Categories, tags and attributes are essential for running your WordPress website for long term. However, these can be used for running your website for a short period of time as well. If you set these features on your store in right way, your customers will find their specific products through your store.
In this article, we will discuss how to manage WooCommerce Product categories, Tags, Attributes.
Product categories
Product categories in WooCommerce help you to filter your products and group them in a single place. You can also quickly add multiple products in one category. For example, the category for shoes will contain all sorts of shoes while the category for Shirts will contain all sorts of shirts. You can also add subcategories to your products as per your requirements.
Add/Edit Product Categories
To add product categories in WooCommerce just go to: Products > Categories. Clicking on it will open the categories option for your products.
You will find the following options:
Once you’ve entered this section you will find almost the same category page as the one in above figure, where you can enter the Name, Slug and Description for the category.
Name: Add your category name.
Slug: Add your “slug”, the URL friendly version of the name. It should contains only lowercase letters, hyphens, and numbers.
Parent: You can also choose parent category if there is a child category which is newly created.
Description: The description is not displayed by default. However, some themes may show it.
Default Type: Here you can find different types of options like Products, Subcategories or both.
Thumbnail: You can upload category image of your choice here if you want.
Once you filled up the details then click Add New Product Category. The product category will appear in the adjacent window, which lists all the product categories on the Add Product page.
You can also modify the order of categories from here by clicking and dragging a category. This will be helpful for the front end user when you’re displaying the categories.
In WooCommerce 3.3, there is a default category. Every product must be assigned to a category. If you forget to assign a product category the default category will be automatically assigned to that product. By default, this category will be named as “Uncategorized” and can not be deleted. However, you can rename the category.
To delete the “Uncategorized” category just switch the default category using the row actions underneath the category name, then the “Uncategorized” category can be deleted as it is no longer as the default.
Product tags
If you want to upload any content on the internet then you should make sure that visitors are able to search it. Tags provide this opportunity to visitors. If used in the right way these tags can get you ranked on Google, while they are an excellent source of internal link multipliers.
Add/Edit Product Tags
To find the settings page for Product Tags, you have to go to Products> Tags
When you will enter this section you will find options to create new product tags. These options are exactly the same as the tags of posts. If you want to create product tags in WooCommerce, fill out the fields of Name, Slug, and Description. Then click on the Add New Product Tag button.
Product Attributes
Product attributes are very important for a store. If you are selling clothes of more than one color or size, then you need to add all that to your store. Product Attributes lets you add these additional details for your products and WooCommervce provides such option. Let’s see how you can add Product Attributes.
WooCommerce provides you two options to use these attributes in the shop sidebar.
First: Using the “WooCommerce Layered Nav” widget. If you add this widget to your shop sidebar, all customers who will visit your store will be able to filter the products based on the provided attributes.
Second: Adding the attribute is by creating Variable products. To create a variable product, you must add an attribute. This option will be found in the Add Product window. Here you can select the product type as Variable product and Add an attribute from Attribute option.
Add/Edit Product Attributes
To add/edit product attributes go to Products> Attributes. This will open the attributes option for your products.
Like categories and tags, the first two fields which you will fill in while creating any attribute are for Name and Slug.
The next options are for Enable archives, Type and Default sort order. Both options are in the form of drop down menus and offer a few options from which you may choose according to your requirement.
Enable Archives: This option lets you view a page with all the products.
Type: From this option you determine how you choose attributes for your product. If you choose Select option, you will have the same attributes all over your store and you can then Select the attributes. If you want to type new value to the attributes you have to choose text.
Default Sort order: This option controls the sort order of the terms on the front-end. Users can choose Custom ordering, Name and Term ID. If you choose Custom ordering then it will be easier for you to drag and drop the various terms in an attribute.
Once you filled all these fields, click the Add Attribute button.
Now you have to configure the terms in this attribute. For example, let’s create an attribute named as ‘Size’.
You can go to the settings of the attribute by clicking on the gear icon on the right side of the attribute row.
A new window will be appeared with the title ‘Add New Size’.
Add a Name, Slug, and Description. You can also define a parent for the term.
Once you add all the required information of attributes, click Add New Size button.
You can add multiple sizes by repeating the process.
Once you complete adding all the available sizes, you can find your attributes and terms displayed on the attributes page.
These are all global attributes, which you can use for any product that you add to your store. Alternatively, you can create custom attributes while creating a variable product to your store.
Related Article: Managing Products Categories, Tags and Attributes