Small, Red/Medium, Blue/Small, Blue/Medium). For large products you may need to generate them in batches.
5. Click the arrow next to each variation to expand it and enter details like price, stock quantity, and even a different image for each variation. This is crucial!
6. Save your changes.
Example:
You have a t-shirt that comes in Red, Blue, and Green, and Small, Medium, and Large sizes. By setting up a variable product with “Color” and “Size” attributes, you can define the price and stock level for each specific variation (e.g., Red/Small might cost $20 and have 10 in stock, while Blue/Large might cost $22 and have 5 in stock).
Method 2: Using a WooCommerce Filter Plugin
While the built-in widgets are a good starting point, for more advanced filtering options, better performance, and a more customizable look and feel, a dedicated WooCommerce filter plugin is the way to go. There are many excellent plugins available, both free and paid. Some popular options include:
The specific steps for setting up a filter plugin will vary depending on the plugin you choose, but the general process is usually as follows:
1. Install and activate the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (Plugins > Add New).
2. Configure the plugin’s settings according to your preferences. This might involve selecting which attributes and categories to display in the filters, choosing the filter style, and configuring the layout. Most plugins have very detailed settings pages that will walk you through the steps.
3. Add the filter to your shop page or sidebar. Some plugins provide a shortcode that you can insert into your shop page or a widget that you can drag and drop into your sidebar.
Example using WOOF – WooCommerce Products Filter:
After installing and activating WOOF, you can go to WooCommerce > WOOF Settings. Here, you can choose which terms to show, the filter Explore this article on How To Add Shipping Zones In Woocommerce type (dropdown, checkbox, range slider), and more. After configuring, you can insert a shortcode `[woof]` on the shop page and start seeing your new filters at work.
Key Considerations for Effective Filtering
By following these steps and considering these best practices, you can create a powerful and effective filtering system that will enhance the user experience of your WooCommerce store, leading to more sales and happier customers. Good luck!
