WooCommerce products Tag Archives - Page 2 of 2

How to Change the Number of Related Products in WooCommerce

May 12, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

Changing the number of related products in WooCommerce is a relatively easy task if you know how to do it. WooCommerce defaults to two related products in the single product page but store owners may want to show their visitors more than just two related products.

Why Change the Number of the Related Products?

Showing more products in the Related Products section will increase and develop the browsing or buying choice of the user. This strategy is basically cross-selling/upselling. It is the strategic way of introducing your customers to other products that are related to what they are already interested in. Research shows that product recommendations account for 10% to 30% of e-commerce store revenue and increase average order value.

Setting up the Number of Related Products

There are two ways you can set up the number of related products. First is to insert a code snippet in the functions.php file on your theme. Second is to install a plugin to do it for you. The first method may seem intimidating to some WooCommerce shop owners, but it is actually as easy as copy and pasting a code. This method is recommended because it doesn’t bloat your site with unnecessary code.

In some themes, authors have added custom functions that allow users to edit WooCommerce and this includes the number of related products. Buying themes that come with a lot of custom functions however are generally not recommended as they can add unnecessary bloat to your site.

How to Change the Number of Related Products in WooCommerce Using Code Snippets

The best way to edit the number of related products is by using a code snippet that you insert into your child theme so that the code doesn’t get overwritten when you update your theme. Don’t get discouraged by the thought of coding but do take extra caution as one wrong code can break your entire site. If you do not know what you are doing, it would do you well to hire a developer to do this for you. If you are comfortable working with code snippets, then proceed with the steps below.

To start, locate functions.php in the WordPress file system. Go to your WordPress Dashboard. Navigate to Appearance > Editor. Choose the theme you are using from the dropdown in the upper right sidebar and locate at the bottom right the functions.php file. You can also access your site’s file through an FTP client and edit the functions.php file from there.

Next is to copy and paste the code below at the very bottom of your functions.php file.

/**
* WooCommerce Extra Feature
* --------------------------
*
* Change number of related products on product page
* Set your own value for 'posts_per_page'
*
*/ 
function woo_related_products_limit() {
  global $product;
  
  $args['posts_per_page'] = 6;
  return $args;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_output_related_products_args', 'jk_related_products_args' );
  function jk_related_products_args( $args ) {
  $args['posts_per_page'] = 4; // 4 related products
  $args['columns'] = 2; // arranged in 2 columns
  return $args;
}

The piece of code above will make the number of related products into 4 per page arranged in 2 columns. This is defined in these lines of code:

“$args[‘posts_per_page’] = 4; // 4 related products”, and “$args[‘columns’] = 2; // arranged in 2 columns”.

In order to have the desired number of related products, you just need to vary the values. For example you want to have 6 related products in a single column, change the 4 to 6 and 2 to 1. So it will be:

“$args[‘posts_per_page’] = 6; // 6 related products” and “$args[‘columns’] = 1; // arranged in 1 columns”.
Save the file when you are done.

How to Change the Number of Related Products in WooCommerce Using a Plugin

For less technical store owners, you may want to change the number of the Related Products in your WooCommerce store by using a plugin. Using a plugin will save you from editing important website files that can break your site. Here are some plugins that we can recommend:

Booster for WooCommerce

Booster for WooCommerce was previously called WooCommerce Jetpack. This enables you to tweak a lot of settings for WooCommerce not just changing the number of related products. For anyone using the WooCommerce platform, this plugin is highly recommended because it provides a lot of functionality.

To change the number of related products, follow the steps below:

First, install and activate the plugin.
Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Booster.

In the Booster menu, click on the Products tab > Related Products.

Enter the number of Related Products that you want. You can also change the number of columns for the Related Products Section.
Check the Enable Module, save and you’re done.

While WooCommerce Booster is a powerful plugin in itself, you may want to use a different plugin if you just need to edit the number of related products. This is because the number of features that you wouldn’t be using would just add extra bloat to your site.

Woo Related Products

Woo Related Products is one of the simplest plugins out there for editing related products in WooCommerce. It is light and easy to navigate. It also allows you to change the heading text on the related products section.

To start, install and activate the plugin.
Locate “Related Products” from your WP admin menu panel.
Select the number of related products you want to display. And then click on Save Changes.

You want to increase your conversions. By increasing the number of related products from WooCommerce’s default to introduce more products to your customers, you can increase your revenue and average order value. You can follow the steps mentioned in this article to accomplish this for your own website.

Do you know of other strategies that can help increase conversions through cross sells and upsells? Let us know in the comments.

10 WooCommerce Plugins to Supercharge Your Store

April 5, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

WooCommerce is a great tool to sell online with unlimited possibilities for customization. One of WooCommerce’s best features is its extensive library of plugins available.

Many of the customizations you need for your WooCommerce store will most likely have been requested by a lot of WooCommerce users. This is where the plugin developers come in. Hence, there will almost always be a plugin for your specific needs.

Here we’ll list down 10 WooCommerce plugins to supercharge your store.

1. WooCommerce Customizer

WooCommerce Customizer is a free plugin from Skyverge. It adds an extra settings page for WooCommerce to help you make quick changes which otherwise would require writing some custom PHP functions. The plugin allows users to edit the text for Add to Cart and Submit Order buttons on the WooCommerce store. It allows you to edit the number of products shown as well as the number of columns on the category pages. You can also edit page coupons, tax labels, logins, product headers and additional information tab headers. The plugin only works on individual sites and does not support multisite networks. It is a great tool for A/B testing because you can change settings in a few clicks. You can optimize the look of your WooCommerce store for optimum conversion.

2. WooCommerce Products Filter

WooCommerce Products Filter is a great plugin especially when you have a lot of products on your WooCommerce store. It lets you set search categories for your visitors and use this to filter products by categories, tags, attributes, and taxonomies. It uses AJAX for easy product search. This allows the user to continuously search without the need to reload the page which is convenient. You can choose from various display formats like drop-downs, check-boxes or radio buttons. These display formats let you customize how users can search products in your WooCommerce site. It also has simple options if you want your product search filter to be less complicated. To add the filter, you just need to insert the shortcode.

3. WooCommerce Products Slider

Create a mobile-friendly slider of your products anywhere in your site using WooCommerce Products Slider. You just create your sliders then paste the generated shortcode where you want them to appear. This plugin lets you display featured items, latest products, or sort products posted by date and more. The height, column numbers, size, items and button colors are easy to customize. The free version comes with two themes to help you showcase your products across your WooCommerce store.

4. Booster for WooCommerce

Booster for WooCommerce is a free plugin that supercharges your e-commerce site with features that will empower your standard WooCommerce store. It extends WooCommerce features and lets you add more customizations. It lets you customize prices and currencies, button and price labels, products, cart and checkout, payment and gateways, shipping, invoices, emails, etc. You can check out the long list of features in the plugin page.

5. WooDiscuz WooCommerce Comments

WooDiscuz WooCommerce Comments is a plugin that can help you build customer trust, boost engagement and increase sales. This can also double as your instant FAQ and support platform for specific products. It gives you a platform where your customers or users can discuss your products and add reviews. Visitors can ask pre-sale questions.

This plugin allows you to moderate comments, tweak permissions, and edit security options. It also has anti-spam, AJAX pagination, and redirect to “Thank you” page features.

6. WooCommerce – Store Exporter

Take control of your store data with WooCommerce – Store Exporter. It lets you design advanced and concise exports of your data in minutes. This will benefit e-commerce businesses that need to deal with large amounts of data. The free version lets you export your products, categories, tags, and user data into a CSV file or WordPress Media. It is also compatible with WordPress multisite.

7. WooCommerce PDF Invoices and Packing Slips

WooCommerce PDF Invoices and Packing Slips will automatically create and add a PDF invoice to WooCommerce emails sent to your customers. Save time from having to send invoices manually and increase your WooCommerce store’s trust rating. You can easily modify the base template for the invoices or create your own template. The plugin also allows for generating and downloading invoices and packing slips in bulk. Monitoring your invoices is easier with the custom format sequential invoice numbers. It has multi-language functionality and lets you add custom fonts.

8. Stripe Payment Gateway WooCommerce Addon

Stripe Payment Gateway WooCommerce Addon is a free payment gateway plugin for WooCommerce. Setting a payment gateway with Stripe is made easier through this plugin. When configured, the plugin allows your WooCommerce store to accept credit cards payment on checkout. Stripe does this with a generated API. Paying won’t seem like they are redirected to a different site with its overlay appearance. Customers can choose to use and edit saved cards to speed up the checkout process. It also integrates well with refund options in WooCommerce 2.2 versions and above. Do note that an SSL certificate is still required for this to work.

9. Smart Manager for WooCommerce & WPeC

Smart Manager for WooCommerce & WPeC plugin gives you the functionalities of spreadsheet software like Excel within the WordPress Dashboard. It helps you manage products, product variations, customers, coupons and orders quickly with ease. No more tedious importing and exporting of data. The browser-like spreadsheet interface gets rid of distractions with a full-screen view. Typical store administration with WooCommerce will require you hundreds of hours. This plugin would reduce that significantly so you can focus on other important business aspects. The advanced search function will help you to easily manage large amount of data at once. The free version allows you to edit up to 3 items at once.

10. UltimateWoo

UltimateWoo plugin is like the JetPack for WooCommerce. The plugin provides access to a multitude of WooCommerce extension modules. UltimateWoo has a total of 72 modules that you can use to customize your WooCommerce store. These modules help manage analytics, reporting, e-mail, payment, products, sales, marketing, and shipping. For a complete rundown of all the modules, you can check out this page. A word of caution though, plugins with a lot of functionalities tend to add a lot of bloat to the site.

Conclusion

These are just some of the most useful plugins for WooCommerce. These 10 plugins will make WooCommerce much better for you. However, do note that you should only install plugins that you really need. While plugins are powerful tools when used properly, they can slow down your site. If this should happen, you could lose customers and your conversion rates would suffer.

What are your thoughts on this post? What other WooCommerce plugins do you think deserve a spot in this list? Let us know in the comments.

Creating and Editing Products on WooCommerce

January 29, 2015 By John Leave a Comment

Want to boost your online conversion and sales? Adding more products to an already existing store, with an already existing user base, is the way to go!

You are not as limited by shelf space as a physical store, so make use of this and add more products. It makes sense that the more you have to offer the more you can sell, right? But should you be adding them yourself?

Our Solution for Convenience

If you have a lot of products in your WooCommerce store, it may be difficult to manage it on your own.Tweaking the look of your product page, as well as creating variable and grouped products can be a little too complicated.

Adding and managing products can take a lot of your precious time. For one, you have to familiarize yourself with how the product categories, tags and attributes work. Then, all product data should be input.

If you own the business, wouldn’t you rather have someone else do all this while you focus on growing your business?

Here’s the thing – you should spend more time working ‘on’ rather than ‘in’ your business. It means doing developmental activities to improve your business, rather than routine activities that you do every day to keep the business going. Why? Read more about this post here.

Instead of staring at your WordPress dashboard and clicking on Add New Product day in and day out,use the time in planning, marketing, and following up on leads. Or, spend the time with your family.

Our team can help you out with your WooCommerce store so you can prioritize on your tasks that really matter. Leverage your time by hiring people who can create, add, and edit products on your online store – fast.

How to Outsource Creating Products for WooCommerce

October 14, 2015 By John Leave a Comment

Outsourcing tasks can make your e-commerce store more profitable. When managing a WooCommerce store, you will need to add new products regularly. Sure you can do it yourself but shouldn’t you be doing more important things? When you outsource creating products for WooCommerce, you save precious time.

outsource-creating-products

Before you outsource creating products for WooCommerce, you have to get your information organized. This ensures that the task will be done properly.

Here are a few things you should prepare before handing over any WooCommerce product creation task.

Documentation

You need to have a “workspace” where can you document all the elements of the products. This can be in project management software like Asana or Basecamp or a Google doc. We at Wooassist have created a spreadsheet template that you can use for handing over product creation tasks to a WooCommerce expert. You can download it here. Just fill it with the information on the products that you want to add to your WooCommerce store.

After you have the same contractor do this for you a few times and they are starting to get comfortable with your product range, they will be able to fill out a lot of this spreadsheet themselves. You will be able to just send them the links to suppliers and competitors sites and save you even more time.

Optimizing Images for Product Pages

When selling online, having good images is crucial, since people need to see what they are buying. Your contractor should have intermediate image editing skills.

optimizing-images

It is best practice have uniform image sizes on your site. When you set product image dimensions in WooCommerce settings, always keep your images to that same resolution and have this written clearly on your product creation documentation. Check out this post to learn more about optimizing images for web.

Writing Persuasive Copy

If you are at all serious about selling your products online, then you should have persuasive copy. We recommend outsourcing a professional copy writer. Putting a great deal of attention to writing persuasive copy for your products will help you convert more. For creating good product descriptions, you can check out our post on how to write persuasive copy.

persuasive-copy

You can give your product creation contractor a go at creating the copy and you might be pleasantly surprised, but more than likely you will need the help of a professional. Once you find a copy writer you are comfortable with, your product creation contractor can manage this specialist saving you time.

Different Types of Woocommerce Products

In WooCommerce, there are different product types: Simple, Grouped and Variable products. If you are not familiar with these product types, you can check out the WooCommerce Documentation for Managing Products.

Simple Products

Simple products include: product name, SKU, inventory, price, sale price (if you are offering a discount), category, product tags if any, long and short product description, and any specific instructions.

simple-product

Upload your images to a file sharing website and be sure to include the download link in the spreadsheet. Before you do that, make sure you use folders and appropriate file names for easy identification. There is a field where you can put the link in the spreadsheet we created. For sharing files, we recommend Dropbox or Google Drive.

Grouped Products

For Grouped Products, it becomes a bit more complex as this involves grouping two or more simple products. However, the information that you need to provide is no different from the information required for simple products.

grouped-products

If you are going to set the simple products as “not viewable individually”, you won’t need to provide images or descriptions for each simple product. You only need to state the product name, price and inventory for the simple products. All the other information should go to the grouped product.

If you are going to make each simple product viewable then it makes sense to outfit each simple product. And that means complete images, complete product descriptions and everything else necessary.

Variable Products

Variable Products deal with different product attributes. When sending information to your WooCommerce product expert, you should include the attributes for the product.

variable-products

For example, if you are selling shoes, you can have several product attributes such as size, color or type (laces or straps). That will result in multiple variations of the product. You need to provide information for each product variation. In some cases, different product varieties will have different prices. So make sure you include the price for each product variation. If you downloaded the spreadsheet we prepared, you just need to fill in the details.

Recommended Websites to Outsource Work

There are a lot of websites out there that provide freelance services and they have a lot of WooCommerce experts. We can recommend Elance and Upwork, formerly known as Odesk. And of course, we also highly recommend our team of WooCommerce experts at Wooassist. Our expert team from the Philippines can help you out with whatever problems you are having with your WooCommerce store.

Summary

This process takes time to develop. Clear documentation is the key, followed closely by developing a good relationship with a Woocommerce product expert. The better and more familiar your contractor is with your products the easier it will be for you to create the documentation.

It will take you longer to create these processes than to do the task yourself initially, but will save you hundreds of hours in the long run. I have 2 Woocommerce stores that sell physical products and I have not created a product myself for over 3 years. I plan on keeping it that way.