Category: Article

There are 2 major problems with the woocommerce product grid that need to be fixed immediately on your shop. The first issue is that exploring product features is difficult in the default grid. The second issue is that it’s missing several convenience features that shoppers today have come to expect from modern e-commerce stores.

Below we will go over all these issues so you may fix them on your store today using WooCommerce Product Table PRO.

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1. Exploring products is difficult

Exploring products in the default WooCommerce product grid is difficult because the grid does not highlight important product attributes. Customers need to know these key attributes of your products in order to understand and compare the products. Only then can they find the products that meet their requirements and choose which ones to purchase.

For example:

• In a book store customers may want to know the author, date of publication, genre, etc.
• In a phone shop they want to know screen size, memory size, processor speed, RAM etc.
• In a clothes shop they may want to know size, color, cloth material etc.

But the default WooCommerce product grid does not provide any of this information. Instead it only shows product name, a single image and price. So customers know very little about the product at first glance. They are forced to click on the product and go to the product page to check further details.

The customer has to repeat this cycle for every product in the shop that they find remotely interesting. This would take a long time, several clicks going back and forth between the shop and product pages to find the products they want. 

This is a major problem because it makes shopping slow, frustrating and disorienting for potential customers and the shop ends up losing sales. 

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2. Adding products to cart is slow and confusing

Once customers have found the products they want to buy, a modern e-commerce shopping experience ensures that purchasing these products is fast and easy.

For this the following facilities are necessary in the product catalog. But the WooCommerce product grid misses all these important facilities. 

Select product quantity to purchase 

Many times customers need to add multiple units of a product to their cart. The default WooCommerce product grid provides no option to enter product quantity. Customer has to click on the add to cart button multiple times and each time wait for the previous add to cart command to complete. 

Remove products from cart

During the shopping process customers will sometimes add products to cart by mistake, or they may add the wrong quantity. The WooCommerce product grid unfortunately provides no option to remove products from cart when this mistake happens. Instead customer has to go to the cart page to remove items from cart or change quantity. This makes the purchase process slow and confusing even when customers are prepared to buy products from the shop. 

Add variable products to cart directly from catalog

The woocommerce product grid shows the ‘select options’ button for variable products. This button takes customers to the product page where they can make the product purchase. This unnecessarily extends the purchase process for variable products.

Instead the variable product options should be provided in the catalog itself or when the add to cart button is pressed, the options should appear in the popup. Customers should not be forced to go to the product page each time they want to add a variable product to cart. 

Bulk add products to cart

Many web shops need the facility to bulk add several products to cart in one go. Customers should not have to wait for add to cart process to gradually complete for each product

Show product cart count

While shopping, customers will add different products to their cart and typically continue browsing the rest of the product catalog. To help clear any possible confusion, the catalog should tell them how many units of each product they have already placed in their cart.

Let’s explore the impact of product table layout on your shop. How it helps enhance the shopping experience on your site, increases sales and gives your e-commerce shop a clear edge over the competition.

What is a product table?

By default WooCommerce only displays products in a grid layout with each product represented in a cell. This is a very limiting layout and not at all the ideal way to display products for most stores. 

While browsing the product grid if your shopper wishes to explore any product further they have to click on the product cell and go to the product page and repeat this tedious exercise for each product that they may be interested in. This is a slow process, and makes browsing and comparing products harder. Therefore they are also less likely to make purchases with such a shop layout.

A product table layout (see demos) is meant to increase sales by making it much quicker and easier for your shoppers to compare and find the products they want, and buy them immediately right from the shop browsing page. Which is why a well prepared product table layout can have a huge impact on your shop conversions and give you a major advantage over competition. 

The traditional grid layout of products is only suitable for products that are heavily image focused, and the other product properties have little to no impact on purchase decision. And with WooCommerce Product Table PRO’s addon called Grid Table View Switcher you can even give your shoppers the option to switch between grid and table layout while browsing your products. This gives your prospective customers the best of both worlds, putting them in a better position to explore and purchase products from your store. 

Do you need it?

WooCommerce Product Table PRO is capable of creating a table as well as list like view.

Examples of pure table view: Demo 1, Demo 2, Demo 3

Examples of list like view: Demo 1, Demo 2, Demo 3

For many product types such as food, spare parts, music, electronics, gaming cards, etc it is absolutely essential to provide a table or list like view in order to let the shoppers easily browse the products in the fastest, most convenient way.

And for all other product types it is highly beneficial to give your shoppers the option to also view the products in a table / list view even if you keep the grid view as the primary layout on your site. 

Great shopping experience is absolutely essential for increasing product sales. Which is why the product listing should be top notch on any web shop. It should be easy for your prospective customers to browse your products and quickly find the ones they want. Which is why a product table / list layout option should definitely be available on every web shop. Not providing your shoppers the right browsing experience can lead to unnecessarily lost sales. On the other hand by making shopping easier on your site you get a great edge over competitors.

Which is why a product table layout, at least as the secondary layout if not primary is essential for any e-commerce shop looking to boost profits. 

How to set it up on your site?

It is very easy to set up a new product table on your website or even replace the existing product grids on your site with tables using WooCommerce Product Table PRO. 

You can get started with your first product table within a couple of minutes using built-in presets (see preset getting started video). You can also download any of the plugin PRO demos and install them on your site. These pre-built tables are fully customisable so you can modify them as per your site requirements. Or you can create a custom table from scratch if you wish. 

The plugin provides clear step by step tutorials that anyone can follow along and are designed to help you get started immediately. As well as documentation, and FAQs. And you also have the option of email support if you have any special questions to clarify. 

WooCommerce Product Table PRO users have set up fantastic product table shops on their stores to improve their sales and so can you! 

You can start with the free version of the plugin right now, which is useful for getting started but limited. Then progress to the PRO version for exclusive features aimed at greatly improve shopping experience and product sales at your store.

A hybrid between a pure table and list view, the WooCommerce product list table is a great way to organize products in your shop. While WooCommerce does have an easy shortcode for creating simple product lists, unfortunately it significantly lacks power. Web shops need a tool to easily create and manage multiple product lists across their site with functionality such as search, sort, pagination, filter and responsive control.

This is why the WooCommerce Product Table plugin was created. Using this neat tool you can easily create you beautiful and responsive WooCommerce product list view in no time. You can list products by category, IDs, SKU, etc. And it comes replete with all the functionality for creating a great product catalog. What’s more? This is a free plugin!

At first WCPT may seem mainly table oriented. But check out the plugin demos and you will find it can be used as an excellent WooCommerce product list plugin as well. 

You should create a WooCommerce product list view when:

1. The shop products need to be easily compared by a specific column such as movie rating, price, width, etc. Visually tracking a column to make comparisons between products is much easier than tracking the field in a grid.
2. You need to provide a sizeable amount of information for each product. This may be required because the products need some context which will not be possible without the additional information. In such a case product list shines as compared to grid / pure table. 
3. You need your products to be neatly presented in a narrow space such as the sidebar or a footer column. Product lists fit perfectly in such tight spaces.
   

Conclusion

Now you don’t need to worry about creating an excellent WooCommerce product list table for your site anymore. While this is not a default WooCommerce functionality, WooCommerce product table plugin perfectly fills the gap and makes it easy to create a WooCommerce product list view. So download the free plugin and start increasing your shop sales now!

For some web shops, the product catalog looks best in a table view.  A product list or grid view will simply not work as well. But the problem is that while WooCommerce does have convenient shortcodes for product grid and product list view, unfortunately there is no shortcode to make WooCommerce display products in table.

This is why the  WooCommerce Product Table plugin was created. With this plugin you can easily make WooCommerce show products in tables. It is free and it does not require any coding knowledge. Now anyone can conveniently create simple or complex product table structure, with features such as search, sorting, pagination and styling.

When to make WooCommerce show products in table?

1. As the main product catalog

For some shops it makes sense to only use table view for their product catalog and drop any grid or list view from their website entirely. This is especially true when:

1. Product images are not the main focus in the product catalog. Such as, in the case of books, music, machine parts, software, common food items, etc 
2. Shoppers are mainly interested in comparing products along certain columns. Such as numeric attributes, rating, etc.
   

2. As a supplementary product view

For other shops a product table view can be a great supplement to their existing product grid/list view. It would give their shoppers the additional facility of exploring their products in a table view as well, which makes sorting and visually comparing products along columns much easier.

Conclusion

If you have been stuck without a great table view for your product catalog you do not need to worry any more. Can WooCommerce display products in table on its own? No. But is there an easy solution for this? Yes! With the WooCommerce Product Table plugin you can conveniently manage multiple product tables across your website and maximize your opportunity for conversion. You should try it today!