WooCommerce Product Table order form

If you want your WooCommerce store to succeed, you'll need to design it with the needs of your specific customers in mind. For instance, shops that regularly sell items in large quantities may require something beyond a traditional layout.

These stores can benefit from making the ordering process quicker and more efficient. Fortunately, this can easily be achieved by setting up a WooCommerce bulk order form. This feature will enable your customers to buy everything they need on one page, and add it all to their cart with a single click.

In this guide, we’ll explain how WooCommerce bulk order forms work and discuss what kinds of e-commerce stores they’re most suited to. Then we’ll walk you through how to set up and customize one. We'll use the WooCommerce Product Table plugin for selling multiple products in the same order form; or WooCommerce Bulk Variations to create bulk order forms listing the variations for a single product. Let’s get to work!

An introduction to WooCommerce bulk order forms

Most WooCommerce stores are set up so that customers must visit each product's individual page to buy it. This works well for shops where visitors are likely to purchase only one or two items per visit.

However, what if you’re running the type of shop where customers tend to buy many products or variations at once, in bulk? Forcing them to navigate to every product page will only slow them down. This leads to frustration and increases the risk that they won’t complete the bulk purchase.

That’s where a WooCommerce order form plugin comes in handy. This adds a one-page product table to your site, either listing one or many products like this:

 

Customers can see all your products and variations at once (or the ones you’ve selected to display). They'll have the important information about each item right at their fingertips. Most importantly, they can pick everything they want to buy on the form, and add their entire order to the cart simultaneously in bulk. It's the perfect way to allow bulk buying in WooCommerce.

A WooCommerce bulk order form can be a smart addition to your site. It streamlines the buying process, improving the user experience at the same time. As a side benefit, it also promotes all your products, and encourages visitors to buy more items.

Case study – Darren Bowen Photography’s WooCommerce bulk order form

Darren Bowen is a photographer who sells his photographs online at Darren Bowen Photography. On the website, customers can also buy a range of mugs and iPad smart covers all printed with Darren’s images.

Buying the mugs and iPad smart covers in bulk is easy because of the two WooCommerce bulk order forms powered by our WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

It's an easy to understand order process. The customer chooses the right quantities on the bulk order form, then uses the “add to cart” function. Once everything’s in the cart, the customer can check their order before proceeding to pay. From there, it's a fast and simple one-click single-page checkout.

Carry on reading to find out how you can add your own WooCommerce bulk order form.

How to know if your store needs a WooCommerce bulk order form

Of course, not every site needs a bulk order form. How do you decide if this feature is right for your WooCommerce store?

The short answer is that a bulk WooCommerce order form comes in handy for any shop where customers tend to make multiple purchases in the same order. The more likely your visitors are to buy in bulk, the more beneficial this type of order form can be.

Let’s look at a few examples of e-commerce sites that will find a WooCommerce bulk order form invaluable.

Wholesale stores

WooCommerce wholesale ordering pluginsIf you’re running a WooCommerce wholesale store then a bulk order form plugin is essential. Your customers are likely to know exactly what they’re looking for, and to buy dozens or hundreds of items at once. Requiring them to browse through separate product pages to choose their quantities and variations is hardly the optimal solution.

With a WooCommerce bulk order form, on the other hand, you can enable buyers to make selections quickly. This is a smart way to encourage them to keep coming back.

Further reading: Read our ultimate guide to WooCommerce wholesale plugins.

Office supply shops

Of course, some stores regularly sell items in bulk to individual customers. Office supply shops and similar sites are a perfect example. Customers will often want to purchase everything they need for their office in one convenient order. You need to make this bulk buying process easy for them.

The same applies to any store where the products offered are fairly simple and self-explanatory. Rather than listing out each type of printer paper on its own page, you can offer all the options on a one-page bulk WooCommerce order form.

Grocery and catering businesses

Bulk grocery stores are becoming more common, since few people purchase only one or two food items at once. These customers aren’t likely to need a lot of in-depth information about each product. A WooCommerce bulk order form plugin lets them check off everything on their shopping list, and move on:

A WooCommerce bulk order form for a restaurant.

The same goes for catering businesses, and some types of restaurants. Customers ordering food online will appreciate the option to select everything they want on a single page.

Further reading: How to create a WooCommerce restaurant ordering system.

Which is the best WooCommerce bulk order form plugin?

At this point, you probably know whether you’d like a WooCommerce bulk order form plugin for your online store. All that's left is to choose the best tool for the job.

You'll need one of the following plugins:

  1. WooCommerce Product Table - create bulk order forms listing multiple products. If you have variable products then the variations are either listed as dropdowns for the customer to choose from, or on separate rows of the table. Comes with search, sort and filters to help customers find what they want more quickly.
  2. WooCommerce Bulk Variations - create a bulk order form listing the variations for a specific product. This normally appears on the single product page, but you can list variations anywhere on your site.

As a reminder, here's what the two options look like:

Both bulk order form plugins let you list products or variations on your WordPress site, and customize it fully. They are 100% integrated with WooCommerce, and are excellent tools for creating a bulk order form.

How to design an effective WooCommerce bulk order form (in 4 steps)

Fortunately, both plugins are very easy to use and customize. Now, we'll take a look at how you can use each one to set up your own WooCommerce bulk order form.

  1. WooCommerce Product Table instructions
  2. WooCommerce Bulk Variations instructions

#1. WooCommerce Product Table setup guide

The following steps will walk you through the process of creating and customizing a WC bulk order form with WooCommerce Product Table. Let’s start with the basics!

Step 1: Install and activate the plugin

The first thing you’ll want to do is purchase and install the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. You can do this on an existing or new WP site. Just make sure you have WooCommerce installed, and you’ve added all the products you want to display.

After that, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings in your WordPress Dashboard. Choose the tab labeled Products, and click on the new Product tables section:

The WooCommerce Product Table settings.

Paste in the license key you received when you purchased the plugin. Then select Save changes at the bottom of the page. This is essential for ensuring that all features will work correctly.

Step 2: Customize your bulk order form settings

At this point, you can start customizing your WooCommerce bulk order form. There are a lot of options you can configure. To get you started, we’ll run through a few of the most important settings to consider when setting up a bulk order form.

Your first stop should probably be the Columns field:

The WooCommerce Product Table settings for columns.

Here, you can determine exactly what information will be displayed in your WooCommerce bulk order form. You can show images, descriptions, categories, and much more. Don’t forget to include an Add to Cart button!

The next two options are also important:

The WooCommerce Product Table settings for cart buttons.

By selecting the Quantity selectors checkbox, you enable customers to easily purchase more than one of the same item. Then, in the Add to cart button drop-down menu, choose the Checkbox or Button and checkbox option. This is crucial, since it will let customers check off all the items they want and add them to their cart with one click (using a handy button at the top of the order form).

Next, it’s a good idea to change the default setting under Product variations:

The WooCommerce Product Table settings for variations.

Customers shouldn’t have to visit individual product pages to see all of an item’s variations. Instead, you can display product options (such as colors or sizes) within your Woo bulk order form, either as a dropdown list or on separate lines.

Just below, you may want to enable the Filter dropdowns option:

The WooCommerce Product Table settings for filters.

Use the filter options to let customers filter the order form so that it only displays items meeting a certain criteria (such as products in a particular category, if your table contains a category column).

After that, scroll down a bit and look for the Lazy load option:

The WooCommerce Product Table settings for lazy loading.

If you have hundreds or thousands of products, your bulk order form can take a while to fully load. By selecting this checkbox, you’ll speed up the process so customers don’t have to wait.

Near the bottom of the page, you’ll find a setting called Show links:

The WooCommerce Product Table settings for links.

By default, certain columns in your bulk order form will display as links to the individual product pages. However, you may want to disable some or all of those links. That way, you keep customers on the bulk order form page throughout the entire buying process.

Step 3: Generate your WooCommerce bulk order form

When you’re done tweaking the product table settings, don’t forget to save your changes. Then, you’re ready to actually create your bulk order form.

Open up or create a page, and check out the icons at the top of the WordPress editor:

Adding a WooCommerce bulk order form in the WordPress editor.

The last option is called Toggle Toolbar. Select that, and a new row of icons will appear. Click on the one labeled Insert Product Table:

Adding the WooCommerce Product Table shortcode in the WordPress editor.

This will place a shortcode on the page, which will pull all the product table settings you chose and generate your order form. You can view it on the front end using the Preview button:

An example of a customized WooCommerce bulk order form.

If you want to make any additional changes to your WooCommerce bulk order form, go back to the product table settings page and alter whatever you like. Your changes will automatically be applied to your existing order form.

By default, all of your WooCommerce products will appear in the bulk order form. You can change this, however, if you want to display particular categories or specific items. This is a good idea if you want to create more than one bulk order form, each listing different WooCommerce products.

When your WooCommerce bulk order form is complete, simply Publish the page to make it live on your site! Customers will now be able to use it to make bulk purchases. Before wrapping up, however, let’s look at a few more optional features you can add.

Step 4: Add ‘extras’ to your WooCommerce bulk order form

In this final step, we want to present a few extra features you can use to enhance your WooCommerce bulk order form. While these options aren't required, they can be a valuable addition.

Add product quick view lightboxes

WooCommerce Quick View Lightbox with Product Variations

A WooCommerce bulk order form is a brilliant way to create one-page shopping. But what if you want a way to display more information without taking customers to a separate page? What happens if you have too many variations or product options to fit neatly into the order form?

WooCommerce Product Table Quick View Magnifying Glass
Add quick view buttons or links to the bulk order form.

The answer is to use WooCommerce Product Table with its sister plugin, WooCommerce Quick View Pro. This lets customers view extra product information in a popup lightbox window. It's a great option because customers are not taken to a separate page. When they close the lightbox (either by closing it manually or adding the product to their cart), they remain on the bulk order form. This encourages them to buy more and more from the order form, increasing your average order value.

The quick view plugin has lots of options so that you can control how customers can access extra information from the bulk order form:

  • Choose whether to open the quick view by clicking on the product image, name or a dedicated quick view button.
  • Rename the quick view button to anything you like, e.g. 'Configure', 'View More Images' or 'Choose Options'.
  • Show or hide the quick view icon.
  • Choose whether to display the product image gallery in the lightbox, and/or product information and purchase details.
  • Choose exactly which product data to include in the lightbox.

Upsell with extra product options

As we’ve discussed, you can easily display product variations in your bulk order form. However, what if you also want to offer add-ons to specific items? To do this, you can purchase the Product Options add-on extension for WooCommerce:

This extension is simple to use, and gives you more flexibility in what you can let customers buy using your bulk order form. Here's an example of how the add-on fields appear in the bulk order form:

WooCommerce custom product fields in table

Show the cart contents on the bulk order form

If your bulk order form page has a sidebar, it can also be a nice touch to display the customer’s cart contents and subtotal there. You can do this easily in WooCommerce by navigating to Appearance → Widgets in your dashboard, and adding the Cart widget over to your sidebar.

Now, your customers will be able to see the contents of their carts without leaving the order form page:

A bulk order form and WooCommerce cart widget.

#2. WooCommerce Bulk Variations setup guide

Next, we'll look at how to create bulk order forms for your variations with WooCommerce Bulk Variations. As we saw earlier, this plugin lists the variations for a specific product in a variations grid or matrix.

WooCommerce Bulk Variations lets customers view and purchase variations in bulk. This is the easiest way to sell more variations and increase sales. It also saves you time by letting you add and edit variations in bulk.

Customers can use quantity selectors next to each variation to quickly add multiple product variations to their cart. You can use the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin as either a bulk order form or a price matrix.

With WooCommerce Bulk Variations, you can display products that have either one or two attributes used for variations. The plugin automatically lists your variations in a matrix-style grid format. For example, if you sell t-shirts and have Size and Color as attributes, your bulk variations matrix might look something like this:

WooCommerce Bulk Variations grid

The bulk variations order form has a quantity box for each variation. This makes it easy for customers to quickly add products to cart and proceed to checkout. The best part is that customers won't have to select each variation individually. This speeds up the purchasing user flow.

Most people add these to the single product page, so I'll show you how to do that.

Step 1: Install WooCommerce Bulk Variations

  1. Log into the WordPress admin and install the WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin.
  2. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Bulk variations and activate your license key from the order confirmation email.
  3. Choose the default settings for your bulk variation forms, and whether or not you want to enable them automatically.
WooCommerce Bulk Variations settings page

Step 2: Add bulk variation order forms

If you used the option on the settings page to enable the bulk variations form for each product automatically, then you can skip this step! Alternatively, you can enable it for specific products only by going to the Add/Edit product page.

Product with 1 or 2 attributes which are used for variations will have an extra 'Bulk variations' tab in the 'Product Data' section of the page:

WooCommerce Bulk Variations product page tab

You can use this to configure the variations grid for each product individually.

If you want to display the bulk variations order forms elsewhere, then you can do this using a shortcode.

Step 3: View the variations grid

Finally, view the product page and you will see the variations listed in a beautiful bulk order form like this:

WooCommerce Bulk Variations grid

Bonus tips

You can use the following tips to enhance your bulk variations forms whether you're using WooCommerce Product Table or WooCommerce Bulk Variations.

Use minimum quantities to force customers to buy in bulk

WooCommerce Quantity Manager Plugin

So far, we've looked at 2 ways to create a WooCommerce bulk order form which makes it easy for customers to buy in bulk. However, we haven't done anything which actually forces customers to purchase bulk quantities. They can still place small orders if they wish to do so.

That's why it's important to set some WooCommerce minimum quantity rules in your store. These prevent customers from placing low quantity or low value orders. As a result, you create a bulk-only store and ensure that every order is profitable.

To do this, you need to use WooCommerce Product Table or WooCommerce Bulk Variations with the WooCommerce Quantity Manager plugin. This lets you set a range of minimum quantity rules to your store:

  • Add a minimum order quantity for the entire cart.
  • Set minimum quantities for specific categories, products or even individual variations.
  • Specify minimum values that the customer must spend before they can complete their order. Again, this can be set for the entire order or per category, product or variation.

Get more sales with quantity-based bulk discounts

WordPress bulk discounts plugin
Research into buying psychology has proven that customers buy larger quantities if they believe they're getting better value. This fits perfectly with a bulk WooCommerce order form.

Use your bulk order form with the official WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing plugin. Set up quantity discounts to reward customers for buying in bulk. It's a great way to increase your revenue from the same number of customers!

Speed up the bulk ordering process by skipping the cart page

Finally, you can speed up the buying process even further by automatically directing customers to their cart when a product is added. This option is found under WooCommerce → Settings → Products. Just check the box next to Redirect to the cart page after successful addition:

The WooCommerce Add to Cart settings.

You can even use a dedicated plugin to skip the cart completely, and move customers directly to the checkout page. Customers who order in bulk are usually busy people, after all. The quicker you can make the buying process, the better their experience will be.

Create a bulk WooCommerce order form today!

If you're only selling a handful of items, then it makes sense to feature them on separate pages. However, if you're moving a lot of products on a daily basis, then you need a better way to display them. For shop owners, this means using a WooCommerce bulk order form pluign.

Choose whichever plugin is best for your store:

Both plugins come with full support and a no-risk 30-day money back guarantee. They only take a few minutes to set up, so install your chosen plugin and start selling in bulk today!

Do you have any questions about how to build the perfect WooCommerce bulk order form? Let us know in the comments section below!

Image credit: Wikipedia.

Do you need to create a WooCommerce grid / list view for your store? Keep reading to learn how to use the bestselling WooCommerce Product Table plugin to let customers choose between a grid or list view of your products. This can make your store more user-friendly and improve your conversion rate.

WooCommerce Product Table order form

I’ll also provide full step-by-step instructions on how to create your very own WooCommerce grid/list view toggle.

Why do I need a WooCommerce grid/list view plugin?

Default layout without WooCommerce gridWhen you create a fresh WordPress/WooCommerce install and add a theme, your store will come with some fairly standard built-in layouts. Your products will be listed in a default grid layout with approx. 3 products on each row, large product images, and some basic data such as name and price. There will be an add to cart button but no extras such as quantity arrows or variation dropdowns. Each product will take up quite a bit of the page because of the large images and extra space between each row.

Some types of product lend themselves perfect to this default grid layout. However, others don’t sell well in this way.

When you set up WooCommerce, it’s important to think about the best way to present the types of products you’re actually selling. Don’t just stick with the grid that comes with your WordPress theme.

Many types of products sell better when listed in a tabular WooCommerce list view. The data is listed in a much more structured way, with each product on its own row of table, and multiple columns of information about each product.

Other products work well in either format, but it's nice to give customers a choice of how to view products.

Keep reading to learn how to display products in a table-based list format; and also how to add a grid/list view toggle so that customers can switch between the two views.

You may also like: How to create a WooCommerce product list view with extra columns of data.

Benefits of a product grid or list view

WooCommerce grid list view plugin

While you’re reading this, I expect that you’ve already started thinking of ways a WooCommerce grid or list view can boost your sales. Here are some of the main reasons:

More products per page

A WooCommerce list view plugin lists products in a way that takes up significantly less space per product. This means that customers can see more products at a time. They don’t have to scroll as much or click to multiple pages. This helps them to find and buy products more quickly, boosting your conversion rate.

More product data directly in the list view

When you discover that a list view plugin uses less space per product, you might assume that it contains less information about each product. Surprisingly, the opposite is actually true!

By listing products in a space-saving table, each product takes up a small amount of space. But the extra columns let you display extra product data, all within the table view.

You can see how this works in the screenshots below. As you can see, the default store layout displays just 3 products in the same space as the WooCommerce list view shows 6! Yet the table layout contains columns for extra data, quantity and variation options which aren’t available in the basic layout. It’s a win-win, for both you and your customers!

WooCommerce grid product order form layout
Left: Grid view. Right: List view.

Order form functionality

When you use WooCommerce Product Table to create a list view, you can just list products with links to the single product page. If you prefer, you can even disable the links and use it to create a read-only product catalog.

But for many stores, the best way to grow your sales is to use the product list view to use it as a one-page WooCommerce order form. An order form layout puts ALL the information that customers need to buy on a single page. There are extra columns of information to allow customers to make buying decisions. And once they’ve chosen, they can quickly select the products they require, choose variation options and quantities, and add them to the cart.

By adding these extra purchasing elements, you can transform a basic product list view into a fully functional WooCommerce order form. The entire ordering process is kept on a single page, which significantly speeds up the buying process. And research shows that the quicker the buying process, the more sales you’ll get!

Related: 10 ways a product table view can improve your WooCommerce conversion rate.

What types of products sell better in a list or grid layout?

Like I said, some products sell best in a list view, while others benefit from having a grid view too. You need to think about the types of products on your store. Decide which layout will best boost your sales - or whether it's best to let customers toggle between a grid/list view.

Here are some examples of products that work well when listed in a WooCommerce table view:

  • Non-visual products such as car parts - Lots of WooCommerce stores sell products where data is more important than what the product looks like. If you’re selling something like car parts where looks aren’t important, then it’s much better to list products in a compact list view. Sure, you might have a small thumbnail image of each product (although this isn’t essential). But you shouldn’t use the huge images that come with the standard grid layout.
  • Industry-specific products such as restaurant foods - Some types of product sell best when displayed in a specific way, based on customer expectations. For example, a restaurant online ordering system is most effective when the foods are presented in a way that mimics the layout of a printed restaurant menu. The best way to achieve this is via a web page with separate product tables for starters, main courses and desserts, with quick tick boxes for customers to select foods and order online.
  • All wholesale products - If you’re building a WooCommerce wholesale store, then a product list view will nearly always be better than the standard layout. That’s because by definition, wholesale users are regular customers and are already familiar with your products. They don’t need a grid of large pictures to help them make buying decisions. Instead, they need factual information and a fast buying process. A WooCommerce wholesale order form listing your products is exactly what trade users need.

What products aren't suited to a WooCommerce grid/list view plugin?

I would say that clothes and furniture are examples of products that aren't suited to a WooCommerce grid/list plugin. For something like clothes or furniture, customers need to see big images of each product. After all, they’re buying based on what the product looks like!

Are your products similar to the examples listed above, where space and factual information are the priority. Or are they more like clothes or furniture, where large images are what matters?

Perhaps you have some products that you’d like to list in a tabular grid layout, and others where you’d prefer the built-in store layouts. Maybe you want to let customers choose between a grid/list view of your products. That’s absolutely fine, as you can use both in different parts of your store - or on the same page, with an option to toggle between the grid/list.

Keep reading to learn how to set up either option.

How to create a WooCommerce list view

By now, you should have decided whether your products will sell well in a table-based list view - either as the only way to present your products, or with a toggle to switch between the grid/list layout. Next, I’ll tell you how to use the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to create a list view for some or all of your products. After that, you'll learn how to let customers choose between both layouts.

  1. First, get WooCommerce Product Table and install it on your WordPress site.
  2. Next, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Product tables. Add your license key (you’ll find this in your confirmation email). Then look through all the settings and choose the default options for your product tables. Use the knowledge base links for guidance on how to choose which columns of data to include in the product grid view, add filters above the table, etc.
  3. Next, create a new page where you want to display products in a WooCommerce list view.
  4. Add a shortcode to your page: [product_table]
  5. If you want to list all your products on a single page, skip to step 6. To list specific products only in the table, use these instructions to select products based on their category, tag or other data.
  6. Finally, publish and View the page.

You’ll see your products beautifully displayed in a WooCommerce product list view with the options you selected on the plugin settings page. Read through the full list of product table options and tweak them until you’re completely happy.

Can I import products to the list view?

As you can see, it’s pretty easy to list your existing WooCommerce products in a grid/list view. The neat thing is that WooCommerce Product Table takes the products already in the WordPress database and instantly lists them in a table layout. No extra data entry required.

This means that if you haven’t already added your products, you can import them using the built-in WordPress/WooCommerce importer or any CSV import plugin. This is a handy way to bulk import products to your site.

How to add a product list view to the main shop and category pages

In the above instructions, I told you how to list products in a table view on any page. This is a handy way to list some products in a table, while still using the built-in WooCommerce grid for other products.

If you prefer, you can add the product table layout directly to the template files in your theme. This will replace the standard layout throughout your store. For example, it changes the layout on the main WooCommerce shop page, product category archives, etc. The benefit is that the WooCommerce list view will be used whenever someone accesses any pages in your store. You don’t have to add any shortcodes to your site or specify which products to list on each page.

The method for doing this is slightly more technical, as you actually have to modify template files in your theme. There are instructions on how to do this in the plugin knowledge base.

Let customers toggle between the grid/list view

So far, we've looked at how to replace the standard grid layout with a product list view.

If you'd rather let customers toggle between the product grid/list view, then that's fine. Simply follow the instructions in this knowledge base article to add these links to your shop and category pages.

Add quick view to the grid/list of WooCommerce products

WooCommerce Quick View Plugin Build Your Own Product

Sometimes, you'll find that you want to show extra information about each product but don't want to take shoppers away from the grid/list view. You might also have too many variations to list directly in the grid of products. This is a valid concern, because customers will buy more from you if they remain on the list of products and don't get lost on individual product pages.

WooCommerce Product Table Quick View Magnifying GlassThe solution is to use WooCommerce Product Table with WooCommerce Quick View Pro. This adds user-friendly 'quick view' buttons to the list of products, or to the default product grid. Customers can click on these to view extra product images, more information and even choose variations and add to the cart from a quick view lightbox.

It's the perfect compromise because you can show information that wouldn't fit in the product table; without taking customers to a separate page.

Get WooCommerce Quick View

Where to get the plugin

A WooCommerce grid/list view plugin like WooCommerce Product Table isn’t for everyone. Consider the type of products in your store, and whether displaying them in this layout will improve customer experience.

For less visual products, listing items in a compact table layout with extra information can make a huge difference to sales. Get the plugin, follow the instructions to set it up, and improve your store layouts today.

 

WooCommerce order form plugin demo

If you want your WooCommerce store to succeed, it’s important to make the buying process as simple as possible. The easier it is for visitors to make a purchase, the quicker they’ll open their wallets. This means you need to find a way to streamline their experience.

One of the best solutions is to add a quick WooCommerce quick order form. Instead of visiting individual product pages, customers will be able to select the products they want and add them to their WooCommerce cart from one convenient location. What’s more, you can have customization options for your order form to make it as user-friendly as possible.

In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll explain why you might need a WooCommerce quick order form, and talk about choosing the right tool for the job. Then we’ll show you how to create a WooCommerce quick order form using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. Let’s take a look!

Demo: See a quick WooCommerce order form in action!

What is a WooCommerce Quick Order Form (and might you need one)?

Most WooCommerce stores provide dedicated lists or galleries where customers can see many items at once. They also display each product on its own page. This enables visitors to easily compare products, and find out more information about each one. In general, however, people are only able to purchase items one at a time. At most, they might be able to add products to the cart individually from the shop pages and category pages, but there's no way to choose quantities or specific variations.

This can be inconvenient for customers who want to buy multiple items at once. Fortunately, you can make their lives easier by creating a quick WooCommerce order form. This is simply a table listing out some or all of your products. Visitors can select all the products they want from the WooCommerce quick order form, and add them to the cart:

An example of a WooCommerce quick order form.

The Benefits of Adding a Quick WooCommerce Order Form

Aside from making the order process quicker and more streamlined, adding a quick WooCommerce order form provides a number of other benefits. For example:

  • Customers will be able to see lots of products at a glance.
  • It becomes very easy for people to compare similar products.
  • You’ll be using space more efficiently.

As with any feature, certain types of sites will benefit from implementing a WooCommerce quick order form more than others. This includes stores with lots of similar products, as well as those selling ‘simple’ products that can be understood at a glance (such as clothing and decorative items). A WooCommerce quick order the one-page shop will be handy if your customer base browses your store from mobile devices.

If you do decide to try out a quick order form on your WooCommerce site, you’ll find that the process is quite simple. All you need is the right WooCommerce quick order plugin!

How to choose a WooCommerce quick order form plugin

Since this is a very specific feature, you’ll need exactly the right WordPress order form plugin to implement it. Along with the basic criteria you should use when choosing any WooCommerce quick order plugin, you’ll want to look for a tool that:

  • Is customizable, so you can create a WooCommerce quick order form suited to your exact needs.
  • Offers filtering and sorting features, so customers can find what they want quickly.
  • Includes support for custom fields and taxonomies, so you can organize products however you’d like.
  • Lets customers select variations and quantities right from the order form, without needing to visit the actual product pages.
  • Is fully responsive on mobile devices.

Fortunately, our WooCommerce Product Table plugin includes all of these features and more:

This tool enables you to quickly build a product list or order form that is highly customizable. Plus, it’s designed to be used alongside WooCommerce, so customers will be able to order products right through the form.

See a WooCommerce Product Table quick order form in action!

With WooCommerce Product Table, you can easily build a one-stop shop, or create order form to be used alongside more traditional store pages. Let’s talk about how to get started now.

How to create a WooCommerce quick order form (in 3 steps)

The first thing you’ll want to do is purchase and install the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. Don’t forget to activate your license key afterward.

If you haven’t already installed and activated WooCommerce, you’ll need to do that as well. You’ll also want to ensure that you’ve created all the products you want to include in your quick order form. Then, you’re ready to begin!

Step 1: Create a quick order form page

To start building your quick order form, first, create a new page and give it a name.

  1. The next step depends on whether you're using the Classic Editor or Gutenberg:
    • Classic Editor - Click the 'Insert Product Table' toolbar button. This adds a [product_table] shortcode to the page.
      toolbar button
    • Gutenberg - Add the [product_table] shortcode to a 'Shortcode' block.

The shortcode tells the page to display your product table and pulls in the default options from the WordPress order form plugin settings page. (If you haven't configured the settings yet, don't worry - we'll do this next.)  By default, the WooCommerce quick order form plugin will display all your products, along with a name, description, price, and Add to Cart button for each one. It will also link the title to the product single page:

A basic WooCommerce quick order form.

You could stop here. However, chances are you’ll want to customize exactly what information is displayed and how.

Save this page, and navigate to WooCommerce > Settings. Select the Products tab, and then the Product tables subsection. Here, you can configure exactly how your product table will work:

The Product tables settings page.

The first thing you'll probably want to do is decide what information should be included in your table. You can do this under Default options > Columns:

Configuring columns for your quick order form.

Creating Customized Columns in WordPress Order Form Plugin

Simply list out all the columns you want to include, separating them with commas. You can take a look at the WordPress order form plugin's documentation to see all the columns you can add and what names to use. You have a lot of options, including things like SKU and stock status. Don't forget to hit Save changes at the bottom of the page when you're done.

If you go back to your quick order form page now and preview it, you'll see your newly-organized table. Here's a screenshot of what it might look like:

A WooCommerce quick order form with images.

Customers will be able to add products to their carts and use the Ajax search form to find specific products.

This is a great start. However, let’s talk about some ways you can customize your WooCommerce quick order form more fully.

Step 2: Customize your quick WooCommerce order form

If you want your quick order form WooCommerce to be user-friendly, there are a few additional features to consider and tweaks that you can make. First, you’ll want to enable customers to select product variations right from the order form. In other words, if you offer the same shirt in red, green, and yellow, you need to let people easily pick the version they want.

In the Product tables settings menu, go to Default options > Product variations:

Customizing your quick order form to include product variations.

If you choose Show as dropdown list, all relevant products will now display dropdown menus that show their variations:

A WooCommerce quick order form with drop-down menus.

You could also choose the Show as separate rows option instead. This will display each variation on its own row within the table.

Now, what if you want to let customers select multiple items and add them all to the cart at once? Still, under Default options, look for Add to cart button:

Settings for the add to cart button.

In this dropdown menu, select Button and checkbox. This will make a simple checkbox appear next to each Add to Cart button. Customers will now be able to select all the products they want and add them to the cart simultaneously. This is a great option for a WooCommerce bulk order form or WooCommerce wholesale store order form.

I'd definitely recommend using add to cart checkboxes in a WooCommerce quick order form, either with or without the individual add to cart buttons.

You can also choose how to handle variable products in this section.

A WooCommerce quick order form with check boxes.

Next, under Lazy load in the settings, you'll see a checkbox labeled Load products after the page has loaded:

Activating the lazy load option for your quick order form.

Improving Table Loading Speed for Better Customer Experience

If your table is displaying a lot of products, customers may experience slow loading times while waiting for everything to show up. Enabling this option can help avoid performance issues, although it does come with a few limitations worth reading up on. Another option is to use pagination to limit the number of products that are displayed at one time.

Finally, you can use the Table controls section to add filters and search options, including an option to let shoppers filter by product categories.

At this point, your WooCommerce quick order form is coming along nicely! You can continue to customize it to meet your exact needs, making whatever changes you'd like in the settings.

How to show specific products in the WooCommerce quick order form

If you want to show specific products in the order form instead of your whole catalog, then there are also shortcode options that let you display products based on category, tag, etc. Add these options directly to the [product_table] shortcode. You can read about them in the plugin knowledge base.

How to add a quick view to the quick order form

By creating a quick WooCommerce order form with a product table layout, customers can quickly click multiple products and add them all to the cart at once. This is ideal for selling simple products, or products with a small number of variations. But what if you have a large number of variations per product?

Obviously, you don't want to send customers to a separate page to buy each product. That defeats the purpose of a quick order form!

WooCommerce Product Table Quick View Magnifying Glass
Add quick view buttons or links to your WooCommerce quick order form.

The solution is to add quick view buttons to your WooCommerce order form. You can do this with the WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin, which is designed to work with WooCommerce Product Table.

Install the plugin and use the settings page to choose what information to display in the quick view lightbox. Next, add a quick-view column to your list of product table columns.

This will add quick view buttons to the table (which you can rename to anything you like on the Quick View plugin settings page). Customers can click these buttons to view extra product information, product image gallery, and/or purchase options in a lightbox popup.

After adding the product to the cart, the lightbox closes and the customer remains at the same point on the quick order form, where they can continue adding more and more products to their cart.

Step 3: Optimize the checkout process

Before we wrap up, there’s one more element to consider. Along with optimizing your quick order form WooCommerce so that it’s user-friendly, you’ll want to do everything you can to speed up the ordering process. The more convenient it is to buy products, after all, the more likely customers will be to complete their purchases.

This step involves using a few additional tools. Here are the two most important features you’ll want to consider implementing:

  • Redirect users to the cart page after selecting one or more products. This encourages customers to buy right away and can be done easily using a WooCommerce setting and the free Redirection plugin.
  • Add more payment gateways to your e-commerce store. The more payment options you provide, the larger your potential customer base will be. WooCommerce itself offers a variety of ways to add new payment gateways.

At this point, take a moment to sit back and admire your handiwork. You have a fully-functioning quick order form WooCommerce that’s informative and easy to use – and the process of purchasing products through it couldn’t be simpler!

Conclusion

It’s important to design your WooCommerce store to provide the best user experience possible for your customers. This means making it simple for them to see what products you offer, select the ones they want, and get right to the checkout screen. To do this, you can create a WooCommerce quick order form – either as a one-stop WooCommerce shop or to supplement your existing product pages. By using the Woo quick order table view, your customers will be able to select and buy the items they are after fast and without fuss.

Fortunately, the WooCommerce Product Table plugin makes this task incredibly easy. You’ll just need to:

  1. Create order form page.
  2. Customize your order form.
  3. Optimize the checkout process.

Do you have any questions about how to set up your WooCommerce quick order plugin? Ask us anything in the comments section below!

If you're looking for a way to increase sales on your WordPress e-commerce website, it's time to consider a bulk add to cart WooCommerce plugin.

Customers can buy more quickly by adding multiple products to the cart at once. They simply tick a checkbox next to each product and click a button to add them all to the cart:

It's the perfect way to increase your WooCommerce store's conversions.

Today, I'm going to tell you how to use our popular WooCommerce Product Table plugin to add bulk add to cart buttons in WooCommerce.

Let's get started!

What is the bulk add to cart WooCommerce plugin?

WooCommerce Product Table is our bestselling WordPress plugin and works perfectly as a bulk add to cart plugin.

It lists products in a customizable table layout, with a tick box next to each item. There will be an 'Add Selected to Cart' button above and/or below your product tables.

You can create a single product table listing all your products with multiple add to cart buttons. Or you can create tables listing specific products only (e.g. by category). There are options to add tables anywhere on your site, or to replace the default layouts on the main Woo shop and category pages.

You can configure pretty much any aspect of your product tables. For example, you can choose which columns of product data display in the table. You can choose whether or not to show quantity selectors and product variations in the table. It's even possible to control how the table and quick add to cart buttons behave responsively on mobiles and tablets.

Here are just a few of the benefits of using bulk add to cart buttons:

  • Help site users find and add products to cart faster
  • Make it easier to add multiple products to cart
  • Potentially increase conversion rate
  • Simplify and streamline the buying process

How to add bulk add to cart buttons in WooCommerce

  1. First, get WooCommerce Product Table and install it on your WP website. I'm assuming that you've already got a website with WooCommerce setup and some products.
  2. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Product Table.
  3. Next, paste your license key from the confirmation email, and choose the default settings for your product tables. (You can override these for each individual table if needed.)
  4. WooCommerce add multiple products to cart pluginFor the 'Add to Cart button' setting, choose the 'Checkbox only' style to display a multiple add to cart checkbox next to each product. Choose 'Button & checkbox' if you want a add to cart button AND bulk tick boxes.
  5. Now it's time to add 1 or more product tables. There are 2 ways to do this:
    1. Create a page where you want to add a product table. Add the shortcode [product_table] to the page. Enter any further product table options to the shortcode.
    2. If you want to use product tables directly on the main WooCommerce shop page, follow the instructions in the knowledge base to add the product table layout directly to your theme's template file.
  6. Finally, view the page and you'll see your tables with WC bulk add to cart checkboxes next to each product.

Get WooCommerce Product Table

Get the most out of quick add to cart options

WooCommerce quick add to cart plugin with variations

The whole point of a bulk add to cart Woo plugin is to make it quicker for people to buy from you. With that in mind, I'll give you some tips on how to encourage customers to add multiple products to the cart. Use these to get more sales by encouraging each customer to buy more products.

Are customers likely to add multiple products to the cart?

First, you need to decide whether the products you sell will benefit from quick buy options such as a bulk add to cart WooCommerce plugin. Multi-select checkboxes are a major asset to many WooCommerce stores (including wholesale WooCommerce stores). However, they're not for everyone.

Customers are more likely to add multiple products to the cart when you're selling relatively small, low-cost items; or products that are designed to be used together.

Examples of products that benefit from quick add to cart checkboxes

Low cost products

Low cost products sell better with a bulk add to cart WooCommerce plugin. This applies to any store where each product isn't a major buying decision with low value products. For example, stationery, cosmetics and make-up, food and drink, gifts and toys.

Subtle improvements like quick buy checkboxes can convince them to buy more. Further encourage this with postage discounts for multiple items, or quantity-based bulk discounts.

Make sure your customers know they can save money, and use a bulk add to cart WooCommerce plugin to make it quick and easy.

Build a box

Build Your Own Product Website WooCommerce

WooCommerce Product Table is popular for selling build-your-own products such as gift hampers or wine boxes.

The box contents are listed in a table. Customers use the quick add to cart buttons to bulk select the box contents. Once they've ticked the required items, they add all selected products to the cart at once.

Restaurant order form
A WooCommerce bulk order form for a restaurant.

Many restaurants use WooCommerce Product Table as an online restaurant food ordering system.

They add their restaurant menu to a single page, with a separate product table for each section (e.g. starters, mains, sides). Each product table has bulk add to cart buttons with an 'Add Selected to Cart' button.

Customers tick all the food options from one table, add them to the cart in a single click, and then choose items from the next table. This is much quicker than clicking individual add to cart buttons for every product.

Related products and sets

If you're selling multiple products designed to be used together, then WooCommerce bulk add to cart buttons will make the process more user-friendly. Perhaps you're selling kitchen units where customers choose their own combination from a set of items such as worktops, cabinets and doors.

Customers need to plan their entire purchase before adding to the cart. When they're ready to order, WooCommerce bulk buy checkboxes make it much quicker to buy.

Case study - using a WooCommerce add to cart plugin to sell items in bulk

Darren Bowen Photography sells a range of products printed with Darren’s unique artwork. To help customers quickly buy multiple products there are two bulk ordering pages powered by WooCommerce Product Table. One for mugs and the other for iPad smart covers.

To buy multiple items, you simply select the quantities and use the “add to cart” function or check the “buy it” box. Once you’ve put everything you need in the cart, you can check your order before making your payment. And to keep things simple, there's an easy to use one-click checkout system.

Keep reading to learn how to add similar WooCommerce bulk order forms to your own site.

Which WooCommerce products don't need bulk add to cart buttons?

As you can see, many types of product will sell best with a plugin that provides quick buy options. However, a bulk add to cart WooCommerce plugin isn't going to help you with major purchases such as selling furniture online. If each purchase is a major decision for the customer, then adding quick check boxes won't really encourage them to buy more.

Think about whether the types of product in your store lend themselves to a quick bulk add to cart format.

Show important buying information in the table

There's no point having a WooCommerce bulk add to cart plugin if customers still need to visit the single product page before they buy. The whole purpose of the quick add to cart checkboxes is to allow customers to add multiple products directly form the main shop or product listings page.

This means that your WooCommerce product tables need to contain all the information that is needed to make purchasing decisions. You can do this by choosing which columns appear in the product table.

Joseph uses the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to include a quantity field in his product table:

Exactly What I Have Been Looking For
This plugin is absolutely fantastic. I have been looking for a plugin just like this for a while now. I so glad I discovered this one. I wanted a quick, nice way to have my many products listed in a table with a quantity field and an add to cart button. This plugin was the answer. I love the way you can customize the table to include only the columns you want and how you can order the table by a specific column. I would totally recommend this plugin.

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin supports all the standard product data that WooCommerce stores. Read the full list of available columns and choose your columns wisely. Add the product data that will actively encourage customers to buy without clicking elsewhere. You can even add extra data such as custom fields and taxonomies. These are ideal for adding any further information or downloadable documents that will help customers to reach a quick buying decision.

Add a quantity picker and variations

Customers will only use the plugin's bulk add to cart checkboxes if they can select product options directly from the product table view. This means that you need to make these options available alongside the quick add to cart buttons. This includes:

  • Activate the quantity selector on the WooCommerce Product Table plugin settings page. This lets customers choose a quantity before selecting the product and adding it to the cart.
  • Use one of the options to show variable products in the product table. You can show product variations as dropdown lists next to the bulk add to cart boxes. Alternatively, each variation can have its own row in the product table with a separate add to cart checkbox for each one.
  • If you're using the WooCommerce Product Options plugin with WooCommerce Product Table, then extra product options will appear next to the bulk add to cart check boxes. These two plugins work perfectly together, so this is a good way to add extra product options if variable products aren't right for you. For example, you can add extra options as checkboxes and radio buttons, or even add text fields where customers can add a personal message for each product. All this works directly on the product listing page, so customers can choose their options and add multiple products to the cart.

Help customers find products faster

Built-in options

Bulk add to cart buttons are just one way to speed up the buying process in WooCommerce. It works because products become more visible, faster. The WooCommerce Product Table plugin comes with plenty of features to help customers find products more easily. All these improvements work together to truly improve your sales and increase conversions.

For example, add filter dropdowns or filter widgets to let customers quickly refine the list of products. They can choose their filters, view a list of products they're interested in, tick the boxes and add multiple products to the cart in bulk. Keyword search above the product table offers another way to do this.

Performance and page load time is also important. If you have lots of products, you can use the lazy load option to load fewer products at a time. Lazy load lets you list hundreds or even thousands of products in a table. It minimizes load time and avoids potential speed and performance issues.

Advanced filtering plugin

WooCommerce Product Filters Table Integration

For stores that need bulk add to cart options with more advanced filtering, you can use WooCommerce Product Table with its sister plugin - WooCommerce Product Filters. This adds even more sophisticated filters to your bulk order forms, as you can see in the screenshot above.

WooCommerce Quantity Manager Plugin

The Product Table plugin makes it easy for customers to add bulk quantities and add multiple products to the cart at once. However, customers can still buy small quantities if they want.

If you only want to receive bulk orders, then you need to use WooCommerce Product Table with a minimum quantity plugin. It is designed to work alongside the Quantity Manager plugin, which lets you set different types of WooCommerce minimum quantity rules.

For example, you can set a minimum order quantity or value to prevent customers from placing small orders. Alternatively, you can set minimum quantities for the whole order or per category, product or variation.

Either way, WooCommerce Quantity Manager helps you to guarantee your profit margins by stopping customers from placing non-bulk orders.

Get Quantity Manager

WooCommerce Quick View Plugin with Product Table

Bulk add to cart plugins are all about helping customers to buy as quickly as possible. So what happens if you have too much information, or too many product options, to fit in the product table? Obviously, you don't want customers to have to visit the single product page. After all, this would slow down the buying process and defeat the purpose.

Instead, you can enhance your product tables with the WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin. This handy plugin works hand-in-hand with WooCommerce Product Table and your bulk add to cart buttons. It adds quick view buttons or links to the product tables. Customers can view more product information and purchase options in a quick view lightbox. They can then either select variations and add to the cart directly in the popup, or they can quickly close it and use the bulk add to cart buttons in the product table.

Get Woo Quick View Pro

Adding products to the cart in bulk lets customers order more quickly and easily. However, they can still lose time completing the standard multi-page WooCommerce cart and checkout.

To optimize the second half of the customer purchase process, I recommend installing WooCommerce Fast Cart. This plugin displays the WooCommerce cart and checkout in a popup after customers add products to the cart in bulk. They can complete their order from directly within the popup. This is so much faster than having to visit multiple page after adding products to the cart.

WooCommerce one page checkout popup
Install WooCommerce Fast Cart for an on-page cart and checkout.

Get WooCommerce Fast Cart

Now you can create your own WooCommerce bulk add to cart buttons!

Now you know everything about how to use a bulk add to cart WooCommerce plugin. It's the easy way for customers to add multiple products to the cart at once. As you have seen, it will really speed up the buying process on your store.

Research shows that faster customers can use an e-commerce shop, the higher your conversion rate and sales will be. Test the add to cart checkboxes on our WooCommerce quick order form demo. Get the plugin today and add bulk add to cart buttons to your WooCommerce store straight away!

WooCommerce Product Catalog Plugin

Discover the easy way to create a table-based WooCommerce catalog. Ideal for large product directories, your products will be listed in a searchable table with filters.

This tutorial will tell you how to create your own e-commerce order form complete with variation pickers and add to cart buttons or checkboxes.

You'll also learn how to combine product tables with WooCommerce catalog mode, disabling the e-commerce functionality.

Whatever type of WooCommerce catalog you need to build, I'll teach you how to create the ultimate product catalog using the bestselling Product Table plugin, without the need for any custom PHP or CSS.

WooCommerce Product Table Demo

A WooCommerce catalog plugin is ideal for creating a 1-page view listing all your products. It makes it easy for customers to sort products and find what they're looking for. A catalog layout displays products in a neater and more compact way to the default Woo store layout.

A catalog layout makes it possible to display more products per page, so your customers can view them all together. It's perfect if you need a larger WC product catalog table, for example, you might have 100s or 1,000s of WooCommerce products.

Who needs a WooCommerce catalog plugin?

A WooCommerce product catalog plugin is useful for any website that needs a user-friendly way to present lots of products. The products are listed in a structured table or grid layout, so customers can view more products per page. Typically, a product catalog will include features to make it easier for customers to find specific products, including keyword search, filters or sort options.

Product catalog layouts have many possible uses, such as:

  • WooCommerce order form - Your product catalog can include Add to Cart buttons or tick boxes to add multiple products to the cart. This lets it double as a fully functional order form for WooCommerce. Or you can hide the add to cart facility to create a read-only WooCommerce catalog.
  • WooCommerce restaurant food ordering system - A restaurant or takeaway business can use the catalog plugin to let people view menus and order food online.
  • Product directory - A product catalog can also function as a complete WooCommerce directory, with large numbers of products listed in an easy-to-find format.
  • WooCommerce wholesale catalog - WooCommerce Product Table is hugely popular for wholesale catalogs. List all your wholesale products in a structured catalog layout to help trade users quickly find and order their products. You can use it with our other WooCommerce plugin, WooCommerce Protected Categories, to create a hidden wholesale area separate from your public shop page. You'll be able to certain user roles or by having users enter a password.

Would you rather create a simple product list view? Check out our other tutorial on creating WooCommerce product lists.

What features can a WooCommerce catalog table have?

E-commerce order form or catalog mode?

The best product catalog WordPress plugins give you a choice of whether or not to accept orders online. This gives you two options:

  1. You might want to include full purchase functionality in the product catalog layout, with quantity pickers, variation dropdowns, add to cart buttons, etc.
  2. Alternatively, you might want to put your store in read-only 'catalog' mode, disabling the e-commerce features. With this use case, you can still list individual products in a catalog-style table view, but this is for read-only purposes and customers can't make a purchase. You could use a contact form plugin to create an inquiry form that interested visitors can fill out to request a quote or start a purchase.

Keep reading to learn how to create a WooCommerce catalog view with both options.

Flexible information to display in the catalog view

The WooCommerce catalog plugin lets you create the ultimate product catalog, listing various product details, including columns for:

  • Product name
  • Short or long description
  • Attributes
  • Add to cart button (with or without quantity selector and product variations. You can also choose whether or not to use the Ajax add to cart functionality)
  • Product image
  • Product prices
  • Stock status
  • SKU
  • Product categories
  • Tags
  • Custom fields (which can include various information. e.g. HTML links, shortcodes from other plugins, images, video, audio players etc.)
  • Custom taxonomies
  • And more
Ultimate product catalogue.

There are also lots of extra features relating to how the product catalog is displayed, and how customers interact with it. For example, you can add filter dropdowns for category, tag, attributes, variations, and custom taxonomies above the table. You can add sidebar widgets to filter by attribute, price or rating. You can show or hide elements, including the search box. There are even options to control how the responsive product catalog behaves on mobile devices.

You can either have a single product catalog page listing all your WooCommerce products, or, divide a catalog into sections. For example, you might have separate tables for products with specific categories, tags or custom field values.

Buy Plugin

Use WooCommerce Quick View to provide extra product information

When you use WooCommerce Product Table to create a catalog of your products, you can choose which columns of information to include. But what if you want to display multiple product images, or extra information that won't fit in the catalog? That's when you need to add quick view to your catalog.

The WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin is designed to work with WooCommerce Product Table. It adds quick view buttons or links to the catalog, so that customers can open extra information and purchase from a lightbox instead of directly on the catalog page.

This is an excellent compromise because it keeps customers on the catalog page and doesn't take them to a separate page for each product. However, it lets you provide extra images, a longer product description, more data about each product, and you can also let them select variations from the quick view.

GET QUICK VIEW

Case study - Wavelength Electronics' table-based product catalog

Wavelength Electronics sell technical products in the electronics industry. The website uses our WooCommerce Product Table plugin to create detailed product comparison tables for each product category.

The website acts as a catalog for customers to compare products. The product table needed to display a lot of technical information so they created WooCommerce custom fields to display the extra data. They also included ticks and PDF icons with links to downloadable data sheets. By using the filter dropdowns, it couldn't be simpler to compare several different products all at once.

Wavelength Electronics Product List

Carry on reading to find out how you can create your own WooCommerce product catalog.

How to create the ultimate product catalog

First, I'll show you how to list products in a table-based catalog. This is all about the layout, and doesn't affect whether or not people can purchase your products (although as you'll see, you can do this by choosing not to include an add to cart column in the table). If you want to fully disable the e-commerce side of things and prevent people from purchasing, skip ahead to the section on catalog mode.

To get started, your website should have 2 plugins installed:

You can then follow these instructions to create the ultimate product catalog.

1. Create a page for the WooCommerce catalog table

First, create a new page for the product catalog by going to Pages > Add New in the WordPress admin. Call the page whatever you want, for example 'Product Catalog'.

2. Enter the default WooCommerce Product Table shortcode

Now, enter the WooCommerce Product Table shortcode which will create a table displaying your ultimate product catalog (we'll add more columns in the next step!). This shortcode will list your WooCommerce products as a searchable, sortable table.

[product_table]

Publish the page and click View Page to see your WooCommerce catalog table.

You'll see a dynamic catalog listing all your WooCommerce products. It's currently using the default column headers – these may or may not be relevant to your particular product catalog, but we'll edit these shortly. The default columns are product name, short description, price and add to cart button:

Default WooCommerce product catalogue plugin

By default, the plugin displays all of your products, but you can also add an inclusion or exclusion list to control which products display or add related products. Learn more here.

3. Choose which columns appear in the WooCommerce catalog table

Next, I'll show you how to choose which product data to include. This will make the table more suited as a WooCommerce product catalog.

It's time to make some changes to the WooCommerce Product Table shortcode to control which columns are displayed in the catalog. Go back to the Edit Page screen for your product catalog and try replacing the default shortcode with this:

[product_table columns="sku,name,description,categories,att:size,tags,price"]

This adds a 'columns' parameter to the shortcode. In the example above, I've added the following columns:

  • sku - the unique identifier for the product. Many product catalogs include a product code or ID to make products easier to identify.
  • name - the main title for your product.
  • description - the long description for the WooCommerce product.
  • categories - this tells the catalog to display a filterable column listing the product categories each product is in. Customers can click on a category to filter the table for products in that category.
  • att:size - this tells the product catalog to include a column for the 'size' attribute. Use this format for any product attributes you wish to include in the catalog. Instead of 'size', add the slug for the attribute in your WooCommerce store.
  • tags - this adds a filterable column listing the tags for each product.
  • price - this tells WooCommerce Product Table to display a price field.

Use the product table knowledge base to see which other columns are available. It also tells you how to rename the columns in your WooCommerce catalog table or hide column headings.

If you want your products to be purchasable from the catalog page, then you'll also want to include an add-to-cart column. Use the knowledge base to learn how to add quantity pickers, variation dropdowns, and other purchase options.

Now view your product catalog

Now Update and View your page. You'll see the table is now a very useful WooCommerce catalog and the 7 columns are those we listed in the product table shortcode.

Example without online purchasing:

WooCommerce product catalogue WordPress plugin

Example with online purchasing:

A WooCommerce product table with drop-down variations.

4. Add filters to the WooCommerce catalog table

Another neat option in WooCommerce Product Table is the ability to add filter dropdowns and filter widgets so customers can quickly and easily find the products they need in your product catalog.

WooCommerce catalog filter dropdowns

To add filter dropdowns, add filters="true" to the product table shortcode. For example: [product_table columns="sku,name,description,categories,att:size,tags,price" filters="true"]. Alternatively, you can use the knowledge base to control exactly which filters appear in the product catalog view.

WooCommerce product catalogue plugin with filters
WooCommerce catalog table with dropdown filters.

WooCommerce product filter widgets

The product catalog plugin also comes with its own version of all the WooCommerce filter widgets. These include a widget to show the active filters, a layered nav filter listing product attributes, a price slider and ratings filter.

Make sure your product catalog is on a page that contains the product table shortcode and has a sidebar area (e.g. left or right column). You can then add filter widgets by going to Appearance  Widgets and adding any of the filters beginning with 'Product Table' to your sidebar. The filter widgets will appear on your product catalog pages, but won't affect the rest of your website:

WooCommerce catalogue plugin
Ultimate product catalog, including dropdown and sidebar filter widgets.

How to add quick view to your WooCommerce catalog

WooCommerce Quick View Magnifying Glass

Earlier, we learned how you can improve your WooCommerce product catalog by adding a quick view plugin. If you'd like customers to be able to view extra information and/or buy products from a lightbox popup, this is how to do it:

  1. Install and activate WooCommerce Quick View Pro via Plugins → Add New in the WordPress admin.
  2. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Quick view and activate your license key.
  3. Choose all the settings for your quick view lightboxes.
  4. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables and add a quick-view column.

It's also possible to open the quick view by clicking on the product name or image in the catalog.


How to create a read-only product catalog & disable online ordering

So far, I've shown you how to create a WooCommerce product catalog table, with or without an add to cart column. If you prefer, you can use it to list products without online ordering. There are 2 ways to do this:

Option 1 - Create a read-only product table

To create a read-only product table, simply make the following changes:

  1. Remove the 'add-to-cart' column from the WooCommerce Product Table shortcode.
  2. Disable the links to the single product page.

You can also add a custom button to link people to a contact form or inquiry form if you want - just make sure to enable HTML processing in your WooCommerce catalog.

This option is ok, but people might still access the single product page through the back door. And the single product page will contain add to cart buttons. If you need a more robust catalog mode solution, use Option 2 instead.

Option 2 - Use WooCommerce Catalog Visibility Options

WooCommerce Product Table works beautifully with the official Catalog Visibility Options extension. This great plugin lets you hide the price and/or add to cart buttons throughout your WooCommerce store, including the product table catalog page.

Install Catalog Visibility Options and go to the settings page: WooCommerce → Settings → Visibility Options. Here are some notes on how the different settings affect the content of your product tables:

Purchases

Use this option to enable online purchasing, disable it, or enable it for logged in users only.

If you're using the 'Logged in users' option, then you might want to include an add to cart column in the product table. If you do this, then it works best if you use add to cart buttons instead of checkboxes. (This is an option on the WooCommerce Product Table settings page.) The buttons simply don't appear for users where purchasing is disabled. Other elements such as quantity pickers disappear too - nice!

It's worth noting that variation dropdowns still appear even when Purchases are disabled. This is because the variations are listed for information only, and can't be purchased. If you don't want this, then you can disable the variation dropdowns in WooCommerce Product Table.

Prices

Finally, tick this to hide the Prices from the product catalog page. Again, you can hide prices for everyone, no one, or just logged out user/guests.

If you hide the price, then the 'Price' column in WooCommerce Product Table will appear blank. This might make sense if you want to show prices to logged in users. If you want to hide the price from everyone, then I suggest removing this column from your product tables.

Alternate text options

WooCommerce Catalog Visibility Table Plugin

You'll also see 3 settings where you can add different messages to display when content is hidden. These are: Catalog Add to Cart Button Text, Catalog Price Text, and Alternate Content.

These all work correctly in the product table, and you can see them in the screenshot above. If you don't add anything to these fields, then they will appear blank in the product table.

Disable caching in WooCommerce Product Table

If you get any problems, make sure you disable the caching option in WooCommerce Product Table. If you're showing different pricing/purchase information to different types of user, then the table needs to be loaded fresh for each person. Caching will interfere with this, so disable it on the product table plugin settings page.

Option 3 - Use YITH WooCommerce Catalog Mode plugin

Alternatively, you can use a free plugin named YITH WooCommerce Catalog Mode from YITH Plugins to automatically disable the ability to buy online. Please see our separate article for full details on using the 2 WooCommerce product catalog plugins together.

Whichever option you choose, customers will be able to view your products in the catalog but there'll be no way for them to add products to the cart or use your checkout pages:

Read only ultimate product catalogue.

Using your WooCommerce Catalog

Have a play with your WooCommerce catalog, or the catalog page on the plugin demo site.

As you can see, your customers can do many different things with the WooCommerce catalog. They can click on a title to view the actual product page (this link can be disabled if needed - see knowledge base). They can click on a product category or tag to filter by that category. Then they can use the search box to find products.

Customers can also click on the column headers to order your products by that column - for example, to sort by price.

Once they've chosen their products, they can easily add them to the cart and buy online. Or if you've disabled online ordering in WooCommerce, they can take whatever other actions you desire, such as phoning you to place an order.

Discover the top 10 ways to use product tables to improve your WooCommerce catalog's conversion rates. 

Easily create the ultimate product catalog

In this tutorial, I have shown you how to create an interactive WooCommerce catalog table. While the example I've given shows a popular use case, it may not meet your needs exactly. With almost 2 million websites using WooCommerce according to the latest stats, lots of sites need different types of product catalogs.

Don't worry, WooCommerce Product Table comes with many more options to refine your ultimate product catalog. For example, you can control how your table is ordered by default, and how many rows appear per page. You can let customers select quantities and variations directly from the WooCommerce product catalog view. You can add quick view lightboxes. Or even add-on options, if you're using Product Table with the WooCommerce Product Options plugin. You can control the responsive options and how the catalog behaves on different screen sizes.

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin knowledge base contains full details of what you can do with this simple but powerful plugin. In no time, you can create the ultimate product catalog to attract your customers and increase your sales.

You can now click here to buy WooCommerce Product Table.

WooCommerce wholesale ordering plugin

WooCommerce is designed for retail sales. So what happens if you want to sell to B2B users as well as (or instead of) public customers? The solution is to install a WooCommerce wholesale ordering plugin. This article will show you how.

There are some key differences between B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business - i.e. wholesale) e-commerce. Everyone knows that B2B customers usually get a discount off the recommended retail price. However, there's a lot more to creating a professional wholesale ordering solution for your WordPress WooCommerce store.

Fortunately, it's really easy to get everything you need for successful wholesale ordering. Simply add the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin, and it does all the hard work for you, Simple!

In this article, we'll look at 5 essential things that you need in order to add WooCommerce wholesale ordering. And even more importantly, you'll learn how to set it up. Let's get started!

You may also like our complete guide to WooCommerce wholesale plugins and how to use them.

5 essential features for a WooCommerce wholesale ordering system

1. Fully automated (no manual orders!)

Lots of business owners get it wrong by setting up online ordering for their retail sales, while handling wholesale ordering manually. What a nightmare!

By adding wholesale ordering to WooCommerce, you can free up time to focus on more important tasks such as business development. B2B customers can place orders directly on your website, which is a much more efficient way to do business.

2. One website, not two!

Many WooCommerce store owners decide to create 2 websites: one for their public retail online shop, and one for wholesale. These might be standalone, or a WordPress multisite.

This does the job, but can be confusing for your customers (what if they end up on the wrong site?). It's also a lot harder and more expensive for you to set up and maintain multiple websites. As well as the overheads of creating and running two websites, you need two versions of each product. This brings lots of products, for example the difficulties in managing stock across duplicate products.

The best WooCommerce wholesale ordering plugins will add a private wholesale area to your main WordPress website. One website, two types of store. Perfect!

3. Wholesale pricing

WooCommerce product wholesale price

As with any wholesale system, a WooCommerce wholesale ordering plugin must allow you to charge different rates for the same product to B2B and B2C customers.

The WooCommerce Wholesale plugin makes this easy. You can add unlimited wholesale user roles, and each one will see the correct pricing for their role. There are plenty of ways to set wholesale prices. You can set trade discounts globally, per category or for each individual product or variation.

Public customers will have no idea that you have a private wholesale ordering area with special B2B pricing!

And of course, wholesale pricing only works if your ordering system has user-friendly registration and login forms. WooCommerce Wholesale Pro comes with these too.

4. Wholesale order forms

WooCommerce Wholesale Plugin

It's amazing how many e-commerce wholesale stores forget about this one.

Wholesale buyers have completely different needs from retail customers. A retail customer wants to spend time browsing to find the products they like. In contrast, B2B buyers are regular customers and already know what they need. As a result, they need a quick way to select the required items, choose quantities and variations, and add everything to the cart in one click. They certainly don't want to waste time looking at big pictures or visiting a separate page for each wholesale product.

The solution is to use WooCommerce Wholesale Pro with our WooCommerce Product Table plugin. You can select the two-plugin bundle when you buy WooCommerce Wholesale Pro. The Product Table plugin adds quick one-page wholesale ordering to your store.

Each product is listed in a B2B order form layout. Instead of having to visit a different page for each product, all the essential information appears in columns within the order form. Customers can select variations and quantities, and add wholesale products to the cart - all from one page.

WooCommerce Product Table Quick View Magnifying Glass
Add quick view buttons or links to your WooCommerce wholesale ordering page.

For even faster one-page wholesale ordering, you can add our WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin. This is ideal if you want to show extra product data and purchase options that may not fit on your one-page WooCommerce wholesale order form.

For example, you might want to show a longer description that doesn't fit into the product table layout. Or you might have a lot of variations or add-ons that mean that each product takes up too much space on the order form.

WooCommerce Quick View Pro is the solution. You can improve your one-page wholesale ordering by adding quick view buttons to the product table. Wholesale customers can use these to view extra information, choose options and add to the cart from a quick view lightbox for each product. When they add a product to the cart, the lightbox closes and they immediately return to the wholesale ordering page. This makes it easy for them to purchase multiple products in a single order - essential for B2B ordering.

5. Trade-only products

wholesale ecommerce visibility

Finally, lots of WooCommerce wholesale ordering systems need to sell different products to the trade. You might sell most of the same products to public and wholesale users, while having a selection of wholesale-specific items. Alternatively, you might offer completely different products for B2C and B2B.

Either way, you can do this with the WooCommerce Wholesale plugin. Simply choose whether each product category is available to public customers, wholesale customers, or both.

How to add wholesale ordering to WooCommerce

As you can see, the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin has everything you need to add a professional B2B area to your WordPress website. Next, let's learn how to set it up. If you have already installed WooCommerce and added some products then fortunately this only takes a few minutes.

  1. Install the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro and WooCommerce Product Table plugins.
  2. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Wholesale and enter your license key.
  3. Go through each page of the plugin settings and choose how you want your e-commerce wholesale ordering system to work. This will guide you through adding wholesale roles and global percentage discounts, enabling the order form layout in the wholesale area, and how you want wholesale registration to work.
  4. (Optional) If required, you can also add wholesale discounts to categories (via Products → Categories) or individual products or variations (via the 'Edit Product' screen).
  5. Finally, link to your wholesale login/registration page as needed, e.g. from your navigation menu or footer.

Your WooCommerce wholesale ordering system is complete!

Where to get the WooCommerce wholesale ordering plugin

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro is the perfect solution for all your wholesale ordering needs.

  • Comes complete with all the essential features for wholesale ordering.
  • Regular updates and new features.
  • Full documentation and video tutorials.
  • Expert support if you need any help or advice.
  • 30-day guarantee - love it or your money back (no-risk)!

Alternatively, you can find more detailed setup instructions in our in-depth tutorial about how to build a WooCommerce wholesale store.

In this article, I'm going to tell you how to use the best WordPress plugin to build a quick WooCommerce wholesale order form. It's easy to set up, and you can put your B2B wholesale order forms within a private area for approved wholesale buyers.

If you run a WooCommerce wholesale or role-based store, your customers need to see the correct products and prices for their wholesale status or group. Wholesale customers also benefit from a tabular view of all the products available to them.

You can get this by using our wholesale suite of plugins - WooCommerce Product Table combined with WooCommerce Wholesale Pro. WooCommerce Wholesale Pro adds wholesale registration, new user approval, user roles and pricing to your store (without affecting your public-facing shop); and WooCommerce Product Table adds quick wholesale order forms.

The best wholesale order form plugin

WooCommerce wholesale order form plugin

WooCommerce Product Table takes your wholesale products displays them in a table. When used alongside WooCommerce Wholesale Pro, it's the perfect format for a WooCommerce wholesale ordering form plugin.

You can choose which columns are displayed in the order form. You can even add filters based on categories, tags, variations etc. There are over 50 options for you to experiment with.

What’s great is that customers can select multiple products from the WooCommerce wholesale order form and click "Add Selected to cart". This is a handy feature for wholesale buyers, most of whom will be making a bulk purchase and want to buy quickly.

How to set it up

You can create a WooCommerce wholesale order form in just a few minutes. Either watch this video tutorial, or follow the written instructions below.

  1. Install and activate WooCommerce Product Table and WooCommerce Wholesale Pro.
  2. Go to the plugin settings pages (WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables and WooCommerce → Settings → Wholesale) and enter your license key for each wholesale plugin. Choose the other settings to set up each plugin according to your requirements.
  3. Choose the 'Order form' options on the 'Layout' tab of the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin settings:
WooCommerce wholesale layout settings

Now, when a wholesale user logs into their account, they will see the products listed in the WooCommerce wholesale order form:

WooCommerce order form cart widget

Normal retail customers will continue to see the default store layouts. (Tip: If you want to use the order form layout for public customers too, then you can enable it throughout your store on the WooCommerce Product Table plugin settings page.)

Bonus tip - Add quick view to your WooCommerce wholesale order form

You can make a wholesale order form even more user-friendly by adding quick view options:

  1. Get WooCommerce Quick View Pro and install and activate it on your WordPress site.
  2. Add your license key to the plugin settings page at WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Quick view. 
  3. Use the settings on this page to control the content of your wholesale quick view lightboxes.
  4. Now go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Quick view and change the following options:
    • If you wish to add a quick view column to the table, add quick-view to the list of columns.
    • If you want people to be able to open the lightbox by clicking on a product name, click the 'Replace all links to product page with quick view' option near the bottom of the page.
    • If you want the image column to open the quick view too, then you will need to disable the image lightbox option further up the page.

Other ways to increase your B2B sales

By now, you've learned how to set up an effective WooCommerce bulk order form with restricted access for B2B users. That has taken care of the ordering process for that user group.

Before we close, it's worth mentioning some other ways to grow your B2B sales. For example, use email marketing in a way that will appeal specifically to B2B customers. This will convert them from one-time buyers to regular wholesale customers. And as everyone knows, it's cheaper to retain and existing customer than to recruit a new one - so this is a cost-effective way to bring them back to your wholesale order form over and over again.

Case study #1 - PolBazar24 WooCommerce wholesale order form

PolBazar24 is a Polish food wholesaler. Their website has a WooCommerce wholesale order form powered by our WooCommerce Product Table plugin. Every wholesale product is listed in the easy to use table along with a small image.

Customers can quickly read a short product description and find out the stock number, its weight and price. There’s even a handy stock level indicator to let customers know if the product is in stock. And if it is in stock, customers just input the quantity needed and click add to cart. It works well for PolBazar24's customers as everything can be done from the single WooCommerce bulk order form and there's no flitting between pages to place their order.

You can use the same plugins to create your very own WooCommerce wholesale order form.

Case study #2 - Yarn Gate's wholesale order form

WooCommerce quick view wholesale plugin

Yarn Gate also used WooCommerce Product Table to build their wholesale order form. They went a step further, and enhanced it with some extra plugins. They used the WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin to add 'Select color' buttons to the table.

When logged in wholesale customers click on these buttons, they can click on a photo to choose a color variation, and add it to the cart. The variation photos are created using the WooCommerce Attribute Swatches plugin.

This is a perfect example of how you can add extra features to your WooCommerce wholesale order form.

Get WooCommerce Quick View

Add wholesale order forms to WooCommerce today!

As you can see, it's really easy to use our suite of wholesale plugins to add a private B2B area with wholesale order forms. You can use them to make your whole store private, or run them as a hidden area alongside your public retail shop.

  • Quick to set up and easy to use
  • Flexible customization options
  • Full documentation and support (absolutely no way to get it wrong!)
  • Written and video tutorials
  • Love it or your money back!

Let us know in the comments how you use the WooCommerce wholesale ordering plugins in this tutorial. I'd love to hear from you.

Best WooCommerce order form plugin

Have you ever noticed how long it takes to add products to the cart in WooCommerce? Customers have to visit a separate page for each product so that they can select quantities, choose variations etc. You can speed up the customer journey by adding a quick WooCommerce bulk order form to your website. To do it, simply install a WooCommerce order form plugin.

Order forms allow customers to view and compare a longer list of products than the traditional WooCommerce layout. For lots of stores, an order form fits aligns better with how customers browse and buy products. They can see everything on one page, compare products and make quick buying decisions. This encourages more sales by enabling customers to shop quickly and efficiently.

WooCommerce Product Table order form

WooCommerce Product Table is the perfect way to create a quick order form. In fact, people keep telling me it's the best WooCommerce order form plugin around! We've built a quick order form demo so you can see how it works – go ahead and have a play.

Of course, an order form layout isn't for everyone. In this post we'll help you choose between using a WooCommerce order form plugin and the standard WooCommerce shop layout, so you can rest assured you're creating the ideal product layout for your store. Once you've learned all about WC order forms, I'll provide step-by-step instructions plus a video tutorial on exactly how to set it up.

What is a WooCommerce order form?

By default, WooCommerce displays e-commerce products in a standard format, with each product occupying a relatively large amount of space.

This typical store layout has a grid format with 3 or 4 products per row. Each will have a large featured image, a title, a short description, a price, and an Add to Cart button. Customers click through to a single product page to read more information before adding the item to their shopping cart:

Default WooCommerce layout example

A WooCommerce order form is an alternative way to list products. Presented in a structured table format, each product takes up a single row in the table, and product images are much smaller. The layout is far more compact and often includes extra features, such as sort options and filters. The screenshot below shows what you can create:

WooCommerce order form plugin example

An order form plugin lets you list many more products on a single page than you could in the default WooCommerce store layout. And, instead of clicking through to the single product page, customers can select variations, specify a quantity and add their chosen items to the cart – all directly from the order form.

Boosting sales with an alternative layout

Both the traditional category layout and order form view use the Woo cart and checkout. Once a customer has chosen their products, the process for placing an order is identical.

The real difference is how the products are presented in the first place. This is a key part of the buying process: it's the point when customers are exploring your products and making buying decisions. The layout has a big impact on your sales and conversion rates, so it's vital to choose the right layout for your products.

Comparing the two layout options for listing WooCommerce products, you can see how a WooCommerce order form plugin (or WooCommerce bulk order form plugin) makes much better use of space than a traditional store layout:WooCommerce order form layout

Using the product table, you'll fit twice as many products into the same amount of space. Because of the compact layout, it's also possible to fit in plenty of extra features, including filter dropdowns, a search box, sorting, and the ability to select quantities and variations. This is why we often refer to it as a WooCommerce bulk order form – because it's so much easier to order higher quantities.

What sort of websites need a WooCommerce order form plugin?

While the standard WooCommerce shop format is great for some stores, there are many cases when an order form gives customers a better buying experience.

A WooCommerce order form plugin is ideally suited to stores where customers don't want to hang around browsing, but instead want to quickly choose from a list of products. Let customers add multiple products to their carts from a quick one-page order form. 

WooCommerce quick order form

How to create a WooCommerce order form

Watch this video tutorial below to learn how to create a order form in WooCommerce. You can watch me create the exact order form shown on the demo site then create your own on your WooCommerce site! Alternatively, read the quick setup guide or the step-by-step written instructions below the video:

Quick setup guide

  1. Install the WooCommerce Product Table plugin on your WordPress site.
  2. Use the plugin setup wizard to control how you want the order form to work.
  3. Go to Pages → Add New and add the [product_table] shortcode.
  4. Publish the page and view the order form.

Detailed written tutorial

To start, you need a WordPress website with WooCommerce set up and some products added.

Step 1: Install the WooCommerce order form plugin

  1. Get WooCommerce Product Table and install it via Plugins → Add New.
  2. Get your license key from the confirmation email and enter it into the setup wizard or WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables.

Step 2: Configure your order forms

The next step is to choose all the default settings for your product order forms. You can either do this on the plugin settings page or in the setup wizard.

The settings you choose here will apply to all the order forms on your site. If you plan to create multiple order forms, then you can override most of the settings directly in each order form.

For an order form, I recommend considering the following settings:

Choose what data to display in the order form

The 'Column' option lets you control which columns appear in the order form. You can display various data about your products including SKU, ID, name, description, short description, date, categories, tags, image, reviews, stock, weight, dimensions, price and Add to Cart button. The plugin supports product attributes and custom fields as separate columns in the table, e.g. size or color.

WooCommerce order form with variations
You can choose whether the 'Buy' column includes product variations and quantity picker, or whether you want customers to click through to the single product page to view the variations. And if you're using the Product Options plugin to add extra product add-ons, then these will appear in the order form too.

You can also choose whether to have normal add to cart buttons, multi-select checkboxes, or both. Or if you use WooCommerce Product Table with the free WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart plugin, you can even replace the cart button with a simple cart icon:

WooCommerce cart icon plugin
Use filters to help customers find your products

The WooCommerce order form can include filter dropdowns above or filter widgets alongside the table. This lets customers filter by category or product categories, tag or attribute. You can either include all possible filters or choose specific ones to appear.

Here's an example of the filters that come with the order forms in Product Table:

WooCommerce order form with filters

Or for even more filtering options, you can use it with our advanced filtering plugin - WooCommerce Product Filters. By using both plugins together, your filters can look more like this:

WooCommerce Product Filters Table Integration
Change the sort order of the products in the order form

You can choose how the products on the order form are sorted by default. Customers can also sort the products by clicking on a column header.

Control the number of products per page

Your order form can be as short or as long as you like. Simply choose how many products appear on each page before pagination links appear at the bottom. (You can even choose the style of pagination buttons, or display all your products so that no pagination is needed.)

Use lazy load to improve performance in big order forms

The lazy load option speeds up the order form load time for WooCommerce stores with many products. This uses Ajax to load products one page at a time, so if you have thousands of products then this makes a big difference.

Step 3: Create an order form page(s)

  1. Create a new page which you will use for your order form. If you prefer, you can tick the box on the settings page to enable the order form layout on your main shop and category pages instead.
  2. Add any content that you like to the page. For example, you can add text or other content above and below the order form. You can also add subheadings (e.g. one for each category) and insert a different order form after each one.
  3. Go to the part of the page where you wish to add a WooCommerce form. Add the following shortcode to the page: [product_table]
  4. Publish the page and view it.

On your= order form page, you'll see all your products listed in a neat table layout. Tweak the settings to configure your order form in whichever way you like.

If you want to create multiple order forms - either on the same page or multiple pages - then that's fine too. Just use the shortcode options to control which products appear in each order form. You can include specific products by their ID, product categories, tags, and more. You can also exclude products by ID or category.

WooCommerce Product Table categories screenshot

Step 4: Add bonus features to your order forms

Now we've looked at the essential features for a WooCommerce order form, I'm going to tell you how to supercharge it even further. You can do this by using other plugins to add bonus functionality.

Add an on-page popup cart and checkout

A WooCommerce order form is all about bringing the shopping experience to a single page. For this reason, it makes sense to also bring the cart and checkout experience to the same page!

You can achieve this by adding a cart popup plugin to the order form page. The Fast Cart plugin is designed to work alongside your WooCommerce order form like this:

Product table with fast cart

And also this:

WooCommerce popup checkout page

Either use it as a popup cart, or skip the cart and open the checkout as soon as customers add products to their cart from the order form. That's the quickest way to shop because customers can add products and complete their order from the same page!

Add product quick view
WooCommerce Product Table Quick View Magnifying Glass

Your order form can contain various columns of information about your products. However, you may want to display extra information that won't fit in the order form layout. Or you may want to sell product variations or other options without cluttering up the order form page.

You can solve this dilemma by using WooCommerce Product Table with the WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin. This adds quick view buttons or links, which open extra product information and purchase options in a user-friendly lightbox window. It's a great way to show extra information without taking customers away from the order form.

Disable the WooCommerce single product page

By default, customers can click on a product title or image in the order form to view a separate page for each product. Most product order forms don't need this feature. You can disable these links if needed so that the only way to view a product is on the order form page - especially if you're using quick view instead.

Add additional fields and custom fields to the order form

WooCommerce Product Table makes it easy to add additional fields to your order form. This is useful if you need to add media such as PDFs with more information about a product, or you just need other meta information.

We have a full tutorial on how to use WooCommerce custom fields here.

Create a printable WooCommerce order form

Since publishing this article, some of our customers have asked about how to create a printable order form. The idea of this is that customers can print the order form on paper and fill it in manually. They can then post it to place the order the old-fashioned way.

In response, we've created a separate tutorial on how to create a printable order form.

What types of product sell best in a quick order form?

Now we've learned how to use the best WooCommerce order form plugin, let's consider when to use one. After all, all products are different and some lend themselves to the order form layout better than others.

Let's take a look at some examples of when an order form layout is the best way to go:

WooCommerce wholesale order form

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro prices 1

Trade customers typically make regular orders of products they're already familiar with. They don't want to spend ages browsing multiple product pages.

A compact wholesale order form lets them quickly select multiple products and instantly add to cart. This is more efficient for wholesale users than a more traditional WooCommerce product layout, which is too visual and spaced out. It's ideal for bulk wholesale buying.

For best results, use WooCommerce Product Table together with its sister plugin WooCommerce Wholesale Pro. Product Table provides the order forms, and WooCommerce Wholesale Pro adds other B2B functionality like wholesale registration and pricing. You can choose whether to enable the order form view for all customers, or just wholesale users.

Large product directory

A lot of our WooCommerce Product Table plugin users have HUGE e-commerce stores with thousands of products. A WooCommerce directory plugin is a good way to list large numbers of products in a directory structure.

For example, one website uses WooCommerce Product Table to display thousands of ball bearings for sale. Customers can use the filters to find the type of ball bearing they require based on product attributes such as size and color. They can then tick the products they want, add to cart and buy online. This would be a cumbersome process using the traditional WooCommerce shop layout. Not to mention that large pictures of ball bearings aren't necessary! Check out our tutorial on how to create a WooCommerce product catalogue.

Here's a review from a customer who's increased sales by using Product Table to list thousands of products in a quick order form:

Great Plugin!
I needed a simple table to display thousands of products in table form and this plugin did the trick. Plus, it is super simple for the customer to select many items at one time. Before I installed I was lucky to get orders with three items, now I AVERAGE ten products per order. Support is also really good too. I highly recommend this plugin.

WooCommerce bulk order form

Similar to a wholesale order form, a WooCommerce bulk order form is useful for ordering large quantities of products. If a customer is buying products in bulk, they won't want to browse through the standard WC layout. A product table is perfect as a bulk order form because they can quickly order as many products as they like.

'Build your own product' configurator

WooCommerce Product Configurator Plugin

Lots of WooCommerce websites let customers choose multiple items from a list to build a box, create their own pizza, build a luxury hamper, or similar. Customers can select items from a list and add them all to a cart with a single click. An order form is ideal for this 'build a product' format or product configurator.

Case study – using an order form plugin to sell hampers

Barks and Squeaks is an online store selling gifts and treats for fur buddies and their owners. As well as offering individual products, the Barks and Squeaks store sells hampers. To do this, they've created an order form using our WooCommerce Product Table plugin. This enables customers to quickly pack a hamper full of lots of products, without changing pages:

Build your own product example

Which WooCommerce stores don't need a quick order form?

As you can see, a WooCommerce order form plugin is the right choice for lots of stores, but it isn't for everyone.

If you answer 'Yes' to any of the following questions, it's worth considering whether the standard WooCommerce shop format is a better fit:

  • Does your store only have a few products?
  • Do you sell highly visual products that will benefit from big images or multiple images?
  • Do customers need to spend a long time reading detailed information about your products before deciding to buy?

As an example, imagine you own an online boutique clothing store. Think about how your customers would use your store. Big images will definitely play a crucial role in encouraging sales. Your customers will also be happy to take their time browsing items and reading detailed product information. They may then go on to make a considered purchase of one, two, or perhaps a few items.

With a WooCommerce order form, customers can click through to a single page for full product information. You can also increase the size of the product images for a more visual table:

Large image product table

But ultimately, deciding on the right layout to use comes down to which one best suits your particular customers. With smaller purchase quantities and less need for quick purchases, your imaginary boutique clothing store is likely to benefit from the highly visual layout characteristic of the standard WooCommerce shop format.

Create a quick WooCommerce order form today 🚀

How your customers want to shop should dictate your store's product layout. The default WooCommerce shop layout works for customers who are happy to take their time browsing images and reading descriptions. But, when your customers need to buy multiple items quickly, a WooCommerce order form plugin is a much better solution.

We'd love to see your WooCommerce form – share your website in the comments below. We might even link to it from the WooCommerce Product Table showcase!

Whether you are a small business owner looking to expand your product offerings or a large retailer looking to tap into the wholesale market, this free guide is for you. Discover everything you need to know about how to build your own WooCommerce wholesale store.

WooCommerce is great for creating an e-commerce site, but it doesn't distinguish between retail and wholesale customers. That's no good because B2B buyers have different needs from other customers. As well as needing wholesale pricing and discounts, they're already familiar with your products and want a quicker, easier way to buy.

The problem is: How can a company like yours add a WooCommerce wholesale area without affecting the experience for normal public customers?

Luckily, there's an easy solution - simply install the best WooCommerce wholesale plugin.

What to expect from this WooCommerce wholesale tutorial

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro prices 1

This is the complete step-by-step guide on how to build a WooCommerce wholesale store. Keep reading if:

  • You're looking to expand your business and tap into the wholesale market.
  • You currently take wholesale orders manually and want to automate this through your website.
  • There's already a wholesale ordering plugin on your website, but it doesn't fully meet your needs.

This tutorial will take you through the process of setting up your wholesale store from scratch. You will learn how to:

  • Add a WooCommerce wholesale area to your existing online store (without changing anything for retail customers).
  • Create a 100% private wholesale-only online WooCommerce store.
  • Add a wide range of B2B features - including wholesale registration forms, pricing, custom user roles, and choosing which products to show in the WooCommerce wholesale and/or retail areas.
  • Grow your wholesale revenue by adding quick one-page order forms, designed specifically for wholesale.
  • Add a range of bonus features to make the wholesale buying experience even better.

By the end, you will have a fully functional WooCommerce wholesale store.

And the best part? You can set it up in 15 minutes, then sit back and let it do all the work for you. It’s way faster and way cheaper so you can start taking wholesale orders today!

What is the difference between a wholesale store and a regular WooCommerce store?

The main difference between a wholesale store and a regular WooCommerce store is the target audience and the pricing structure. I'll tell you more about both of these.

What is WooCommerce wholesale pricing?

Nearly all businesses offer tiered pricing to different types of customer. Their retail customers pay the recommended retail price, while wholesale buyers pay discounted business-to-business prices.

A regular WooCommerce store is typically geared towards individual customers who purchase products at retail prices. These customers are usually looking to purchase products for personal use or in small quantities. The pricing structure for a regular WooCommerce store is usually set at retail prices, which are higher than wholesale prices.

On the other hand, a wholesale store is geared towards bulk buyers who purchase products at wholesale prices. Wholesale buyers are usually looking to purchase products in large quantities for resale purposes. The pricing structure for a wholesale store is set at wholesale prices, which are lower than retail prices.

Wholesale buyers need a different buying experience

In addition to the pricing structure, wholesale buyers have different needs and expectations compared to retail customers. They are business people who are buying for practical purposes and not for pleasure. For example, they buy your products on a regular basis and don't want to spend time browsing. They need to quickly find their regular items and place an order, without wasting any time.

A good WooCommerce wholesale store will therefore offer a separate buying experience which is optimized for wholesale users.

WooCommerce Product Table screenshot
A WooCommerce wholesale order form provides a much faster buying experience

How NOT to set up wholesale ordering

Most WooCommerce wholesale stores get it wrong in one of these ways:

  • Amazingly, some companies have a public e-commerce store and still take wholesale orders manually. This is a huge waste of time and resources, when they could automate it so easily.
  • Others set up totally separate stores for different customer groups such as their retail and WooCommerce wholesale customers. Of course, this is extremely inconvenient. Your technology should be working for you, rather than creating work for you.
  • Most companies install a basic WooCommerce wholesale pricing plugin, but the wholesale area looks the same as the public shop. If you don't optimize the buying experience for wholesale users then it takes ages for them to select products and buy - reducing your wholesale revenue as a result.

Fortunately, there's a better way to create your wholesale WooCommerce store.

WooCommerce is one of the most powerful and widely-used e-commerce platforms on the web. Its integration into the WordPress Content Management System makes it endlessly customizable, with the broad range of plugins and add-ons available that change and expand its functionality.

With the best WooCommerce wholesale plugins, you can simply and effectively cater to WooCommerce B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) customer groups using the same system. You can provide a great wholesale ordering experience for WooCommerce B2B buyers, with an easy-to-manage back end for you.

WooCommerce Wholesale Plugin

Is WooCommerce good for wholesale?

Firstly, it's worth considering whether WooCommerce is the right platform for your wholesale store.

The short answer is that WooCommerce is a great platform for creating a wholesale store. While it can't be used for wholesale on its own, there are excellent add-on plugins available that add all the features you need. This includes WooCommerce wholesale pricing, user registration, bulk order forms, minimum order requirements, and tiered pricing.

In addition, WooCommerce is a flexible and customizable platform that can be tailored to your specific needs. You can choose from a wide range of themes and plugins to create a unique wholesale store that represents your brand and offers a great user experience for wholesale buyers.

People sometimes wonder "How much does WooCommerce cost?" Luckily, WooCommerce is completely free to use! Download it for free from wordpress.org, and you just pay for a domain name, web hosting and your WooCommerce wholesale plugin.

If you are looking to create a wholesale store, WooCommerce is a great platform to use. Next, I'll tell you how to set it up for this purpose.

This is your complete guide to creating a WooCommerce wholesale ordering store

This step-by-step guide will show you how to use the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro WordPress plugin to create a wholesale store. We'll cover all the essential features:

  1. How to create a private wholesale areaDiscover the easy way to restrict access to your WooCommerce wholesale ordering store. You can either create a completely hidden B2B store; or a public retail WooCommerce store with private wholesale area. It comes with everything you need including unlimited wholesale user roles and user registration (with or without moderation). You can also choose which products to show in the public and/or wholesale stores.
  2. Set wholesale pricing and discountsNearly all WooCommerce wholesale stores need to charge different retail prices and wholesale prices. What's more, many also need to charge different wholesale pricing to different groups of wholesale users. I'll show you how to add 3 different types of wholesale dynamic pricing.
  3. Create user-friendly wholesale layouts and order formsFinally, you'll learn how to list products in an easy-to-use WooCommerce wholesale ordering form. B2B customers don't want to browse through multiple pages or look at big images, so a wholesale quick re-order list is a must.

At the end of this tutorial, you will know how to create a WooCommerce wholesale store with all these amazing features. It's easier to set up than other WooCommerce wholesale plugins or WordPress membership plugins. You'll have everything you need to enable WooCommerce wholesale ordering today.

Video tutorial

To get started, watch the video or follow the written instructions in the step-by-step guide below.

Before you start – set up your basic WooCommerce store

If you haven't already done so, then you need a WordPress website with a domain name. You should also install the WooCommerce plugin on it. (If you don't know how, check out this guide on How do I set up a WooCommerce shop?) Add some products to get started. At this stage, all your products will be publicly available and presented in the default layout.

Keep reading to learn how to add a hidden WooCommerce wholesale area.

1. Create a private WooCommerce wholesale ordering area

Firstly, you need to add a wholesale WooCommerce store which is hidden from public view so that only approved wholesale customers can access it. You might choose to set up a standard online retail WooCommerce store with a separate private wholesale area. Or you can even have a 100% hidden WooCommerce wholesale ordering store that no one else knows exists!

You can do all of this with WooCommerce Wholesale Pro. This section will answer the question "How do I create a wholesale page in WordPress?" You'll learn how to use this fantastic WooCommerce wholesale plugin to add:

  1. Wholesale login page - with or without a registration form for new wholesalers.
  2. User roles - create additional wholesale custom user roles.
  3. Wholesale products - you can either use the same products in the public and wholesale areas (with special pricing and order forms for wholesale users, of course); or you can have completely different products for retail and wholesale.
  4. Menu links - Set up the wholesale store navigation.

All these steps are optional, so you can stick with the default options to set up the WooCommerce wholesale app even more quickly.

1a. Install the WooCommerce wholesale plugin

To get started, buy the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin. Install and activate the plugin, then add your license key using the instructions in the confirmation email.

As soon as you do this, the plugin will automatically create a wholesale user role, a Wholesale Store page, and a Wholesale Login page.

Your WooCommerce wholesale store is now 90% set up, and you haven't even done anything yet!

1b. Set up wholesale registration (optional)

Secondly, log into the WordPress Dashboard and go to WooCommerce → Settings → Wholesale → General. Choose whether or not to allow new users to register for the wholesale store:

WooCommerce wholesale plugin settings

If you enable wholesale registration, then:

  • The Wholesale Login page will also include a registration form.
  • You can choose whether new wholesalers can access the wholesale area immediately, or whether their customer account will be held for moderation by an administrator first.

If you disable wholesale registration, then you can still add wholesalers manually via the WordPress admin.

Edit your wholesale registration emails (optional)

The WooCommerce wholesale plugin comes with a range of emails for each stage of the wholesale registration process:

WooCommerce wholesale emails

When you install the wholesale plugin, these emails will be pre-populated with suitable wording. You can easily edit the emails at WooCommerce → Settings → Wholesale → Roles if required.

Once registered, wholesale users will receive the same emails as your normal customers. These are provided by WooCommerce rather than the wholesale plugin.

1c. Add extra wholesale user roles (optional)

The WooCommerce wholesale plugin automatically creates one wholesale user role. If you want to charge different wholesale prices to different wholesale users, then you need to create a separate user role for each group.

You can easily do this at WooCommerce → Settings → Wholesale → Roles:

WooCommerce wholesale roles settings page

If you enabled wholesale registration, then new wholesalers will be added to the default wholesale user role. You can then change their user role manually (for example, when you approve their account).

If you add new wholesale users manually via Users → Add New in the WordPress admin, then you can select the appropriate wholesale user role from the 'Roles' dropdown.

1d. Control the visibility of your WooCommerce wholesale products (optional)

By default, all the products in your WooCommerce wholesale store are available to everyone. Public users and normal customers see the standard price for each product, while wholesale users see the correct price for their role.

If you prefer, then you can choose whether each category of products is visible to public users or wholesalers only. You can easily do this under Products → Categories:

WooCommerce wholesale category plugin

This lets you sell different products or SKU's to retail and wholesale buyers.

1e. Set up the wholesale store navigation

Finally, you need to structure your wholesale store so that people can easily find their way around. This only takes a minute:

  • Link to the wholesale login pageSome WooCommerce wholesale stores add a wholesale login link to their public website, while others keep this private. You can add a link to the 'Wholesale Login' page to your menu or anywhere else on your site (e.g. the footer). Or if you want to hide the fact that you have a wholesale store, then you can send a link to the Wholesale Login page to your distributors (e.g. in the email to new wholesale users). As a result, retail customers will never know there's a hidden wholesale area.
  • Edit your navigation menuThe WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin cleverly shows and hides your menu links so that each user only sees pages they have access to. Make sure the main menu on your site contains all the required links for both the public and wholesale users. Each one will only see the correct links for them. For example, public visitors or normal customers will see the link to the Wholesale Login page. But they won't see any other links to wholesale-only content. If they login as a wholesale user, then the menu changes to hide any public-only links and display the wholesale-only content. Neat!

Case study: Wholesale navigation for Best Remy Hair Extensions

NRD Web Design used WooCommerce Wholesale Pro to build a private wholesale area for their client Best Remy Hair Extensions.

To ensure that wholesalers can find the hidden products and pricing, they added clear 'Wholesale Login' and 'Wholesale Registration' links to the website header. This creates an intuitive user experience for wholesale buyers, without affecting the navigation for normal customers. 

WooCommerce Wholesale Registration Login Plugin

Next, it's time to set up your WooCommerce wholesale pricing.

Wholesale pricing and discounts

The next step is to add the correct pricing and discounts for your wholesale users. You can set different pricing for each wholesale role - perfect if you have tiered wholesale discounts for different groups.

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro provides 3 easy ways to set wholesale prices:

  1. Global percentage discountOn WooCommerce → Settings → Wholesale → Roles, set a % discount for each wholesale role. This will be deducted from the wholesale price of all products for users with that role, except for any products that have a category or product-specific discount.
  2. Category percentage discountFor greater control, you can set category-level % discounts which will affect all products in that category and its sub-categories (except for any products where you have entered individual wholesale pricing).
  3. Product-specific wholesale pricingFor even more fine-grained control, you can set specific wholesale variable prices for each product or variation. (Note: This option only appears for roles where you have enabled product-specific pricing on WooCommerce → Settings → Wholesale → Roles.)
WooCommerce product wholesale price
An example of setting product-specific wholesale pricing for a variable product

Logged-in wholesale users will see the correct product pricing for their user role. The main price will appear crossed out, and the wholesale price will appear alongside.

If the product is also visible to guest users and non-wholesale user roles, then they will see the standard price as usual. Your WooCommerce wholesale pricing will remain secure and only wholesale users will ever be able to see it.

You can combine the different types of wholesale pricing as required, and the plugin will always show the correct price. For example, if you set a global, category-level AND individual product discount then wholesalers will just see the individual product discount. If there is no product-specific wholesale price then wholesalers will see the category discount, and so on.

How to set wholesale prices on your WooCommerce store

Adding a global wholesale price

wholesale user roles
  1. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Wholesale → Roles.
  2. Click to edit each wholesale role.
  3. Add a whole number in the global discount field. This percentage will be deducted from all products, unless it is overridden by a category or product-specific wholesale price.

Adding category wholesale pricing

B2B ecommerce product isibility
  1. Go to Products → Categories.
  2. Either add a new category or edit an existing one.
  3. Add a whole number for each wholesale role. This will be deducted as a percentage discount off all the product pages (except for products where you set an exact wholesale price).

On this screen, you can also hide the category from public or wholesale users if required.

Adding exact wholesale product prices

WooCommerce variable product wholesale price
  1. Go to the main Products list in the WordPress admin and click on the product you want to add an exact wholesale price for.
  2. On the 'Edit Product' screen, scroll down to the 'Product Data' section. For simple products, go to the 'General' tab and add an exact price (not a percentage discount) for each wholesale user role. For variable products, go to the 'Variations' tab and enter an exact wholesale price per variation.

How to create user-friendly wholesale layouts & order forms

PolBazar24 One-Page WooCommerce Order Form

So far we've covered the best ways to protect your wholesale area from public users and to set wholesale pricing. But that's only half the journey to creating the best WooCommerce wholesale store.

The other half is the layout of your wholesale area. This is more to do with user experience and growing your wholesale sales rather than functionality.

There's little point having a private wholesalers section if it's clunky and difficult to use, or if it looks identical to your retail shop. You need to ensure that you're offering a visually different experience that's better catered to the needs of wholesalers.

Public eCommerce shops tend to use a standard layout with large product images and basic information. This is suited to retail customers who don't need to know detailed specifications for each product but do want eye-catching, persuasive visual listings. Customers can browse the products and click through to view more detail on individual product pages. They take their time to choose each product, and are happy to visit a separate page to choose quantities and variations for each one.

This retail-style layout isn't suitable for most WooCommerce wholesale stores. But strangely, nearly all WooCommerce wholesale plugins neglect this important fact, and leave the wholesale area looking the same as the public shop.

To fix the problem, WooCommerce Wholesale Pro is designed to work alongside its sister plugin - WooCommerce Product Table.WooCommerce Wholesale Pro wholesale default layout

WooCommerce Product Table offers a wholesale-friendly order form layout

Products are listed in a responsive space-saving grid or tabular layout with extra product data and instant purchase options.

This is more appropriate for wholesale customers, who are already familiar with your products. They want to see all the information at a glance, select quantities and variations, and make quick buying decisions from a one-page order form. They definitely don't want to waste time visiting a separate page for each product!

A product table wholesale layout provides an easy way for B2B customers to re-order their regular products, acting as a wholesale quick re-order list.

WooCommerce wholesale ordering plugin reviews

Case study #1 - PolBazar24 wholesale product table

WooCommerce trade store

PolBazar24 is a Polish food wholesaler. They've made it as simple as possible for customers to place an order using their one-page wholesale B2B re-order list powered by WooCommerce Product Table. It lists everything wholesalers need to know in a quick-to-view layout on the front-end, from a short description to the product wholesale price and weight.

The wholesale order form even shows whether the product is in stock. As most wholesale customers know what they're looking for, they just need to check what they want is in stock. Then all they have to do is enter the quantities they need, select any product variations, and click add to cart.

Read on to find out how to create your own wholesale product tables for WooCommerce.

Case study #2 - Yarn Gate wholesale product tables with quick view

WooCommerce wholesale quick view plugin

Yarn Gate use their WC wholesale website to sell high quality knitting yarn to B2B and the trade. They use Woo Product Table together with Quick View Pro and WooCommerce Attribute Swatches to create the perfect WooCommerce wholesale suite of plugins.

The developer wanted a quick one-page wholesale order form that would allow quick buying away from the single product page. They also wanted wholesale customers to be able to click on an image to select each color variation.

The best way to achieve this was to combine the three add-ons and select color swatches from a quick view wholesale lightbox.

Keep reading to learn how to achieve the same for your own WooCommerce wholesale website.

How to create wholesale product tables

  1. Get WooCommerce Product Table. You can buy it on its own, but it's cheapest to buy it as a bundle with WooCommerce Wholesale Pro. (You can do this on the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro sales page.)
  2. Install and activate WooCommerce Product Table using the instructions in the confirmation email.
  3. Go to the plugin settings page from the admin panel – WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product Table. Enter your license key from the confirmation email, choose the default settings for your wholesale order forms, and click Save. You can customize every detail of your tables, from the styling to the table columns, filters and sort order.
  4. You can manually add product tables using a shortcode. However, it's best to set up your product tables centrally in step 3. Then go to WooCommerce → Settings → Wholesale → Layout and automatically enable the product table layout in the wholesale store. This will display the wholesale order form for logged in wholesale users, while keeping your default layouts for guests and retail customers.
  5. Save changes to make them live.

Getting more sales from your wholesale product tables

A WooCommerce wholesale pricing product table with variations.
Choose what to display in your wholesale order form

The WooCommerce wholesale table plugin is incredibly flexible. Here's a summary of the main features to list wholesale products:

  • Columns The table can contain various columns. It supports all the main WooCommerce data fields (title, description, categories, product attributes, tags, stock, etc.). You can also add extra product data through custom fields and taxonomies.
  • "Add to cart" buttons By including add to cart buttons, wholesale customers order online directly from the product table view. Choose whether to include a quantity selector and product variations. You can also create further options using the Product Options plugin. This way, you can create a wholesale order form for easy bulk ordering and quick re-ordering.
  • Wholesale enquiry forms You can replace the add to cart column with wholesale enquiry buttons. By adding buttons or links to the wholesale table, users can click through to a separate page with an enquiry form (created using a WordPress contact form plugin). Alternatively, use WooCommerce Product Table with a Request a Quote plugin.
  • Downloadable documents Lots of Woo wholesale stores provide downloadable files with technical product information. This is useful for downloadable promotional materials, specification documents, etc. You can add a column with an icon, button or text for each product linking to a downloadable PDF or similar.
  • Search, sort & filters Use filters to help wholesale buyers to find products quickly and easily.

Use quick view to speed up wholesale ordering

By now, you know how to create a one-page WooCommerce wholesale order form. But what if you want to show even more information or purchase options, without taking wholesale users to a separate page for each product?

You can do this by adding the WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin. This wholesale quick view plugin lets you add quick view links or buttons to the order form. Trade customers can view extra product information, choose variations and add to the cart from a quick view lightbox.

Once they have made their selections, they immediately return to the wholesale order form where they can add more products to their order. As a result, it's much quicker than buying from a separate page.

There are lots of ways to tailor the quick view lightbox to your WooCommerce wholesale store. For example:

  • Choose whether or not to include images in the quick view popup. Many wholesale stores sell non-visual products, so there's no need to distract buyers with big images.
  • Decide whether to include quick view buttons, or just let customers open the lightbox by clicking the product name or image.
  • Change the wording of the Quick View button (e.g. to 'Configure Options', 'Read More' or 'Customize Product').
  • Choose which information to display in the wholesale lightbox.

Test your WooCommerce wholesale store

Now you've set up the WooCommerce wholesale plugin. It's also important to test the experience for both public and wholesale specific users.

  1. Log out and visit the shop as a guest. Can you see the correct products and pricing?
  2. Now login as a wholesale user. Again, can you see the correct products and pricing? Are the menu links intuitive, and can you see the wholesale order form layout (if you're using WooCommerce Product Table)?

Go back to the plugin settings and continue tweaking your wholesale store until it's perfect.

Add wholesale users to your WooCommerce store

Once you've finished testing the WooCommerce wholesale plugin, it's time to start adding wholesale users.

If you have enabled wholesale registration, then people can register for an account on the Wholesale Login page. You might also want to add wholesale users yourself. There are a few ways to do this:

  • Add wholesale users manuallyCreate a user account (Users → Add New) in the WordPress Dashboard for each wholesale user. Assign them to one of your wholesale roles.
  • Convert existing customers to wholesaleIf you want to convert an existing customer to wholesale, then you can easily do this by editing their account and choosing a wholesale user role from the 'Roles' dropdown.
  • Bulk import themIf you're migrating from another B2B eCommerce system and have a lot of wholesale users to import, then we have provided instructions on how to do this.

Whichever method you use to add them, your B2B e-commerce users can log into their account and access the private WooCommerce wholesale area. Guests and other user roles will never know it exists!

Bonus tips

Build a 100% private WooCommerce wholesale store

Some wholesale stores don't have a public eCommerce area at all. You can set up the WooCommerce wholesale plugin without a retail-facing store.

To do this, make sure all your product categories are marked as 'Wholesale Only'. This will hide them from public view and from search engines.

If you want to hide other parts of WooCommerce too - for example, the links to your cart and checkout pages - then we recommend using WooCommerce Wholesale Pro with our other WooCommerce B2B plugin, WooCommerce Private Store. Use WooCommerce Wholesale Pro for your wholesale registration, login, and to set different wholesale prices for each wholesale role - and use WooCommerce Private Store to ensure that those extra parts of your store are hidden from public view. (Note: Your non-WooCommerce pages - such as the homepage and blog - remain public.)

WooCommerce Private Store is designed specifically for stores that don't sell to the public. Just read what this happy customer said about it:

Exactly what I needed
Building a wholesale store, with a plugin, where only my accepted dealers can obtain access, was exactly what I was looking for - and Barn2Media provided exactly that plugin.... After watching the YouTube videos and communicating with Barn2Media, I had no doubts, that this was the right plugin for me - and it works just perfect....

Hide prices from non-wholesale users

Perhaps you have a wholesale-only store where you want the public to be able to browse the products, but not see the wholesale pricing. You can do this by using WooCommerce Wholesale Pro with the Catalog Visibility Options plugin:

  • Use Wholesale Pro to set up wholesale user registration, create wholesale user roles, and to add WooCommerce wholesale pricing and discounts.
  • Use Catalog Visibility Options to hide the prices and add to cart buttons from logged out users. You can also hide them from logged in users with non-wholesale roles.

When non-wholesalers visit your store, they can browse products as usual, but the prices and purchase options will remain hidden.

Create customer-specific wholesale products and pricing

Some WooCommerce wholesale stores provide specific products and/or pricing for each customer. For example:

  • You might sell custom products (e.g. branded items) that are specific to each wholesale user.
  • Alternatively, you might sell the same products to all your wholesalers, but need to charge user-specific pricing.

Luckily, the WooCommerce wholesale plugin comes with built-in product visibility options. You can choose whether each product category in your online store is available to retail customers, wholesale users, or both.

This is how to create wholesale-only products which are hidden from your retail store:

  1. First, set up WooCommerce Wholesale Pro, as described above.
  2. Next, go to Products → Categories in the WordPress Dashboard.
  3. Add or edit a product category. Either way, find the 'Visibility' settings which are added by the WooCommerce wholesale plugin. The default is 'Public and Wholesale', so change this to 'Wholesale Only'.
Wholesale category discount visibility options

Create retail-only products

Of course, you also might want to create products which are available to public retail customers but not wholesale users. You can do that with WooCommerce Wholesale Pro too.

Simply follow the instructions in the previous section. The only difference is that you need to set the category to 'Public Only', and this will hide it from the WooCommerce wholesale area.

Add wholesale-only payment methods

As we discussed earlier, wholesale buyers often have fundamentally different needs from normal retail customers. After all, wholesalers are regular customers who are buying in bulk, rather than browsing for their own personal use.

As a result, many WooCommerce wholesale stores need to offer different payment methods for each type of user. For example:

  • Imagine that you want to offer PayPal to retail customers but not wholesale buyers due to the high PayPal fees.
  • Maybe you want wholesale customers to pay by invoice or bank transfer/BACS, while requiring instant online payment from regular customers.

The solution is to use the role-based payments feature in WooCommerce Wholesale Pro:

  1. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Payments.
  2. First, make sure you have added all the payment methods that you will be offering, such as PayPal, credit card, invoice, etc.
  3. Next, find the 'Payment Roles' page.
  4. For each payment method on your store, select which user role(s) it will be available to.

One you've done that, guests and normal customers will only see the payment gateways which are available to their role. Similarly, wholesale buyers will only see the payment methods for their role.

Create wholesale-only shipping methods

Shipping products to wholesale customers can be very different to shipping retail orders. That's because wholesale orders tend to be in bulk and involve much larger quantities. As a result, you may want to offer different shipping methods and costs to each type of customer.

For example:

  • Lots of online shops offer flat rate shipping costs or free shipping to retail customers. In contrast, they're more likely to cover their costs by offering weight-based shipping to wholesale buyers using a plugin like YITH Product Shipping.
  • In addition, some WooCommerce wholesale stores offer free shipping to their highest tier of wholesale users. This might be buyers with the highest historical sales, as offering free shipping is a way to reward them for their loyalty.

You can do this using the role-based shipping methods feature in WooCommerce Wholesale Pro:

  1. In the WordPress Dashboard, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping.
  2. Add all the different shipping methods and costs that you require for each shipping zone.
  3. Now go to the 'Shipping Roles' tab within the same section.
  4. Use the options on the page to choose which shipping methods will be available to each user role. Select different shipping methods for retail and wholesale customers.

Or if you don't want to worry about shipping to wholesale users, consider a dropshipping arrangement where the order fulfilment is handled by a third party.

Ready to create a WooCommerce wholesale area in 15 minutes?

If you've been wondering "How long does it take to build a WooCommerce store?" then I hope this tutorial has given you the answer.

WooCommerce Wholesale Pro is a plug-and-play solution to help store owners and developers to create a professional wholesale area in minutes. It's the best WooCommerce B2B plugin for online store owners that want to sell to different types of customers.

No technical knowledge is needed. Just follow the instructions in this tutorial, and you'll be up and running in no time.

  • WooCommerce wholesale plugin with quick plug-and-play setup.
  • In-depth documentation and video tutorials showing you ever step and every click (absolutely no way to get it wrong!).
  • Technical support is available if you need any help.
  • Zero-risk 30 day money back guarantee. Love it or get a full refund!

Get the WooCommerce B2B plugin here, and start taking wholesale orders TODAY →