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How to Turn WooCommerce Variations into a Table
WooCommerce stores offer limited variation dropdowns. Furthermore, these dropdowns only appear on the single product page. Startups and basic online stores have no problem with this feature. However, a WooCommerce variations table plugin will be necessary if one wants to handle large amounts of varied stock. A variations table plugin is a way to list product variations and display them in a list format.
A WooCommerce variations table plugin is important
There are multiple reasons why you should use a variations plugin:
- You can use it to add a table of variations anywhere on your site. This could be listing variations of a specific product or multiple products
- It makes the shopping experience of consumers much more easier
- It encourages multiple bulk sales because consumers have an extra choice and flexibility in how you display the variations
- Since customers are no longer limited to a single page for choosing product variations, the number of clicks significantly reduces thus improving your WooCommerce store’s conversion rate.
A lot of people become frustrated at how variations are turned into tables by WooCommerce by default that is you can only select variations from a specific dropdown on the single product page only. This hinders many people. There are disadvantages associated with listing dropdowns as variations:
- Customers will only be able to see one product at time where they have to select each variation option individually if they want to see the variation price, description, stock and image.
- Since they is no way to select multiple variations in one go, the buying process is much slower
Stores that have a range of product sizes, color, weights and other options will find it difficult when listing variations as a dropdown. Fortunately you can create a dropdown of your variations in table form which you can add anywhere on your page. This can make it so much easier for your customers to find all the necessary information since they can see all the available variations at once rather than having to select from dropdowns.
You can follow these steps in order to turn WooCommerce variations into a table:
- Install the WooCommerce variations table plugin
- Go to the WooCommerce settings and select Variations Table
- In the variations table section, you can configure your tables including setting a title for the variables table, the position of the table and either enabling, disabling or reordering data fields
- Finally, save the changes you have made
- Your variations will appear in table form
Default WooCommerce variation selects
In WooCommerce, you can offer a set of variations on a product with control over price, stock, image and much more for each variation. You can do this with the variable products, which is a WooCommerce product type. Furthermore, you can add new attributes that are specific to that product. You can add or edit as many variations as you would like.
It is recommended to set defaults you prefer on variations. This means that you can set variations that you would like a user to see when they visit the page. For example, if you want a user to see the color and size variation selects when they open the product page, then you can set those variations as defaults. By setting default variable selects, the Add to Cart button will appear automatically on variable product pages. Defaults can only be set when there is more than one variation.
Just a recap. We have said that variable products is a WooCommerce product type that allows you to offer variations on your products. The steps of adding a variable product include:
- Setting the product type
- Adding attributes to use for variations
- Adding variations
You can decide to set defaults for certain variations that you would like a person to see when they open your product page.
The disadvantages of default variations selects
Setting default variation selects may make it easier for your customer to see what variations are available. However, it has some shortcomings.
It is not intuitive
Default variation selects are not intuitive because these are the variations you would like to your customers to see yet they may not be interested in such variations. For example, you may set sizes like small, medium and large as default variation selects for a product yet the customer may not be interested in such variations.
It is hard to see all variations
Once you have set default variation selects, it becomes difficult to see all variations including those that are not defaults.
It is not possible to quickly order
Default variation selects slow down the pace of ordering because a customer may be interested in checking out other variations but finds it difficult to see all variations. Therefore, they will take longer to decide on whether to add that item to the cart.
It is difficult to filter
Filtering products based on different variations is one way that a customer can find the specific product they are looking for. However, with default variation selects, it is impossible to filter because all products have the same variation. Consequently, a customer will have a hard time finding what exact product they were looking for.
Advantages of using a variations table plugin
WooCommerce plugins help you to turn WooCommerce variations into a table. There are benefits that using a variation table plugin offers:
- It is easy and faster to filter. The plugin helps you to sort, filter attributes or search the complete table. The plugin transforms all product variations into fast-loading responsive table entries which makes it simpler for customers to quickly filter products.
- Directly add to cart. The variations table plugin enables customers to directly add items of their choice into the cart
- Live search. Since the WooCommerce variations table plugin uses live filtering and AJAX to add items to the cart, customers are prevented from adding products that already out of stock into their cart. There is a live search of what products that are out of stock
It is important for you to start using a variations table plugin to turn your variations into tables so that your customers can have an easier time when choosing products.
How do you default the variation qty to 0?
You could use a 3rd party plugin for this or custom PHP code. This example could work:
add_filter( 'woocommerce_quantity_input_args', 'customizing_quantity_input_args', 10, 2 ); function customizing_quantity_input_args( $args, $product ) { $args['max_value'] = 10000; // Maximum value (variable product) $args['min_value'] = 500; $args['input_value'] = 0; return $args; }