WooCommerce geolocation plugin

We're pleased to announce that our WooCommerce Product Table plugin works with a WooCommerce geolocation plugin. You can use this to show different content in your product tables depending on the customer's country.
WooCommerce Product Table Plugin Compatibility Logo

GeoTargeting Lite – WordPress Geolocation shows or hides completely different product tables depending on the customer's country. Each product table can show products from a different category or tag. Use this plugin to show different products to different countries, listed in an interactive product table layout. GeoTargetingWP has joined the official WooCommerce Product Table compatibility scheme.

How to use GeoTargeting Lite with WooCommerce Product Table

Next, I'll tell you how to create different product tables which appear depending on the user's country.

How the WooCommerce geolocation plugin works

The free WooCommerce geolocation plugin comes with 2 shortcodes:

  • [geot country="US"] USA only content [/geot]
  • [geot exclude_country="US"] Everyone except USA will see this [/geot]

You can use these to show or hide specific content anywhere on your website depending on the user's country. The geolocation plugin looks at their IP address to decide which country they're in.

You need to know the correct 2-letter alpha country code for the geolocation to work.

How to create country-specific WooCommerce product tables

Use the WooCommere geolocation shortcodes to create country-specific product tables. I'm assuming that you have already set up WooCommerce and added your products.

  1. Install WooCommerce Product Table and GeoTargeting Lite – WordPress Geolocation.
  2. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Product Table, activate your WooCommerce Product Table license key, and configure the plugin settings to choose your product table columns, filters etc.
  3. Next, you need to label your products based on the countries they should be visible to. You can use categories or tags for this. Or if you're already using categories and tags for something else, then create a WooCommerce taxonomy and use this instead. If you want a single product to appear for multiple countries, then it's ok to put them in more than one category/tag/taxonomy.
  4. Create a new page where you will be adding the country-specific product tables.
  5. Next, you need to use the geolocation shortcodes to create product tables that are only visible depending on the user's country. Put the [product_table] shortcode inside the geolocation shortcodes. This will show or hide a product table to the correct country only, depending on which shortcode you're using.
  6. Add as many WooCommerce geolocation shortcodes to the page, each showing or hiding product tables from one or more countries. Use the examples below as guidance on how to do this.

Tip: If you want a specific product table to be visible or hidden from more than one country, then you can add multiple country codes within a single shortcode, Just separate them with commas.

Geolocation example 1

The following combination of shortcodes will create a page containing 2 product tables: 1 showing products from a category called 'france-germany' to customers in France and Germany only, and 1 showing products from the 'UK' category to customers in the UK only:

[geot country="FR,DE"][product_table category="france-germany"] [/geot]

[geot country="US"] [product_table category="us"] [/geot]

As you can see, I have added two product tables to the page. However, each customer will only ever see one product table depending on their location.

Geolocation example 2

This time, we'll use the exclude option to create a product table that will not appear for customers in the US. This assumes that you have tagged these products 'US':

[geot exclude_country="US"] [product_table tag="us"] [/geot]

Geolocation example 3

In this final example, we'll use the include and exclude options together. This will create a product table that is visible to all countries except for Australia. It assumes that I have created a category called 'Australia' for the Australia-only products. It's a useful method if sell different products to a specific country in WooCommerce, e.g. for legal reasons.

[geot country="AU"] [product_table category="australia"] [/geot]

[geot exclude_country="AU"] [product_table exclude_category="australia"] [/geot]

All customers will see 1 product table on the page. Customers in Australia will see the products from the Australia category, and everyone else will see all your other products.

How to show and hide the country-specific products elsewhere on your site

The above instructions will only show or hide the products in your WooCommerce product tables.

You will need to use the geolocation plugin's other features to restrict the visibility of products elsewhere in your store, for example on the main shop pages, widgets and single product pages. To help with this, you can use the above shortcodes anywhere on your site and in template files.

If you want to restrict access to any of the default WooCommerce pages and direct people to your geolocation product table page, then the free Redirection plugin is perfect for this. Simply add a redirect from any unwanted pages such as the main Shop page, and users will be taken to your product tables page instead.

Do any other geolocation plugins work with WooCommerce Product Table?

Right now, this is the only WooCommerce geolocation plugins that we know works correctly in the product table view.

We also tested with Product Country Restrictions and found that it works with WooCommerce Product Table. However, that plugin is no longer actively updated or supported, so we wouldn't recommend it.

There are some geolocation plugins that definitely don't work with it, and we have included these on our list of incompatible plugins.

There are other geolocation plugins that we haven't tested with. Please let us know if you discover any more that work with WooCommerce Product Table, and we'd be happy to include them on this page.

Where to get the WooCommerce geolocation plugin

You can get WooCommerce Product Table from our website. GeoTargeting Lite – WordPress Geolocation is available free from WordPress.org.

Get WooCommerce Product Table

In need of a WooCommerce product display plugin? You're in the right place! In this post, I'm going to introduce you to the best such plugin in the market, plus show you how to use it, step by step.

Here's what you can expect from the plugin in action:

table filter

But first:

Why do you need a WooCommerce product display plugin anyway?

WooCommerce is a great tool, it truly is. But like with most products, there are some chinks in its armor.

For instance, one area where WooCommerce falls a bit short are the available options when it comes to displaying your product catalog in full. Well, when I say "options" ... there actually aren't any.

What you do get is just one default view that you can customize only slightly via WordPress Customizer. Doing more in-depth modifications is basically a nightmare if you don't have any coding or WordPress/HTML knowledge.

This is that default view:WooCommerce default grid

In itself, it's a nice presentation for a standard retail store where each product should get a small portion of the spotlight. But it's not optimal for all business scenarios imaginable.

This is where the WooCommerce Product Table plugin comes into the picture.

What WooCommerce Product Table does better than default WooCommerce

Simply speaking, WooCommerce Product Table allows you to display products inside a searchable and sortable table view. Like this:

WooCommerce Product Display plugin

A couple of important notes about this WooCommerce product display plugin:

  • The plugin gives you an additional way of displaying your product catalog - it doesn't replace the default one. You can still use the old catalog view on your website as well.
  • The plugin doesn't alter the individual (single) product pages. However, you can add product tables to the single product pages if you wish to. Read here for more info.
  • You can put a product table on any post or page, and you can use multiple such tables.
  • It comes with a search field (which works as you type) and a filtering mechanism. You can also sort by any column.
  • It inherits the styling from your current theme, matching the rest of the website.
  • It's fully responsive and mobile-friendly.
  • It works on multilingual WordPress sites.
  • You can include/exclude certain products or product categories.

See the full feature list here.

Being able to display your product catalog this way opens up a handful of interesting possibilities:

When to use this alternative WooCommerce product display plugin

First off, the more products you have in your store, the more you'll enjoy WooCommerce Product Table.

Additionally, the plugin helps you handle all the product variations that you might have in your store.

For instance, you can display those variations as individual rows in the table. Tables are much better at showcasing similar products since they're much easier to scan through than a grid view. Not to mention that the buyer can filter through the variations with a couple of clicks (see the animated GIF above).

Here are some interesting ways in which the WooCommerce product display plugin can be used:

Use case #1: A wholesale catalog

Wholesale customers usually expect different things than retail customers. Most importantly, they don't want to be forced to have to scroll through pages upon pages of product listings. They also probably already know what they want to get, and how much of it. And finally, they want to get as quickly through the process as possible.

A product table works great for that. Everything is in one place, and the customer can buy multiple items at once.

We have a separate guide on how to build a WooCommerce wholesale store.

Use case #2: Use it to market to returning customers

A WooCommerce product display plugin is great when your customers are already familiar with your products and just want to get their hands on them as soon as possible.

This can happen when you're marketing to returning customers through an email campaign or social media ads.

With a customizable product table, you can pick the exact product category to display, put it on a certain page on your site, and then send people directly to that page.

Use case #3: Use it when products come back in stock

If you have certain products in your offer that often go out of stock (due to popularity), you can put all those products in a separate category and then display that category on a separate page inside a product table.

Since the products are already popular, your customers will probably not need any additional convincing why they should get them.

As an added bonus, the WooCommerce product display plugin lets you show stock as a separate column, which should help the cause as well.

in stock

Use case #4: Use it to sell supplies

Office supplies, workshop supplies, construction supplies, etc. If you're in a business like that, displaying all your products as a table can be much more efficient than using a grid display.

Let's face it, no one under the sun is particularly interested in looking at an individual sales/product page for some sticky notes or a pair of scissors.

The table display also makes things easier when buying multiple products - which usually does happen when we're talking supplies.

Use case #5: A configurator

Build Your Own Product Website WooCommerce

A table-based WooCommerce product display plugin can be an interesting alternative when selling anything that's made up of a number of individual elements that the customer can adjust/select.

We're basically turning that product table into a functional product configurator.

Think things like custom PC computer builds, or handmade furniture, or "make your pizza."

A pizzeria, for example, could use a separate webpage for online orders. On it, they can put a product table that lists pizza toppings (like pepperoni, tomato, olives, chicken, etc.). This lets the customer get their ideal tailor-made pizza.

Interested in building a configurator? Here's our step by step guide.

How to use WooCommerce Product Table

This WooCommerce product display plugin works much like any other WordPress plugin. Here's how to get started:

1. Get and install WooCommerce Product Table

Click this to get the plugin:

You will be able to download the plugin from your order confirmation page.

  • Save the ZIP file with the plugin to your desktop.
  • Take note of your license key.

Log in to your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New, and click the Upload Plugin button that's at the top of the page.

Select the ZIP file of the plugin from your desktop, and click on Install Now. Then click on Activate to finalize the process.

2. Configure WooCommerce Product Table

To configure the plugin, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables:

WooCommerce product display plugins

The first thing you need to do is enter the license key in the very first field (see above).

Click on Save changes to enable the plugin fully.

At this stage, you can begin configuring how exactly this WooCommerce product display plugin is going to go about displaying your products.

Most of the options on the page are pretty self-explanatory, plus you can click on the Read more links next to each one.

Visit the complete list of plugin options here.

3. Add a product table to any post or page

This really couldn't be easier. The exact method 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.
    WooCommerce Product Table Gutenberg Block

This shortcode is going to be turned into an actual table once you save/publish your post/page.

Best part, you can customize this shortcode by adding parameters to it. And there is a lot of those! Let me give you just a couple of examples:

  • Display only products from certain categories: [product_table category="courses,books"]
  • Limit the number of columns to just the product name and price: [product_table columns="name,price"]
  • Use a checkbox instead of an "add to cart" button - useful for product configurators: [product_table cart_button="checkbox"]

Here's a complete list of all the ways in which you can modify the main shortcode.

Important note. Modifying this shortcode is purely optional. If you don't do anything to it and just stick with the default version ([product_table]), the plugin will take all its settings from the main settings page (WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables). Modifying the shortcode is a good idea if you want to add multiple tables to your site, each one different. But if what you need is a single table, you best get it configured in the settings. There's a lot of options there:

woocommerce product display table settings

Bonus tip: Add quick view to your WooCommerce product display

WooCommerce Product Table Quick View Magnifying GlassWooCommerce Product Table displays products in a tabular list. You can build on this by using it with its companion plugin, WooCommerce Quick View Pro. This lets you add quick view buttons and/or links to the list of products. Customers can click on them to view more information, the full product image gallery, and even choose variations and add to the cart from a quick view lightbox.

It's a big improvement if:

  • You want to display extra product information that doesn't fit within the table layout.
  • There are too many variations or options for each product to neatly fit into the product table.
  • You want to keep customers on the product list, instead of being taken to a separate page for each product. (This is a good way to increase the average value of each sale, as customers are likely to buy more products from you.)

Get Woo Quick View

Improve the display of your WooCommerce products

At the end of the day, WooCommerce Product Table presents a really interesting alternative to the default way in which WooCommerce handles the display of your product catalog. If you have enough products in your offer, you're very likely to enjoy it. Like these people do:

testimonials

Want to learn more about what this WooCommerce product display plugin can do? Check out our knowledge base.

Hide WooCommerce products

Looking for a solution to hide WooCommerce products at your store? Sometimes you don't want every single product available to the public, especially if you're running something like a B2B/wholesale or members-only store (though the use cases definitely don't stop there).

In this step-by-step tutorial, I'll show you how to hide products in WooCommerce using three different methods, depending on the level at which you want to hide your products. By the end of this article, you'll be able to hide:

  • A single product using WooCommerce to hide specific products from the shop page.
  • An entire category of products using the WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin (either by password, role, or individual user login).
  • Your entire store using the WooCommerce Private Store (either by password or user login).
An example of a category hidden with a password

WooCommerce Private Store
Protected Categories

Benefits of Hiding Products on a WooCommerce Store

There are several reasons why store owners might want to utilize WooCommerce hide products on your ecommerce store:

  1. Exclusive products: You may have some products that you only want to make available to a select group of customers, such as a VIP customer group or WooCommerce members of a loyalty program. By using the WooCommerce hide product feature, you can create a sense of exclusivity and make customers feel special.
  2. Seasonal products: If you sell seasonal products, you may want to hide them during the off-season to avoid confusing customers or cluttering up your online store. This can also help you to manage your inventory more effectively.
  3. Pre-launch products: If you're concerned about product visibility WooCommerce, and are planning to launch a new product or collection, you might consider hiding it until you're ready to make it available to the public. This can help to build excitement and anticipation among your customers.
  4. Wholesale products: If you offer wholesale customers pricing to certain customers, you may want to use the WooCommerce hide product feature from other customers who are not eligible for the discounted pricing.
  5. Personalization: You may want to create a personalized shopping experience for your customers by using product visibility WooCommerce based on their past purchase history, preferences, or other factors.

Which way of hiding WooCommerce products is right for you?

I'll keep this brief because you probably have a good idea of which is right for your situation already. But in a nutshell, if you're wondering how to hide products in WooCommerce, there are a few different methods available depending on your needs and preferences.

  • Option 1 - Hide an individual productThe core WooCommerce functionality is helpful if you just need to hide a single product. There's a built-in way to use WooCommerce to hide specific products from the WooCommerce shop page. But it becomes difficult to manage if you want to hide multiple products.
  • Option 2 - Hide categoriesWooCommerce Protected Categories are good if you want to just create some hidden products in an otherwise public store. You can use it to password protect products based on category; WooCommerce hide products by role; or WooCommerce hide products from everyone except specific users.
  • Option 3 - Hide your whole storeWooCommerce Private Store is good if you want to make every single product hidden. You can use it to password protect your entire store or hide it from all logged out users (guests).

Below, I'll take you through how to use each plugin to hide WooCommerce products, as well as the core WooCommerce functionality. Or if you prefer, then you can watch a video about how to set up product visibility WooCommerce:

Option 1: Hide a specific WooCommerce product from the shop page

Note: when you use this method, the product is hidden from the shop pages. But if a user gets their hands on a direct link, they'll still be able to access the product. For that reason, this method is not a good approach if you actually want to make the product private - not just hidden.

Also, this method isn't very efficient if you need to hide multiple products, as you'll need to manually edit every single product. When it comes to hiding multiple products on WooCommerce, a more efficient approach is to assign them to a category in bulk and then hide that category using one of the methods for how to hide products in WooCommerce.

If you're ok with the product still being accessible by direct URL, then it's fine to use WooCommerce to hide specific products from the shop page.

You can do this by editing the Catalog visibility option under Publish and choosing Hidden:

woocommerce hide product

Option 2: How to hide an entire category of WooCommerce products

To get started, you'll need WooCommerce Protected Categories installed and activated at your WooCommerce store.

Then, create a new product category for your private products. I'll give mine a creative name of "Private Products", but you can name yours whatever makes sense.

Once you have the category, assign the products that you want to hide to that category.

Now, you've come to the point where you need to make a choice about how you want to let people "unhide" the products in this category. You can:

  • Let users unhide the products by entering a password
  • Make the products automatically visible to certain users or user roles

How to password protect your hidden WooCommerce category

To add password protection, go to Products → Categories and edit the category that you created for your private products:

  • Scroll down to the WooCommerce product Visibility section
  • Select Protected → Password protected
  • Enter your desired password. You can also add multiple passwords to unlock the category if you want to give different users different passwords
  • Save changes

WooCommerce Protected Categories Password Protect

Then, you can configure how your password protected categories function by going to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Protected Categories.

In this area, you'll want to:

  • Uncheck the two Category Visibility checkboxes to make your category 100% hidden
  • Select a Category Login Page where users can enter the password to see the WooCommerce hidden products/categories
WooCommerce Protected Categories Visibility Settings

You can also peruse the other settings to see if anything applies to your specific needs.

Case study: eLearning Launchpad

eLearning Launchpad is a TOGAF 9 accredited training course provider based in the US. Delegates on training courses need to be able to download the course materials in advance of attending the courses.

But instead of using a commercial filesharing service, our WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin hides WooCommerce Products by working alongside the Free Downloads WooCommerce Pro plugin from Wp Enhanced.

Here’s how the two plugins work together. A password protected category page hides the course materials (i.e. WooCommerce products). A password is sent to course participants to access the category page. Then the materials can be downloaded. Thanks to the Free Downloads WooCommerce Pro plugin, they’re able to capture a few details before any file is downloaded.

Even though each download isn’t being sold on the site, they decided to set up the downloads as WooCommerce products to make them easy to manage - and easy to hide.

The site’s owner is pleased with how our plugin is hiding their WooCommerce products, just look at his feedback:

“I like the category simplicity and flexibility, and the ability to quickly add and delete multiple passwords”

How to hide WooCommerce products by specific user or user role

If you'd prefer to automatically give access to the WooCommerce hidden products to certain users or entire roles:

  • Go to Products → Categories
  • Edit the category that you created for your WooCommerce hidden products
  • Scroll down to the WooCommerce product Visibility section
  • Select Protected → Users and choose which users and/or roles can access your hidden WooCommerce products.
  • Save your changes

WooCommerce Protected Categories User Role Protection

Then, you can configure how your user and role protected categories function by going to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Protected Categories. Here, you need to choose what happens when a logged out or guest user tries to access a hidden category or one of its products:

WooCommerce protected categories redirect for logged out users

Option 3: How to hide your entire WooCommerce store

Now it's time for the third, and most private, way to hide WooCommerce products.

If you want to hide all of your products from the public, you'll need the WooCommerce Private Store plugin installed and activated.

Then, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Private Store to configure the plugin.

Just as with hiding specific categories of products, you can hide your store in two different ways:

  • Require users to enter a password to unhide the store
  • Automatically unhide the store for logged in users

Password protecting your hidden store

To add a password:

  • Enter a password (or multiple passwords) in the Store passwords box.
  • Choose how long the password should unhide the store (in days) in the Password expires after the box.
  • Enter the product page you want users to be taken to after logging in using the Redirect URL box.
  • Configure the Login form options.
how to hide your entire woocommerce store

Letting logged in users see your private store

If you want to automatically allow logged in users to see your private store, you just need to check the box for Automatically unlock the store for logged in users. Underneath, you'll find an option to choose which user roles to unlock the store for. This is handy if you only want certain user roles to have access, such as administrators and store managers.

You can also choose whether or not to Hide the login form… that displays for users who aren't logged in:

automatically unlock woocommerce store for logged in users

Three different options to hide WooCommerce products

Whether you need to hide a single product, one or more categories of products, or your entire WooCommerce store, one of the above methods should work for you.

Remember:

  1. To hide a single product, you can use the Hidden Catalog WooCommerce product Visibility option. Just remember that people can still see the product if they get a direct link - it's not actually private.
  2. If you want to hide an entire category of WooCommerce products, WooCommerce Protected Categories lets you do so via either password protection or specific logged in users or roles.
  3. To hide your entire WooCommerce store, WooCommerce Private Store lets you do so via either password protection or by automatically unhiding your store for logged in users.

Private Store Protected Categories

Any other questions about how to hide WooCommerce products on your WordPress website and provide great user experience? Leave a comment and we'll try to help out.

WooCommerce Product Table WPML CompatibleWe're delighted to announce that WPML, the market leading WordPress multilingual system, have formally tested our WooCommerce Product Table plugin and confirmed that it is fully WPML compatible.

WOOCOMMERCE PRODUCT TABLE WPML

We have always tested our WordPress and WooCommerce plugins with WPML. However, this is the first time that we have submitted a plugin to them for formal testing and review. They were happy that WooCommerce Product Table works perfectly with WPML and have issued a certificate of compliance.

Note: Since publishing this article, WPML have discontinued their compatibility program. However, you can still use it with WooCommerce Quick View Pro.

WPML have also published a demo site where you can test WooCommerce Product Table on a multilingual WPML site. To see it in action, visit the demo site and click the languages dropdown in the top right corner.

Demo: Test drive WooCommerce Product Table with WPML.

What about Barn2 Media's other plugins?

Next, we plan to submit our other WordPress plugins to WPML for formal testing and certification.

In the meantime, we have already tested all our plugins with WPML so you can safely use them together for your multilingual websites.

GET WOOCOMMERCE PRODUCT TABLE GET WPML

WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin product table

Lots of people ask how to use our Product Table plugin with a WooCommerce multi vendor marketplace plugin. A multi vendor plugin lets multiple sellers upload and sell products in your WooCommerce store.

Product table layouts are the perfect way to list vendors' products, as you can show more products per page and choose which information to display about each product. A table view also makes it easier to find products, as you can add features such as keyword search and product filters.

What is a WooCommerce multi vendor plugin?

A product vendors plugin transforms any WooCommerce store into an online marketplace with multiple product vendors or sellers.

All multi vendor plugins work in similar ways, so read about them all and choose your favorite one that works with WooCommerce Product Table.

WooCommerce marketplace plugin with product tables

Sellers can register as a product vendor on your WordPress website, or you can add vendors manually. Each vendor can upload products to sell on your WooCommerce store. All the vendors' products are sold together in an online marketplace, similar to popular websites such as Etsy or Not on the High Street. Each vendor will have their own store page within your WooCommerce store, and you can also list products centrally.

You can choose how to pay your vendors. Most multi vendor marketplace plugins have built-in options for giving them commission and sharing profits.

Which WooCommerce multi vendor plugin should I use?

There are quite a few WooCommerce multi vendor plugins, such as YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor, MultiVendorXDokan Multivendor Marketplace, and WooCommerce Product Vendors. I've tested them all and can tell you that the best plugin to use with WooCommerce Product Table is YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor/Marketplace.

It's from a reputable company and integrates fully with WooCommerce Product Table. This means that you can build a fully functional multi-vendor marketplace, with the vendors' products listed in a user-friendly order form layout. As well as having a separate shop page for each vendor, you can create a central page listing all the products in the marketplace. Customers can easily filter by data such as vendor or product attributes to find what they're looking for.

As a result, I will mostly focus on YITH's in this tutorial. At the end I'll show you how to use other WooCommerce multi vendor plugins with WooCommerce Product Table - but there are some compromises involved.

If you're using a different WooCommerce multi vendor plugin, don't worry. I'll provide tips on how to use it with product tables later. But for the fullest integration with WooCommerce Product Table, use YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor.

Keep reading to find out how!

What is WooCommerce Product Table?

WooCommerce Product Table is a WordPress plugin by ourselves at Barn2. It lets you list any type of WooCommerce product in a flexible table layout with search box, filters and any product data that you want to display. It's popular for creating a one-page order form layout for a WooCommerce multi vendor marketplace.

The plugin comes with over 50 options, so there are literally dozens of ways you can customize your product tables. For example,  you can create tables listing all the products in the marketplace, or products from a specific vendor only. I'll talk about the most popular options to use with a WooCommerce multi vendor plugin later.

Here's a video to explain how WooCommerce Product Table works:

How to use YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor with Product Table

WooCommerce multi vendor plugin with product tables
Create an order form listing all products in the marketplace, or separate shops for each vendor

To get started, install WooCommerce Product Table and YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor.

The multi-vendor plugin allows you to create multiple vendors and give them the ability to add products and manage their orders. The product table plugin creates better layouts for your multivendor store. This combination will get more sales for your sellers, and more commission for you - everyone wins!

Set them up now using the documentation for your chosen plugin. Add some products and vendors to get you started.

Set up your multi-vendor product tables

  1. Install WooCommerce Product Table.
  2. Navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product Tables and enter your license key. Choose the default settings for your multi vendor product tables. In particular, you should:
    • Enable the option to display product tables on the Shop page, Vendor taxonomy, and anywhere else you want to use them.
      WooCommerce Product Table Shop Archive template
    • Choose which columns of data you want to include about your marketplace products. For example, you might add image, name, tax:yith_shop_vendor, price, buy. This will display columns for the product image, name, vendor, price, and add to cart buttons.
    • For the 'Add to cart buttons' option, select either 'Checkbox' or 'Button and checkbox'. This helps to increase conversions by allowing customers to add multiple products to the cart at once.
    • In the variations option, select 'Dropdown'. That way, vendors can select variations from directly in the product table.
    • Enable the 'Lazy load' option if the marketplace is likely to have a lot of products.
    • Set the 'Filters' option to 'Custom' and add tax:yith_shop_vendor if you're creating a central page for the whole marketplace. This will let customers filter to find products from a specific vendor. If each vendor will have their own shop page, then add something different like categories, tags. This will add filter dropdowns above the table for the product categories and tags.

Viewing all products in the central marketplace

Now go to the 'Pages' section of the WordPress admin and find the page that is labelled 'Shop'. View the page, and you'll see a product table listing all the products in the multi vendor marketplace.

The table will have whichever columns you choose on the WooCommerce Product Table plugin settings page. If you enabled other features such as filters then these will show too. For example, you might have a filter dropdown above the table where customers can choose a specific vendor. Customers can also click on any vendor in the Vendors column to view products from that seller.

If any of your vendors sell variable products, then the variation options will appear as dropdowns in the add to cart column.

Individual vendor shop pages

Multi vendor shop page with product table

The best thing about using WooCommerce Product Table with YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor/Marketplace is that you can also have a separate shop page for each vendor. That simply isn't possible with any other WooCommerce multi vendor plugins on the market.

The reason it's possible is because the YITH plugin creates a 'custom taxonomy' for each vendor. WooCommerce Product Table works perfectly with custom taxonomy archives. As a result, the taxonomy pages created using the multi vendor plugin will work with the product table layout.

I already showed you how to enable this in the previous section, when you enabled the table layout for the vendors taxonomy. Once you've done that, find the 'Vendors' section in the WordPress admin, and view the list of vendors. Click 'View' for one of them, and this will take you to their vendor shop page. You will see the vendor's products listed in a WooCommerce table.

Listing vendors' products manually

So far, you've learned how to automatically enable the order form layout on the central Shop page and individual vendor store pages. For even more flexibility, you can use a shortcode to list specific products on any page or post in your site. For example:

  • You can create pages listing products from specific categories.
  • To draw attention to specific marketplace products (e.g. Christmas products), you can publish blog posts. As well as writing in general about how perfect your marketplace is for a particular type of product, you can use WooCommerce Product Table to list relevant products.

To do this, add the [product_table] shortcode to a page or post. Use the documentation to choose which products appear in the table. You can list products by category, tag or attribute. Alternatively, use the term option to list products from a specific vendor. This is how to list the products of a vendor called 'vendor1':

  • Product Vendors - [product_table term="wcpv_product_vendors:vendor1"]
  • YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor - [product_table term="yith_shop_vendor:vendor1"]

The shortcode is also useful if you want different settings in different tables on your site. For example, you can add the columns option to the shortcode if you want certain tables to show different information.


How to use product tables with other WooCommerce multi vendor plugins

I mentioned earlier that  YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor works best with WooCommerce Product Table. That's because it creates a taxonomy for each vendor and display the vendors' shop pages as a taxonomy archive - both of which work with WooCommerce Product Table.

However, it is possible to use other multi vendor WooCommerce plugins with WooCommerce Product Table. It's just slightly trickier to set up, and there are some compromises involved.

Product Vendors

The official Product Vendors extension does create a vendors taxonomy which you can display in the product table. It's just not our top recommendations because YITH's plugin is more feature-rich overall.

To use Product Vendors with WooCommerce Product Table, follow the instructions which I have provided above for the YITH plugin. The only change is that you should use tax:wcpv_product_vendors for your column and filter names, instead of tax:yith_shop_vendor.

MultiVendorX

The next best option is MultiVendorX. With this multi vendor plugin, you can easily create a table of all your vendors, complete with a 'Vendor' column and 'Vendor filter dropdown above the table.

The only downside with MultiVendorX is that there's no automated way to enable the product table layout on the individual vendor store pages. Instead, you have to create these pages manually and add a shortcode to list their products.

MultiVendorX does create a taxonomy for each vendor. That's why you can display and filter vendors in the product table. However, it uses a custom template to create the page for each vendor, which doesn't work with WooCommerce Product Table. Your developer could customize the template to allow this (post a job on Codeable if you don't have a developer). I've also provided instructions below on how to manually list products for a specific MultiVendorX vendor.

How to use MultiVendorX with WooCommerce Product Table

  1. Install WooCommerce Product Table and MultiVendorX in the usual way.
  2. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables and set up your product tables, as described earlier in this tutorial. In particular:
    1. To create a central place for the entire marketplace, tick the box to enable product tables on the shop page.
    2. In the columns option, add something like image,name,tax:dc_vendor_shop,price,buy. This will add columns for product image, name, vendor, price, and add to cart.
    3. Set the 'Filters' option to 'Custom' and add tax:dc_vendor_shop. This will add a 'Vendors' filter dropdown above the list of products so that customers can filter by vendor.
  3. To create individual vendor pages, create a page and add the shortcode [product_table term="tax:dc_vendor_shop"]. Replace 'vendor1' with the slug for the vendor whose products you want to list.
  4. Finally, you need to redirect the default vendor pages that MultiVendorX has created, so that customers are taken to the product table page for each vendor instead. To do this, install the free Redirection plugin and set up the redirects.
WooCommerce product vendors plugin with table layouts
Using MultiVendorX to create a table of a specific vendor's products

Dokan, WC Vendors, WCFM Marketplace and other multi-vendor plugins

Now we've got to the plugins that are a bit more difficult to use with WooCommerce Product Table. However, it's still possible and I'll show you how.

All of these plugins store the vendors in ways that WooCommerce Product Table can't work directly with. For example:

  • Dokan Multivendor Marketplace stores each vendor as a user and has its own custom called template store.php. One of our customers has also reported that WooCommerce Product Table is incompatible with the front end product submission in Dokan (although there is another method you could use).
  • WCMp/WCFM has its own custom template called wcfmmp-view-store-products.php.
  • WC Vendors uses the post author/WordPress user rather than storing the vendor information directly on the 'products' post type.

To enable these plugins to work with WooCommerce Product Table, you need to create your own custom taxonomy for 'Vendors'. You can use this to manually tag each vendor's products. Once you've done that, then you can use the two plugins together with no limitations.

If you don't create a vendors taxonomy, then you can still use WooCommerce Product Table to list the products from your entire marketplace. It just won't be possible to add a vendor column, filter by vendor, or list products from specific vendors only.

How to create a vendors taxonomy

Use our tutorial to create a WooCommerce custom taxonomy. Manually add the vendor name as a taxonomy term for each product. This is similar to adding tags in WordPress. You'll find the taxonomy on the right hand side of the 'Add/Edit Product' screen.

Once you've created your Vendors taxonomy, you can:

  • Add a vendor column.
  • Add a vendors filter above the table.
  • List the products from each vendor separately. To do this, either use the Product Table settings page to enable the table layout on the vendor taxonomy pages, or use a shortcode.

Improve your vendors' sales with WooCommerce quick view

WooCommerce Quick View Demo

As you have seen, a product table layout is ideal for listing multiple sellers' products in a WooCommerce multivendor marketplace. You can make it even more effective by combining it with the WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin.

This adds quick view links or buttons to the product table view. Customers use these to see extra images, read more information, choose options and add to the cart from a quick view lightbox. It's a great way to keep customers on the product table page, as there's no need to direct them to a separate page to learn about each product.

After adding a product to the cart, the quick view lightbox closes. This brings the customer straight back to their current place on the list of products, where they can continue browsing. As a result, they're likely to buy multiple products and spend more in your marketplace store.

Create a multi seller marketplace with product tables

WooCommerce multiple product vendors plugin

WooCommerce multi vendor plugins are a fantastic way to transform your store into a complete marketplace with multiple sellers.

By adding WooCommerce Product Table to your multi vendor store, you can create improved layouts and increase sales. This benefits you and your product vendors, so get started today!

Use WooCommerce Product Table alongside YITH Multi Vendor Marketplace and list products from different vendors - the easy way.

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 custom add to cart button plugin

Discover the best free and premium WooCommerce custom add to cart button plugins, and how to choose the right one for your store.

One of the most important features of any e-commerce store is the "add to cart" button, which allows customers to easily add items to their shopping cart and continue shopping. While WooCommerce offers a default add to cart button, many businesses may want to customize this button to appeal to their customers more effectively. In this article, I will explore the best free and pro plugins available for customizing the WooCommerce add to cart button. I'll also help you choose the one that's right for your business.

To give you plenty of options, I'll focus on three plugins which take different approaches to customizing the add to cart button:

  1. WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button (free plugin) - Change the 'Add to Cart' button text, replace the add to cart text with an icon, or add an icon alongside the button text.
  2. Express Shop Page (premium plugins) - Extend the add to cart button on the shop page by adding quantity and variation pickers.
  3. WooCommerce Product Table (premium plugin) - Make it quicker and easier to add products to the cart by listing them in a fast one-page order form. It comes complete with multiple add to cart buttons, quantity fields and variation pickers for true one-page shopping. Use it alone or with the free WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button plugin.

Keep reading to learn more about these options, and choose which one(s) to install on your store for the best results.

Why customize the WooCommerce add to cart button?

There are lots of reasons why store owners might want an option in WooCommerce to upgrade the add to cart button.

For example:

  • Do you feel that the 'add to cart' text wording doesn't quite fit with your brand? For example, a lot of WooCommerce store in the UK change the button text to 'add to basket'. Think about what custom add to cart text would work better for you.
  • Are you using another plugin to change the function of the WooCommerce add to cart button? This could be through a course bookings plugin, events plugin, add to quote plugin, etc. If so, you might want to reword the Add to Cart text with something more relevant, such as 'Buy Now', 'Enrol Now', 'Book a Place', 'Add to Quote' or 'Make an Enquiry'.
    WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button plugin
  • Are your customers frustrated by the basic add to cart buttons on the Shop page, which don't let you change quantities or choose variations? If so, then you might want to extend these using a plugin like WooCommerce Express Shop Page. This brings all the usual product options onto the shop page, instead of having standalone add to cart buttons.
  • If you've used our Product Table plugin to create a WooCommerce order form, then you might want to remove the Add to Cart text and replace it with a simple cart icon for each product.
    Icon only add to cart buttons
    A website using the free Custom Add to Cart Button plugin with WooCommerce Product Table
  • Or maybe you just want to change the capitalization of the add to cart text, for example from lowercase to uppercase or vice versa.

Whatever your reason for wanting to change the add to cart link in WooCommerce, you can do it with the free WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button plugin.

Option 1: Change the add to cart text and add an icon

WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button is a 100% free WordPress plugin for customizing the add to cart button. It comes with all the essential features for customizing the WooCommerce add to cart button text and adding a cart icon:

  • Change the wording of the WooCommerce add to cart button text.
  • Add a high definition (retina) WooCommerce cart icon alongside the text.
  • Hide the add to cart text and just have an icon.

It's super-simple and lightweight, so it won't weigh down your site.

Here are some examples of the plugin in action:

How to create WooCommerce custom add to cart buttons

  1. Log into the WordPress Dashboard and go to Plugins → Add New.
  2. Search for 'WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button'.
  3. Install and activate the plugin of this name by Barn2 Media.
  4. Go to Appearance → Customizer → WooCommerce → Add to Cart. Here, choose the options for your custom WooCommerce add to cart buttons.

As you can see, the plugin is incredibly simple to use. There are full usage instructions on the official WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button plugin page on wordpress.org, but that's basically it!

Option 2: Add quantity and variation pickers to the Shop page add to cart button

WooCommerce Express Shop Page plugin

WooCommerce puts add to cart buttons on your main product listing pages, such as the main Shop page and your category pages. However, these are pretty useless as they come! That's because clicking the add to cart button only adds 1 of each product to the cart - there's no way to choose a quantity. It's even worse for variable products, which show a 'Select options' button linking to the single product page.

It's much better to allow customers to choose quantities and variations directly on your Shop and category pages.

Fortunately, you can easily do this with the WooCommerce Express Shop Page plugin. It adds variation dropdowns and quantity pickers to the shop page like this:

Add quantity and variations to WooCommerce shop page plugin

As you can see, customizing the basic add to cart button in this way makes it much easier to add products to the cart.

For best results, use Express Shop Page with the free WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button plugin to change the button text and add an icon.

Option 3: Create one-page order forms with custom add to cart buttons

Gutenberg for WooCommerce Product Table block

So far, we've discovered two plugins for customizing the WooCommerce add to cart button. These create a custom button without changing the overall layout of your products.

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin takes things to the next level. It takes your products and displays them in a quick one-page order form for faster shopping.

Use it alone, or with WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button to create a WooCommerce order form with cart icons.

WooCommerce Product Table is a powerful solution for taking your custom add to cart buttons to the next level. This plugin offers a unique approach to product displays by creating a table format. This allows customers to purchase products directly from the main shop page. As a result, there's no need to click through to individual product pages.

Why should I use custom add to cart buttons in a product table?

Product tables are a good addition to your store because:

  • There are a variety of purchasing options. These include the ability to select product variation and choose quantities. As a result, customers can quickly add products to the cart directly from the order form. This enhances the customer experience by streamlining the purchasing process. It also helps to increase conversions by reducing the number of clicks required to make a purchase.
  • You can also add WooCommerce custom fields to the product table, such as SKU, weight, and dimensions. Add multiple columns to provide customers with additional information.
  • It is highly customizable, with a range of options to control the appearance and functionality of the product table. You can choose which columns to display in the table, enable filters and sorting, and even add product search functionality.

As you can see, this gives you a lot of conversion-boosting flexibility compared the default WooCommerce shop page. Bringing the full range of add to cart options to the main shop page can help to increase conversions. The end result: driving more sales for your business.

Which WooCommerce add to cart plugin should I use?

In conclusion, customizing the WooCommerce add to cart button is a crucial step in improving the shopping experience for your customers. By using the free WooCommerce Custom Add to Cart Button plugin, you can easily change the button text and add an icon, helping to improve the design and functionality of your website.

Additionally, the WooCommerce Product Table plugin takes things one step further by bringing the full range of add to cart options directly onto the shop page. This allows customers to purchase products without having to navigate to individual product pages.

While each of these plugins offers its own unique set of features, they work best when used together. Combine them to create a highly customized and streamlined shopping experience for your customers. This will help to conversions and drive more sales for your business.

So why wait? Try them out today and see the difference they can make for your WooCommerce store!

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.