Improving your customers’ online shopping experience is an easy way to deliver more value and, in turn, increase sales. For example, by creating a WooCommerce order form, you can display all of your products in a neat table layout that makes it easier to browse, find, and purchase products.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create a WooCommerce order form for your online store using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll have a clear idea of how to set it all up.
Let’s get started!
What Are WooCommerce Order Forms and Why Do You Need Them?
The default WooCommerce store layout displays all of your products in a grid layout. The products are arranged in rows and columns with each row containing three to four products. It looks something like this:
Notice how customers can only view the name of the product, image, ratings, and price. Clicking the product name takes them to the individual product page. From this page, customers can view more information about that product, add to cart button, and additional buying options (e.g. setting quantity).
WooCommerce order forms offer an improved way of presenting e-commerce products. In addition to displaying important product information and quantity selectors, the product table also features options to search, sort, and filter products.
Businesses That Can Benefit From Order Forms
If you’re looking for an easy way to display more products on a single page, consider creating a WooCommerce order form. Here are some examples of businesses that can benefit from adding WooCommerce order forms to their sites:
- Wholesale Stores. Order forms make it easy for wholesale buyers to purchase products. The quantity selector and checkboxes option enable quick bulk purchases.
- Restaurants. The WooCommerce order form is ideal for creating restaurant menus. The table layout allows customers to browse through the dishes you offer and view important food information at a glance before making their choice.
- Build your own product stores. Many stores allow customers to customize their products. Some examples include pizzas, cakes, pastry boxes, or gift hampers. You can display product variations in your product table to present all of the available options.
The ordering process remains the same whether you decide to continue using the default store or replacing it with a WooCommerce order form. The only difference is in how you’re able to present your products and the shopping experience you create for your customers.
Compared to the default shop page, order forms let you display twice the number of products in the same space. You can even add features like searching, filtering, and sorting to help your customers quickly find exactly what they’re looking for.
How to Create a WooCommerce Order Form (In 3 Easy Steps)
One way to create a WooCommerce order form for your online store, is by using the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. You can use it to display products in a table layout complete with features like Add to Cart buttons, quantity selectors, and sorting and filtering options.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll assume you already have a WooCommerce website set up. Once you’ve installed the WooCommerce Product Table plugin to your online store, activate its license and follow the steps outlined below to create an order form:
Step #1: Configure WooCommerce Product Table Settings
The first thing you need to do is configure the WooCommerce Product Table plugin’s settings to customize how your order form appears on the front-end. Head over to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Product tables to get started.
There are many different customization options available to you that you can configure based on your personal preferences. Here, we’ll step through some of the essential configurations you need to make in order to create a functional WooCommerce order form:
Columns
This option controls the information displayed in your order forms. For instance, you might want to display product names, images, prices, add to cart button.
Add to Cart column
It controls the functionalities of the add to cart button. You can display a simple Add to Cart button, a checkbox for adding multiple products to cart, or both.
Table controls
You can choose which sorting and filtering options you’d like to make available to your customers. This is incredibly useful for online stores that sell many different types of products.
Once you’ve configured these basic, essential settings, click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen to proceed.
Step #2: Decide Which Products to Display in the Order Form
Once you’re done configuring the design and functionality settings of your WooCommerce order form, you can decide which products you’d like to display in it. By default, the shortcode [product_table] displays all of the products in your online store.
However, if you’d like to display some products in your WooCommerce order form, you can simply select a grouping. For example, you can display all items from a product category, tags, custom taxonomy terms, or those with a custom field value. You can also use the include and exclude parameters in your shortcode to target specific products by their product ID.
The WooCommerce Product Table offers a number of features that let you sell more products by creating a functional WooCommerce order form.
Step #3: Create a Page for Your WooCommerce Order Form
Once you’ve configured the WooCommerce Product Table’s settings and decided which products you’d like to display, all that’s left to do is add the WooCommerce order form to your online store.
Since the WooCommerce Product Table plugin gives you the option to use shortcodes, you can place your order form just about anywhere you’d like! This includes pages, posts, and widgetized areas such as sidebars and footers.
For example, you might want to add a WooCommerce order form to a page. To do this, you would simply use the Insert Product Table icon to insert the shortcode to your page.
It would look something like this on the front-end:
Conclusion
The default WooCommerce shop page doesn’t offer the best layout to display your e-commerce products. By using an order form, you can enhance your customers’ shopping experience and increase sales. The easier you make it for customers to find and buy from you, the more sales you’ll make!
The WooCommerce Product Table plugin makes it easy for online store owners to create functional WooCommerce orders forms. All you have to do is configure the plugin’s settings and decide which products you’d like to display. The plugin will automatically generate a dynamic product table layout for you.
Between the default WooCommerce shop page and WooCommerce order forms, which option do you prefer and why? We’d love to hear from you so let us know by commenting below.