Complete Guide to setting up custom taxonomies on WooCommerce (2023)

Would you like to organise your WooCommerce products better? WooCommerce custom taxonomies let you manage the products on your online store better.

This way, customers have an easier time finding what they’re looking for. In addition, by using custom taxonomies, you can create a more personalised shopping experience for your customers.

Since customers love to be catered to, offering them an easy way to find and navigate your WooCommerce store is a great idea.

This article will show you how to create custom taxonomies for WooCommerce and create product catalogues that accurately describe your products. As a result, you can improve your online store’s SEO and conversion rates.

What is a taxonomy?

In WooCommerce, you can use attributes, tags, and categories to add product details and organise them in the back-end. Similarly, you can use these “taxonomies” to group multiple products based on common characteristic data such as colour, size, or dimension.

A custom taxonomy is typically used to store additional data and display more details about the product on your online store.

For instance, if you’re selling rare collectables and merchandise, you might want to show the artist’s name, item condition, which collection it belonged to, and the year of manufacture. This way, your customers will have an easier time finding the product they need and be in a better position to make informed purchase decisions.

Adding more product information to your WooCommerce products is also great if you sell unique products or products that have similar product add-on options. For instance, if your online apparel store sells t-shirts and jeans, you can create custom taxonomies such as “100% Cotton”, “Formal Wear”, and “Skinny Wear”.

Adding more product information also helps customers find exactly what they need when shopping from your online store. Better product discovery increases orders and profits for WooCommerce stores. This is why it’s important to make your online store easy to navigate and your WooCommerce products easy to find.

In addition to this, custom taxonomies can be searched filtered, and you can combine them with personalised products. For instance, if you sell custom keychains, you can create “Engraving”, “Custom Printing”, and “Gift” taxonomies to make it easier and quicker for customers to find the products they need.

Creating custom taxonomies in WordPress

If you’re looking to add a new taxonomy in default WordPress, you will need to have some coding skills and a little time on hand. However, if you’re not a developer, you might be looking for an easier way to add WooCommerce custom taxonomies.

We’re going to explain an easier way to get the same functionality of custom taxonomies to your WooCommerce site, that gets you the same benefits.

Since default WooCommerce doesn’t support adding extra fields to products, there are some plugins out there that let users create their own product “taxonomies” and add them to their WooCommerce products. These are options, but nothing compares to the level of flexibility the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin offers!

Introducing WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate

The WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin is an all-in-one solution for personalising your products and offering your customers an enhanced shopping experience.

It lets you add multiple fields to your WooCommerce products, including text boxes, dropdowns, checkboxes, text fields, and much more.

You can also apply conditional logic to specific fields for your WooCommerce products. This way, you can hide or display specific product options based on the customer’s selection.

For instance, you can display an “Include a gift card” checkbox for a WooCommerce product. When the customer selects the checkbox, a new “Enter your greeting” text field will appear to enter a message they want to have printed on the card.

Additionally, the plugin lets you automate repeat fields for products, add extra options like shipping cost per item, and help you override calculations if needed. This also means you can set up a single product with multiple combinations for people to choose from.

For instance, you can create a clothing product where people can select different styles, colours, or materials using dropdown menus or radio buttons. The best part about the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin is that you don’t need any coding knowledge to add such options to your WooCommerce products.

How to create custom taxonomies in WordPress using Product Add-Ons Ultimate

Here, we’ll show you step-by-step how to create custom taxonomies for your WooCommerce products.

For this tutorial, you’ll need a WordPress site and the WooCommerce plugin installed and ready to go. You’ll also need some WooCommerce products added to your online store and the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin.

Step #1: Install and activate the Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin

Start by getting the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin and installing it on your WooCommerce site.

You will receive a purchase confirmation email. Click on the download link from the email to download the plugin and navigate to Plugins → Add New from the WordPress admin panel.

Upload the zip file you just downloaded and click on the Activate plugin button to enable the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin on your WordPress site.

Once the plugin is successfully installed on your site, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Product Add-Ons and click on the Licence link from the top.

Enter the license key provided to you at the time of purchase and click on the Activate this licence button to continue.

Step #2: Add custom fields to WooCommerce products

Go to Product Add-Ons → Global Groups from the WordPress dashboard and click on the Add New button to get started.

Give your custom field group a new name using the Group Title text field and select whether you want to add the custom fields to all WooCommerce products, specific products, or by product category.

You can add common custom fields and apply them to specific products, by category, or globally on your WooCommerce site. You can also add custom field prices when offering additional product options.

This is a great way to let customers personalise their orders before checking out from your store. As a result, it helps increase the average order value and generate more revenue for your business.

Step #3: Display product variations better

The WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate also lets you display your product variations options better by letting you use advanced fields such as photo and color swatches, dropdown lists, and checkboxes.

Navigate to the Edit Group page and click on the Add Field button. Select Image Swatch for displaying product colours better with image selectors. Click on the Add Option button and upload the product colour image and give it a name. Once you’re done, make sure to click on the Update button.

This makes your single product pages look more professional and helps your customers better visualise the product option they are selecting.

Step #4: Showcase product details

Showcasing more details about your product and product options makes it easier for customers to make quicker and better purchase decisions. This is where the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate shines.

It lets you display Information custom fields for WooCommerce products. For instance, you can display a Sizing Guide information field for clothing products.

Create a new Information field by following the steps outlined above. Add information using the Add Option and enter the sizing measurements for the t-shirt using the Data text field. Once you’re done, click on the Save Changes button to continue.

This will allow you to display additional information about the product in easy-to-read rows.

Step #5: Offer special pricing

You can also offer special pricing for specific user roles on your WooCommerce site and enable dynamic price changes when users select multiple product options.

To do this, enable the Update price label checkbox by navigating to WooCommerce → Settings →  Product Add-Ons and entering specific user roles that you want to offer a special price to using the Roles text field below.

Once you’re done, click on the Save changes button to continue.

This will display an additional field for setting special pricing for specific user roles on your WooCommerce site.

Step #6: Offer personalisation options to customers

The WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin is the perfect solution for offering advanced personalisation options to customers.

You can fully customise how “ordinary” product options appear on the front-end of your WooCommerce site and offer an enhanced shopping experience.

Take this one step further: Use the Product Table Ultimate plugin to display products better

If you’re looking to take things a step further, we have the perfect solution for you. Using the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin, you can showcase your products much better in a table-style format.

It’s the perfect option if you have a lot of product variation options or are looking to sell WooCommerce products in bulk or wholesale on your online store. Each product is displayed in a row, and users can add multiple products to their cart from a single page. This includes variable products and products that have add-on fields.

You can set up your products in a table-style format within a few clicks as the plugin is ultra-quick to set up and intuitive to use, even if you’re not very tech-savvy. It also gives you full control over how your product tables look on the front-end. You can include multiple columns to your product tables for displaying details such as:

• Product thumbnails
• Product titles
• SKUs
• Stock level attributes
• Categories
• Tags
• Quantity
• Add-to-cart buttons

In addition to this, you can also let your customers add multiple products to their shopping carts at the same time by displaying a checkbox next to each product row. Users can quickly scan down each product row while selecting the ones they need to add to their cart. Then, with one click of a button, all selected products will automatically be added to the customer’s cart.

How to display products better using WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate

Let’s quickly take a look at how you can display your WooCommerce products better in a product table:

Start off by getting the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin and installing it on your WooCommerce site. Once the plugin is installed, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Product Table Ultimate. Click on the Licence link to activate the plugin.

Once you’re done activating the plugin, click on the General link to start configuring plugin settings.

You can add as many columns as you like using the Columns text field. Select which products to display in a table-style layout using the Products Source dropdown menu.

You can also choose how variations are displayed for products using the Variations Display dropdown menu.

In addition to this, if you have the Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin set up with custom fields, you can enable its integration by selecting Yes using the Enable Integration dropdown menu. Select the Enable quickview for add-ons checkbox to let customers quickly view product custom fields from the same page. Click on the Save changes button once you’re done.

All specified products will be displayed in an attractive product table that’s easy to navigate and select multiple products from.

Customers can quickly select product custom fields using a pop-up window from the same screen. This helps them quickly purchase products and make informed purchase decisions.

Create WooCommerce custom taxonomies today!

WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate and the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate are perfect for eCommerce websites that sell customisable products or services.

If you offer customers a personalised shopping experience that also helps them quickly make purchases, there’s a high chance you will see an increase in sales and generate more revenue for your business. Using both plugins, you can leverage the benefits of adding custom taxonomies to your products without putting in the effort to write code.

Ready to start easily setting up WooCommerce custom taxonomies and displaying your WooCommerce products better? Get the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate and WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugins today!