This ultimate guide to WooCommerce Variable Products is intended to provide you a detailed understanding on using the variable products and its variations in your WooCommerce platform.
We will be dealing with information like what are WooCommerce variable products, when to use the same, the different types of terms related to the same like attributes, custom attributes, global attributes, terms, SKU etc.
Also, we will see the instructions to set up a variable product on your WooCommerce store and some of the best plugins out there that helps you to master the variable products to its best!
What are WooCommerce Variable Products?
Variable Products are a product type in the WooCommerce arena that lets you offer a set of variations on the products listed on your online shopping store. It also allows you to control the same over prices, stocks available, image and much more.
Customers may see all the potential variations with a WooCommerce variable product. They can then select the one that best matches their requirements without fear of missing out on anything.
Eg: Suppose your customer is planning to buy a shirt, and they visit your store. You may display the shirt that comes in 4 different colors, 4 different sizes, and 4 different fabrics, as a single product with multiple variations .
Here, you are offering your customers the freedom to choose from various choices of the same product.
When to use Variable Products?
You might have by now got an idea on when to use the variable products. Well but will discuss the same in little detail here.
Consider the case where you have to sell a T-shirt through your WooCommerce store. For the same, what we will be doing is to create a simple product and then proceed from here.
But assume a situation where you want to sell the same T-Shirt in five different colours. In such cases, you will be needing to create five different products in the respective colours.
So this creates a mess.
Product variation swatches are an essential must for WooCommerce sites that sell variable products. You can present product variations in a variety of ways to give your consumers a more pleasant and organised buying experience.
In such a situation, the WooCommerce Variation Swatches plugin helps you to allow variations for a single product with the control over prices, stocks available, etc.
This gives immense power to the shop owners and can also enhance the overall shopping experience of their customers.
Certain Important Terms related to the WooCommerce Variable Product
Attributes – Attributes lets you depict additional characteristics of the products, such as size or color. This allows the customers to view the variations of the same product available and thus choose the best one for him/her.
Custom Attributes – The term “Custom attributes” are used to depict the newly created attributes by the Admin. WooCommerce plugin allows you to create custom attributes with limited customizations.
Global Attribute – Global Attributes are the ones that can be applied to both the newly created products as well as the existing ones.
Terms – Terms are used to depict the variations that come under a specific attribute. For example, consider that attribute Colour. The terms included inside them will be colours like Green, Red, Blue etc.
SKU – SKU stands for Stock Keeping Units. WooCommerce plugin lets you control the variable products on the basis of SKU, like stocks available, stocks left etc.
How To Create Variable Products?
Now we are all familiar with the basics related to WooCommerce Variable Products. Next, it’s time for having certain basic knowledge on creating variable products by manual means, or importing as bulk in CSV format.
Let’s checkout.
The following steps or procedures will help you to create variable products in the WooCommerce store.
Step 1 – Create Global Product Attributes
The foremost step is to create a Global Product Attribute. So that they can be applied later to the products listed in your WooCommerce store.
- Go to Products > Attributes
- In the ‘Add new attribute’ section, enter the name of your attribute in the ‘Name’ field (e.g. ‘Colour’)
Click ‘Add attribute’
Your newly created attribute will now appear in the table to the right.
Now add the attribute terms. In this case, the different terms under the attribute created are various colours like Red, Blue etc.
- Select ‘Configure terms’ from the ‘Terms’ column of your attribute.
- Enter the name of your first term (e.g. ‘Red’) from the ‘Add new Color’ form on the left.
- Click ‘Add new Color’ to create the term entered.
- Keep repeating for each term until the terms you created fulfil your demands.
Now the Global attributes are created and can be used as per your needs.
Step 2 – Choose your product type and your product.
Once you have created your global product attribute, now it’s time to configure your variable product.
For creating a product that is ready to be displayed on different variations, the product type should be set as a variable product. For the same, follow the steps given below:
- Go to Products > Add New
- Select Variable product from the ‘Product Data’ section.
Step 3 – Opting attributes For your Products
Your WooCommerce variable product is ready and now it’s time to apply the attributes to the Products in which they are to be displayed in your WooCommerce store with multiple variations.
For adding attributes to your products follow the steps given below:
- Go to the ‘Attributes’ tab in the ‘Product Data’ section.
- If you’re adding global attributes:Select one of the attribute names you have created from the ‘Custom product attribute’ dropdown and click ‘Add’.Next, click the ‘Value(s)’ menu and select any attribute values you’d like to display as variations for the product (you can select multiple ones).This is how you can implement product variations to your WooCommerce store.
- If you’re adding custom product attributes:
- From the ‘Custom product attribute’ dropdown, keep selecting the custom attributes created and finally click ‘Add’.
- Enter the name of your attribute in the ‘Name’ field (e.g. ‘Color’).
- Enter the name(s) of your terms (e.g. ‘Red’) in the ‘Value(s)’ section.
- Also note that each term you entered should be separated with a pipe symbol ‘|’.
- Tick mark ‘Used for variations’ for each custom attribute you want to include as a dropdown on the product page.
Then click ‘Save attributes’.
The freedom that WooCommerce Variable product delivers to the owners are beyond one’s simple imagination. Rather than creating each variable product manually, it allows you to apply multiple variations in a single product smoothly.
This saves time and thus ofcourse your business returns. So knowing exactly how to apply the variations to your WooCommerce products is necessary. Hope this blog gave you a minor insight to the same.
