How to Add Product Table to Your Site Using the WooCommerce Product Table Plugin
Having an online store requires constant fine-tuning to the preferences of your customers in terms of your merchandise and how you display your merchandise. The quality of user experience is the key to success for many types of websites, but especially for an online store. Since your customers can’t see and touch the products, they have to rely on your products’ display and description. Therefore, having great product pages is essential and it will be much easier for you if you set them up properly, right from the start. And a good way to start is to choose an adequate e-commerce WordPress theme. Then, you can consider plugins that will help you improve your site further.
In this article, we will review one great plugin that allows you to add product tables to any page of your site. We will show you why and when they are especially useful and how to add them.
WooCommerce Product Table – Why and Where is Best to Have It
Product pages are great and you certainly need to have them, but not every type of product looks equally good on them. For example, product pages with softwares or e-books don’t look nearly as attractive as product pages with clothes, bags, shoes, and similar. That’s where product tables come handy. Plus, it is much easier and faster to add individual items to a cart from a product table.
This of course does not mean you don’t need product pages. WooCommerce by default comes with a product page with all your products listed.
But, it is very beneficial to also have product tables that you can put on any page and enable your customers to quickly access the product list.
Our Choice: WooCommerce Product Table by the Plugin Republic
We wanted a product table plugin that is flexible, feature-rich, and simple to set up so that both beginners and pros can use it equally well. The choice wasn’t easy but we decided to go for the WooCommerce product table by the Plugin Republic. It is super quick and easy to set up, enables you to display products in rows, choose what columns to include like thumbnails, SKUs, categories, tags, add to cart buttons, and a lot more. Simply put, you can customize your product table in line with your needs.
Now, let’s see how you add this plugin to your site and how to use it:
Before we get down to practical instructions note that this is not a free plugin. But, the price is more than reasonable considering all of its features and functionalities. It comes in two pricing plans: Basic and Pro. The main difference between the two plans is that with the Basic plan you get to install the plugin on one site only, and the Pro version allows you to use the plugin on an unlimited number of sites. What is also convenient is that you can choose whether you’ll purchase the license annually (needs to be updated every year), or you can buy a lifetime license that is valid forever and requires no updates.
Now, let’s get down to practicalities. You install the plugin simply by downloading the zip file and adding it to your WordPress website. Then you activate it and you can start using it.
However, what is characteristic of premium plugins is that it is necessary to activate the license key. This way, authors protect their copyrighted work from misuse. This step prevents from using the plugin more than once*. What’s also very important is that with a premium plugin you get regular updates and since WordPress is evolving all the time, these updates are necessary to keep the plugin running smoothly. It is commonly known that just as there are nulled WordPress themes, there are also nulled plugins. We strongly recommend that you do not use such plugins as they may harm your site. The prices of themes and plugins today are negligible compared to the benefits they provide, so it is always best to buy verified plugins from verified authors.
When buying a plugin on the author’s site, you also create an account on the site where you can find all your activities related to the plugin – date of purchase, date of activation, license information, and whether you have activated it at all. But, what is most important to you at the beginning is the license key.
You will find your license key in your Account > Purchase history > View details and downloads. It also arrives at your mail address, though it is often faster to find it through the account.
Once you activate the plugin and find the license key, go to Woocommerce > Settings.
Here you’ll find the general settings for WooCommerce and what you can also see now is the new tab with the name of the plugin that you added – Product Table Ultimate. The message about the license key, that you have not yet received, is clearly visible. You can either go to the message or to the License tab to add it.
Enter the license key and click on the Save changes button.
After you successfully enter the key you get a message.
The image above shows another important option – Deactivate this license. If, for example, you have purchased a license for one site and you want to transfer the once installed plugin to another site, this option allows you to first deactivate the plugin and then install and activate it smoothly on another site.
Let’s go through the settings found in the Woocommerce > Settings > tab Product Table Ultimate.
Columns is a field where we enter how many columns and what data will be found in the table. In our example above we entered four columns – thumbnail, ie product image; name, ie the name assigned to the product; price; and add to cart column in which the button for instant shopping will be found.
It looks like this in the front end:
Above are the options that we selected but the plugin offers many more so that you can entirely customize your product table to your need You can select:
- SKU – identification number that is entered on each product and is different for each product
- Thumbnail – image
- Name – the name of the product
- Short-description
- Attributes – if added to the product itself
- Categories
- Tags
- Price
- Add-to-cart
What is important with columns is that you list them in the order you want them to appear in the table. A comma is placed between each item.
Tip: let’s take a look at the next prime where we entered all possible columns. Of course, all the data used by the plugin is entered on the individual product itself. The plugin just invites them to introduce them.
At first glance, the table looks good. However, we made a few mistakes. The first is that we did not enter the column layout well, so our add to cart button is in the middle though logically, it should be at the end.
The second mistake refers to product data. For example, pay attention to the tag – only one product has it. It may not be the best practice to enter more details for one product only in the table, make sure all the products are displayed with the same type of data. Creating tags and categories in WooCommerce is very simple, but if your shop does not require this type of categorizing, it may be better not to include it in the table. The same is the case with both the SKU and the attributes. It is important that you decide what is really useful for your customers and then make the choice of columns depending on that.
Show quantities on the add-to-cart column – YES / NO – this option adds a field next to the add to cart button and allows users to enter how many pieces of the same products they want to buy.
The Products Source option lets you set which products you want to display. You can decide to display all products or specify the name of a custom query to display products. You can also choose to limit the table to display products from specific categories or specific tags. In case you choose not to display all products but some other option, note that you need to save the changes and then go back to this setting where now you’ll find a new field below where you enter the product source in more detail. For example, if you choose to display products from a specific category, in the field below you should enter the exact category.
Variations Display – this option allows you to display variable products in your table in three different ways. You can choose to direct the customer to the product page when he selects a variable product or to display each variation in its own row, or as a dropdown in the parent row.
Order Table By option allows you to select the parameters (like price, date, popularity, and similar) by which to order the table. Then in the Order option, you can decide between Ascending and Descending order of the items.
The Products per page option is used to enter how many products will be shown in the table. If you want to display everything, enter 0. This way you do not have to update this setting every time you enter a new product.
Enable add selected button – enables you to allow your customers to choose multiple products at the same time. You simply set this field to Yes and checkboxes will be displayed on each row followed by the button at the bottom of the table to add all the chosen products to the cart. Note that this option is available only when the columns include ‘add-to-cart’.
The table will look great even when this option is disabled, but the customers will have to add each product individually to the cart.
The settings we presented above are general settings. These apply to all tables that are added to a page via the shortcode [product_table_ultimate].
If one type of table is enough for you, then it is very easy to add it anywhere on the site, on any page within its content. All you need to do is insert the shortcode [product_table_ultimate] where it should appear on the page. Inserting this shortcode does not depend on the editor you use, it looks equally well with any of them.
If you want to display only the selected category on specific pages, you can modify the shortcode. The new one would look like this:
[product_table_ultimate source="categories" categories="34"]
In this case, Categories refer to the unique category ID.
If you want to show it for a certain tag:
[product_table_ultimate source="tags" tags="44"]
Tags is also the tag ID.
As for Gutenberg, the insertion of shortcodes is customized. Gutenberg is the default builder of WordPress and a special Gutenberg block was developed for it. Everything that can be adjusted in the general settings can be adjusted in the block itself.
In Conclusion
Now that you know all the options that come with this product table plugin, you can better understand the advantages of having product tables on your site. If you run into any issue while setting up or using this tool, you can always rely on the excellent customer support that the plugin’s authors provide. Feel free to ask for more details or share your experience with us in the comment section!
We hope that you found this article to be helpful. If you liked it, please feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
