Introduction:
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Briefly highlight the significance of filters for Woocommerce.
Typically, a WooCommerce store could stock inventory items and products of hundreds of types. To accentuate the customer experience and get more conversions, an online merchant should try and make sure that the visitors easily find the products that they seek.
The eCommerce business domain is competitive. If consumers face difficulty in finding the products that they seek, they are unlikely to refrain from taking your competitors’ services.
WooCommerce category filter is a handy implement that helps resolve difficulties under such circumstances. In this article, we will discuss how you can carry out a step-by-step filtering of products in category pages in WooCommerce.
WooCommerce Category Pages Overview:
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Outline the default layout and filtering options.
In case you have visited any of the popular online stores like eBay or Amazon, you are sure to be aware that they have over a billion products in their catalogue. There is a search bar towards the top that lets you get the category of the products that you desire.
Besides these, one also comes across the product filters section in a sidebar towards the left. Here, the end consumer can make further make refinements in the product listings that he wants to see, based on category, tag, reviews, price, etc.
So, for displaying these filtered results, the website does not have to refresh. Instead, it displays the result on the same page, each time the filters are modified.
The technical name of these filters is Ajax Product Filters. Ajax is a collection of applications that run in the background without requiring a webpage refresh.
Going through Amazon and eBay websites tells us that these product filters are a must if your catalogue contains over 100 products.
In WooCommerce, if one wants to implement product filter functionality, plugins are available for that purpose. While a few of these plugins are free, the others are reasonably affordable.
Overall, the plugins for implementing filters are valuable and bring a measurable difference to ROIs.
Now, let us suppose that your WooCommerce website has a large number of products, all replete with product categories, product attributes, product tags, product custom fields, stock statuses, and prices. In this scenario, implementation of Ajax Product Filters within your WooCommerce store is unlikely to take over 10 minutes. The product filters will be easy to implement.
We can now take a look at WooCommerce plugins for Ajax Product Filters. There are multiple such plugins to accomplish the filtering functionality on WooCommerce category pages.
Among the most popular among these are WooCommerce Default Product Filter Widgets which are available for free for use by online merchants using WooCommerce. This makes matters convenient for merchants who use WooCommerce.
Benefits of Adding Filters:
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Explain how filters enhance user experience and boost sales.
Filter by category functionality in WooCommerce is an implement that will work tremendously towards boosting customer satisfaction rates. In the dearth of this functionality, a customer is going to come across a long list of products. Albeit, the product that he seeks to buy is might not be on his screen at that time. This makes the visitor impatient.
The key advantage that comes into the picture when a WooCommerce product filter is configured is that the process of product discovery is greatly enhanced. The consumer will instantly come to feel that what he sees on the screen is remarkably similar to what he seeks.
So, for enhancing revenue and sales, using product filters works like nothing else.
Step-by-Step Guide:
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Provide concise steps for adding filters with screenshots.
The following is the procedure to use WooCommerce Default Product Filter Widgets:
- Go to Appearance -> Widgets
- In your sidebar, drag and drop the following filters
- Filter products by Price
- Filter Products by Rating
- Filter Product by Attribute
Let us consider an example that further simplifies the scenario.
Let us suppose that your test products have Size as an attribute. Here, we can use the Filter Products by Attribute widget. This will filter product sizes.
In case your products already have attributes, the processes are all automatic.
Following this, the front end looks as follows.
Technically, it is unlikely to take you over a minute to add a rating, attribute, and price slider.
However, this arrangement is not free from glitches.
- It is not Ajax that powers these WooCommerce filters. So, whenever they are used, they will force a webpage refresh.
- Another problem that arises with using the WooCommerce Default Product Filter Widgets is their limited functionality. The number of default widgets available is only 3. Attribute dropdown and list are the only options available. Similarly, even as the price slider can be installed, a list of price ranges cannot be installed, just as they have on Amazon. It becomes easy to see that there is just a limited bit of customization that you can use with this arrangement.
Under such circumstances, an online merchant stands to benefit tremendously from the use of more advanced widgets. He also seeks more design options and an Ajax-powered system.
This way, the merchant will be in the best position to come up with a search functionality for his category pages that is flexible while being robust.
Choosing Plugins:
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How Expertrec plugin solves this problem
WP Fastest Site Search is a plugin by Expertrec. It’s a powerful filter and search plugin that works for WooCommerce and WordPress.
The plugin is an ideal replacement for WordPress search and comes replete with features such as autocomplete, PDF search, and spelling correct. While this delivers a professional look and feel to your website, it is exceptionally useful for visitors to your website and delivers on-ground leverage for your business.
Using the plugin by default adds voice search capability to your website. The search experience keeps lightning fast and the plugin provides a highly customizable UI and search engine. The result page and search filters are automatically added. Multilingual search is another one of the top features of the plugin. This helps your business span, locally and internationally.
