Customizing your WooCommerce: product sorting and ordering mastery

woocommerce sort products

Do you want your WooCommerce store to display your products in a clean, polished way, and facilitate the buying process for your store visitors?

If your online store has a great number of products, it can be difficult for shoppers to find what they need. Thankfully, there are many product sorting options to ensure your WooCommerce products are arranged in an attractive and organized manner.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to manually sort products using the default WooCommerce options. We’ll also take a closer look at how you can sort and display products on your online store in the most conversion-optimized way possible using the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin.

Why does WooCommerce product sorting matter?

Sorting your WooCommerce products in an organized, systematic, and user-friendly manner helps customers find the products they’re looking for quickly. As a result, it helps increase conversions and sales for your online store.

In addition to this, it makes your online store look more professional and organized. This not only helps grab the attention of more site visitors but also encourages customers to spend more on your WooCommerce site.

Sorting your WooCommerce products is a game-changer for your online store as it helps make your site easy to navigate while giving off a friendly, welcoming vibe to customers.

Let’s dive deeper into some of the main reasons why you’d want to sort your WooCommerce products.

Showcase best-selling items

Sorting products on your online store is a great way to showcase some of the best products and get them in front of the eyes of your site visitors right away.

For instance, if you run an apparel store, you can sort your products by price or by rating to showcase the best-selling items on your website. Similarly, you can also sort by product categories such as Men, Women, Summer, Winter, or sort products by brand name.

Let customers change the product order at will

You can use product sorting to let customers sort products the way they want. For instance, you can offer manual sorting on your online auction site where users can bid on different items and sort them according to their price or date added.

Additionally, it can be a great way to offer a more enhanced and exclusive shopping experience on your online store.

Use sorting as an alternative to categories

If you’re constantly having to fill your WooCommerce categories so they don’t look empty, sorting products properly on your online store can help fix that.

Sorting can be used as an alternative to categories if you don’t have enough products to warrant them or for products that don’t seem to fit into any categories.

How to sort products in WooCommerce manually

The great thing about WordPress and WooCommerce is that it offers multiple ways to go about sorting WooCommerce products. It comes down to what you prefer, your level of tech-savviness, and what you’re looking to achieve.

Here are some of the different ways you can sort products in WooCommerce:

1. Using default WooCommerce to sort products

Out of the box, WooCommerce lets you apply product sorting options to your online store. To do this:

1. Navigate to the WooCommerce Customizer to view the default product sorting options.

WooCommerce Customizer

2. Click on the WooCommerce tab and then Product Catalog to view and adjust the default product sorting settings in WooCommerce.

Product Catalog options

3. Using the Default product sorting dropdown menu, you have multiple choices to select how products are sorted on your online store.

WooCommerce sort products

4. Once you’ve selected an option, click on the Publish button to continue.

These default WooCommerce product sorting options are great if you’re looking for a simple way to sort your products. However, they’re pretty limited in the number of default sorting options they offer and don’t let you customize the layout of your products or the sort order. This means you don’t have much control over how your WooCommerce products are sorted and displayed on the front end.

Fortunately, there’s a better way to sort your products.

2. Using shortcodes to display WooCommerce products

Shortcodes in WooCommerce provide a flexible method to display and sort your products, though this approach is more suited for those with some coding knowledge.

Users comfortable with coding can:

  1. Implement shortcodes: Insert shortcodes into your site’s pages or posts where you want products to appear. For example, use [products limit=”4″ columns=”2″ orderby=”popularity”] to showcase four products in two columns, ordered by popularity.
  2. Customize via functions.php: For deeper customization, you can edit the functions.php file in your WordPress theme. This involves adding or altering functions to change how your shortcodes work. For example, this code creates a new shortcode [custom_products], allowing for a customized product display:
function custom_product_shortcode() {
    // Your custom code for product display
}
add_shortcode('custom_products', 'custom_product_shortcode');

For non-coders, using shortcodes and editing PHP files can be complex and risky for those without coding experience. Incorrect edits can disrupt your site’s functionality, and mistakes in the functions.php file can lead to site breakdowns, requiring technical troubleshooting and potentially causing downtime or loss of sales.

While shortcodes offer significant customization in displaying your WooCommerce products, if coding isn’t within your comfort zone, consider more user-friendly alternatives like the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin for straightforward product sorting and display without needing to code.

3. Sorting products using WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate

Let’s take a closer look at one of the most user-friendly ways of adding extra product sorting options to WooCommerce without having to touch a single line of code.

You can use a robust pricing table plugin like WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate to let shoppers on your online sort easily sort products as needed and find what they’re looking for.

WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate is a WooCommerce plugin that lets you display your products in a customizable table format that’s user-friendly and sortable.

WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate featured image

WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate

List products in quick and easy order forms

Find Out More

Using the plugin, you can quickly create sortable and fully customizable product tables and showcase them on any page of your WooCommerce site. This gives your customers an easy way to find products.

The WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin also allows your customers to add multiple items to their shopping carts at once. Customers can select multiple products and add all of them to their shopping cart with a single click. They simply have to tick the checkbox next to each product row to select products they’d like to purchase.

The best part about the plugin is that it’s very simple to use, even if you’re a non-coder or developer or if you’re using it to enhance your clients’ sites.

Another great thing about the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin is that it’s very simple to get started with.

How to create a sortable product table with Product Table Ultimate

Here’s what you need to do to create a filterable product table with extra product sorting options on your WooCommerce shop pages.

1. Installation and activation: Download and install the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin on your WooCommerce site.

2. Basic configuration: Once the plugin is installed and activated, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Product Table Ultimate to start configuring the product table.

Product Table Ultimate settings

3. Setting up the product table:

  • Override pages: Specify which pages (such as the shop page) will display the product table in the ‘Override pages’ text field.
  • Adding columns: Add and define multiple columns for product data in the ‘Columns’ text field.
  • Quantity selector: If you want a quantity selector, enable it in the ‘Show quantities on add-to-cart column’ dropdown.
Sort products in table settings

4. Product source and variations:

  • Selecting products: Choose your product source in the ‘Product Source’ dropdown. For instance, selecting ‘Categories’ adds a new ‘Categories’ field to specify categories in your online store.
  • Variations display: Use the ‘Variations Display’ dropdown to choose how product variations are shown.
  • Custom ordering: Set the order of your products with the ‘Order table by’ field.

5. Products per page and bulk add-to-cart:

  • Set display limits: Define the number of products per page in the ‘Products per page’ field.
  • Bulk add-to-cart: Enable the ‘Enable add selected button’ option for bulk adding products to the cart.

6. Fine-tuning sorting and filtering:

  • Sortable columns: In the ‘Layout’ section, use the ‘Sortable columns’ field to select which headers can be sorted by customers.
  • Filterable columns: Set up customer filters with the ‘Filterable columns’ and ‘Select filters locations’ fields.
Layout settings

7. Save your settings: Click on ‘Save changes’ after configuring these settings.

With the new product table in place, customers can effortlessly browse through your entire product range. The intuitive design allows them to select quantities and add their choices to the cart with just one click, whether it’s a single item or multiple products.

WooCommerce sort products table preview

This streamlined process not only simplifies the shopping experience but also saves time by eliminating the need to visit each product page individually.

Mastering WooCommerce product sorting and ordering

While WooCommerce offers some options to sort your shop’s products, it isn’t enough to help your customers make quick purchase decisions while ensuring they find exactly the product they’re looking for.

The WooCommerce Customizer doesn’t offer much flexibility to sort products on your shop or category pages. In addition to this, it’s also not very intuitive to sort your products manually using shortcodes as it’s highly risky for your online store, especially if you don’t have prior experience with coding.

This is why it’s best to use a robust, all-in-one product sorting solution like the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin.

The plugin is easy to use and lets you quickly create sortable, conversion-optimized tables without having to touch a single line of code. It offers all the features needed to create a product table and customize it by setting filtering options, date picker fields, and much more. It’s the ideal option if you’re looking for a single plugin to take care of showcasing your products better on your online store while ensuring a user-friendly shopping experience.

Ready to add extra product sorting options to your woocommerce store? Get started with the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin today!

WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate featured image

WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate

List products in quick and easy order forms

Find Out More

Ready to start sorting your WooCommerce products? Get WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate today!

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