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How to Filter Products by Category in WooCommerce 

Danielle Di-Tommaso
April 1, 2022
Acsell Designer Character

Do you want to categorize your products to strengthen customer experience? 

When it comes to product taxonomy for your WooCommerce shop, it is important to pay attention to categories and filters. Categories determine the products listed on the page and control the features available for browsing those products, including filters. Filters narrow down displayed products with a category and are combinable to allow customers to customize their search to their unique requirements and find the product they want faster. 

Offering filters and categories of products has a direct impact on site usability, which in turn affects the customer experience, and thereby store owners’ conversions and revenue.

Take the example of Decathlon Singapore, which optimized search options based on rich product attribution filters most relevant for their audience, by promoting specific items or categories like sports practice, nature of the product, and more. These efforts resulted in a 50% increase in their conversion rate.

In this article, we’ll help you understand the benefits of using WooCommerce category filters and implementing them on your WooCommerce website. 

Why Do You Need Product Filters?

According to Nielson Norman Group, online shoppers “desire instant gratification and immediacy when it comes to interacting with ecommerce retailers”. Fast loading pages, one-click ordering, and fast-delivery options are some ways to deliver on that expectation. Furthermore, WooCommerce category filters can elevate online customers’ desire for immediacy and offer a number of benefits, as follows:

An improved user experience

Typing product keywords each time is time-consuming and frustrating. A lack of filtering options or no popular filtering options affects customers’ perceptions of your catalog. Faster is always better!

Reduced bounce rate and cart abandonment

One of the reasons online shoppers leave without paying is if they find the website navigation too complex. An easy browsing experience makes customers stay on the site for longer.

SEO benefits

Google prefers indexed filters over pagination or navigation menus. Adding product filters can help your search engine rankings

Increased product views

When customers see how quick and easy it is to find your products based on their individual preferences, they will feel inclined to discover more of what you offer. 

More conversions

The longer people spend on your website and the more they explore your collection, the higher the chances of them finding the right product for their needs. This has a direct impact on your sales and revenue. 

How Can You Add WooCommerce Category Filters?

WooCommerce has built-in product filter widgets. If you want to use them, you can go to ‘Appearance’ and select ‘Widgets’. You can then drag and drop ‘Filter Products by Price’, ‘Filter Products by Attribute’, and ‘Filter Products by Ratings’ widgets in your sidebar. That said, there are two reasons why you need to look beyond the default options for product filters and consider WooCommerce category filters.

  1. Limited scope

You only have these three default widgets to work with. This may not matter much if your products are simple and similar in nature. But it quickly becomes a problem as you start adding more varieties of products to give customers greater choices in terms of sizes, colors and fabrics. To allow customers to specify more product attributes during their product search, you need advanced WooCommerce category filters.

  1. Page refresh

The other thing is that the page reloads each time your customer performs a filtered search. This is because the filters don’t use Ajax, a set of applications in web development that don’t require a page refresh. As Ajax product filters don’t reload the page, they are better for overall user experience. 

So, how can you add such filters? A plugin is best to offer more options relevant to your customers’ preferences so that they can find what they want quickly.

Acsell Product Filters Checks the Right Boxes

Acsell is the best way to apply multiple filter options at once for a truly personalized online shopping experience. With Acsell, you can create customizable filter groups with any fields you like, and apply them wherever you like, with no coding or PHP/CSS/HTML programming required. 

Here are some of the main benefits of Acsell.

All the filter options you need

Depending on your WooCommerce product, you can filter by items, featured products, stock, attributes, tags, price, and even by sale. Include all the WooCommerce category filters that your customers would like to use for a perfect product match.

No automatic refresh

After the customer applies their filter choice on your webpage, the plugin doesn’t force the page to reload. The reduced server calls mean your customers get instant results and enjoy a smooth purchase journey.

Align to your requirements

Create filters for every category page and group filters together. Add a group of filters globally or individually per product category. Define a filter template for each filter type to maintain consistency throughout your store.

Why use Acsell?

With Acsell, you can easily reduce time spent finding a product, ease the navigation experience and create a more personalized shopping experience, boosting conversions. 

Publishing the advanced filters to your ecommerce store is simple, even for non-technical users. Acsell was tested in a realistic ecommerce environment of over 10,000 products to achieve faster results. It doesn’t have the drawbacks of other product filter plugins which are known to slow your site down and not have proper documentation or support. 

Tutorial to Implement Acsell Product Filters

With just a few simple steps, you can install the product filter plugin. The next step is to run the Config Wizard. Lastly, you have to publish the filters to your store pages.

Install the plugin

1. Download the plugin installation file.

2. On the WordPress sidebar menu, click ‘Plugins’.

3. Click either the ‘Add New’ link in the Plugins menu or the ‘Add New’ button at the top of the Plugins page.

Go to Plugins page

4. Click ‘Upload Plugin’.

5. Click the ‘Browse’ button and go to the location of the plugin installer. This should be your ‘Downloads’ folder unless you saved it to a different location.

Upload the plugin

6. Click ‘Install Now’, then ‘Activate Plugin’.

7. You will be asked to enter your license key, which will be emailed to you when you purchase the product. Then, click ‘Agree & Activate License’.

Add your License key

8. Once you’ve installed the plugin, the Product Filters page will open and the product will start setting itself up. 

Wait for product to set up

9. It will then display the Config Wizard. 

Start Config Wizard

The Config Wizard makes it easy to set global product filters. You can modify the filters manually afterwards.

1. When the Config Wizard starts, you’ll see a filter with the product attribute that comes first alphabetically, i.e. ‘brand’. You can keep it or change it to your requirements.

Product attributes appear in alphabetic order

2. To add another filter, click ‘Add New Filter’. If you want to skip the Config Wizard, click ‘Manual Setup’. After adding filters, click ‘Save and Exit Config Wizard’.

Add new filter and save or select manual set-up

Configuring Filters

You can configure your product filters to suit your requirements. You can also change them manually after you’ve completed the initial setup using Config Wizard.

Filter Options

Type

Create filters based on product attributes like brand, color, size, material, product tags, price, level of discount, availability (‘In Stock’), and product promotion (‘Sale’). 

Values

Select values that apply to your product attributes. For example, for shoe size, values may be 7, 7.5, 8, and so on. 

Mechanism

This is how you’d like to visually present a filter. The list available will depend on the type of product attribute, and include some or all of the following:

Checkboxes

Customers check a box to apply a filter choice.

Checkboxes filter

Links

Customers click a link or links. Selected options are emboldened.

Link boxes

Customers click a box or boxes. Selected options are emboldened. 

Link boxes filter

Drop-down (single-select)

Customers select a filter choice from a drop-down menu.

Single-select drop-down filter

Drop-down (multi-select)

Customers select multiple filter choices in a drop-down menu.

Multi-select drop-down filter

Ranges

Customers select from a range of values. You can define these price ranges. 

Price range filter

Price Slider

Customers select a price band on a slider.

Price slider filter

Swatches

Customers click a swatch to apply a filter choice, such as choosing a particular shoe color, material, or brand.

Swatch

Preview

This is a preview of the filter as it will appear in your webpage sidebar. There are two options:

Display Product Counts – The number of matching products will be displayed in brackets next to each filter choice. If you don’t want this option, you can deselect it. 

Display Values – For swatches, you can select ‘Display Values’ to indicate the associated name or value next to each swatch. 

Value/Name displayed next to each swatch

With this, you will have configured your filters. Click ‘Save and Exit Config Wizard’. Your preferences are saved and a ‘Filter Sets‘ page comes up, where you can add to and edit your filters. 

Publish Filters to Your Shop Pages

To display filter sets on your product page and make them available to your customers, you need to add the Acsell Product Filters Widget to the Shop Sidebar of your website. Here are the steps to follow:

1. In the WP Admin menu, go to ‘Appearance’ and select ‘Widgets’.

Select widgets

2. If your site is using the classic Widgets editor or plugin, then click ‘Acsell Product Filters Widget’ on the left-hand side of the page. Then select the page area for your Shop or Category pages. Or, you can click and drag the widget into the page. Then, click ‘Done’.

Select Acsell Product Filters

3. If your site is using the Block Editor, scroll down to the ‘Shop Page Widget Area’ and expand it.

 Expand Shop page Widget Area
4. Click ‘+’ and type ‘Acsell’ in the search bar. When ‘Acsell Product Filters Widget’ appears, click it. Then click ‘Update’.
Update with Acsell Product Filters Widget

Refresh your store pages. Your filters will be displayed and ready for your customers to use. 

Ready to boost your sales?

Product categories and filtering create the optimized shopping experience customers have come to expect. A plugin enabling this is essential when you begin expanding your catalog with diverse products as WooCommerce built-in product filters fall short.

Acsell is the only plugin you need to fine-tune your search experience for your customers. An easy set-up process for adding WooCommmerce category filters, several customization options and super-fast speed and performance – Acsell surpasses expectations. And you’re in luck because you can enter a draw on our website and win a copy of Acsell. Put your name in now! 

You can also check out Acsell with a free trial. Get started today to see Acsell in action.

Acsell Product Filters

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