How to manually sort your WooCommerce products
![WooCommerce sort products](jpg/woo-sort-products-856x571.jpg)
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 options to ensure your WooCommerce products are arranged in an attractive and organised 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-optimised way possible using the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin.
Why does WooCommerce product sorting matter?
Sorting your WooCommerce products in an organised, 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 organised. 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.
Make WooCommerce categories look more full
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, simply navigate to the WooCommerce Customizer to view the default product sorting options.
![WooCommerce Customizer](https://pluginrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/woo-customizer.png)
Click on the WooCommerce tab and then Product Catalog to view and adjust default product sorting settings in WooCommerce.
![Product Catalog options](https://pluginrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/product-catalog.png)
Using the Default product sorting dropdown menu, you have multiple choices to select how products are sorted on your online store.
![WooCommerce sort products](https://pluginrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/sort-products.png)
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 customise 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
Another way to sort your products is by using shortcodes. Shortcodes let you display products anywhere on your WordPress site in the sorting you specify in the back-end, though it involves some coding.
While this is a simple and easy way for coders and people with technical knowledge to sort products in WooCommerce, it’s still not user-friendly or easy. This is because using shortcodes in the back-end and editing the functions.php
file of your WordPress site is not ideal for non-coders who just want a simple solution.
In addition to this, this increases the risk of accidentally breaking down your online store. If you’re not experienced with coding, you can unknowingly break your site, which would then need troubleshooting.
Unfortunately, this can be detrimental to your brand image and can result in downtime as well as a loss of sales for your business.
3. Sorting products using WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate
Let’s take a closer look at one of the most user-friendly ways of sorting your WooCommerce products, without having to touch a single line of code.
You can use a robust 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 customisable table format that’s user-friendly and sortable.
Using the plugin, you can quickly create sortable and fully customisable 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 cart 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’ site.
Another great thing about the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin is that it’s very simple to get started with.
Here’s what you need to do to create a sortable and filterable product table on your WooCommerce shop pages.
Start off by getting the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin and installing it on your WooCommerce site. We’ll use this plugin to create a filterable and sortable product table that only displays specific products from your online store. We’ll also show you how you can use it to display all products on your ecommerce store.
Once the plugin is installed and activated, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Product Table Ultimate to start configuring the product table.
![Product Table Ultimate settings](https://pluginrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ptu-settings.png)
Start off by specifying which pages (such as the shop page) on your WooCommerce site will display the sortable product table to customers using the Override pages text field. You can also add multiple columns to your product table by specifying each one using the Columns text field to display product data. It gives you the option to display the quantity selector on your product table using the Show quantities on add-to-cart column dropdown menu. Now, select your Product Source and click on the Save changes button to configure new fields.
![Sort products in table settings](https://pluginrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/woo-sort-products-settings.png)
For instance, if you select Categories from the Product Source dropdown menu, a new Categories field will be added to specify categories on your online store. You can also choose how variations are displayed on the product table using the Variations Display dropdown field and set the Order table by the field to list products by custom ordering. Other than specifying the sort order of the product table, you can also set the total Products per page that will be displayed on a single page of your product table.
You can also let customers add multiple products to their cart at once using just one button. To do this, select Yes from the Enable add selected button dropdown to let customers add multiple products to their shopping cart with one click. Once you’re ready, click on the Save changes button to continue.
Now, click on the Layout link from the top to set various custom sorting and filtering options for the product table.
![Layout settings](https://pluginrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/layout.png)
Using the Sortable columns field, you can select which headers to let users sort by when browsing the product table. You can also use the Filterable columns and Select filters locations fields to let customers filter and sort out the products they were looking for easily. Once you’re ready, click on the Save changes button to continue.
![WooCommerce sort products table preview](https://pluginrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/sorted-table-1108x1200.png)
Customers can view and go through all of your products using the intuitive product table. Once customers select the quantities, they can add all products to their cart using a single button or only add selected products to their shopping cart. The product table makes it easy for customers to find specific products on your online store and add multiple products to their cart without having to go to the single product page.
Conclusion
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-optimised tables, without having to touch a single line of code. It offers all the features needed to create a product table and customise 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 start sorting your WooCommerce products? Get WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate today!