How to Add Product Filter in Woocommerce | Step-by-Step Guide

Product filters in WooCommerce are essential for enhancing the customer shopping experience, especially for stores with extensive product catalogues. Filters allow customers to narrow down products based on specific criteria like price, category, colour, size, and more making it easier for them to find exactly what they're looking for quickly. By adding effective product filters, you not only improve navigation but also increase the likelihood of conversion as customers can find relevant products with ease.

In this guide, we'll cover the benefits of adding filters in WooCommerce, explore popular product filter plugins, and outline the steps to implement them seamlessly into your store. With the right filter setup, you can streamline product discovery, cater to diverse customer needs, and create a more user-friendly shopping experience. Whether you run a small boutique or a large online marketplace, this guide will help you understand how to choose, install, and customize product filters that meet your store's unique requirements.

What is a Woocommerce Product Filter?

Woocommerce Product Filter is a feature or tool that helps users narrow their searches while finding products on a website. You often visit websites to find any particular products and wish to see them as soon as possible. Finding the desired products among thousands seems highly crucial and time-consuming. Currently, the Woocommerce Product Filter feature is highly effective in narrowing down your searches. 

Often, users leave or lose interest in your website when they don’t find the desired products quickly. But with Woocommerce Product Filter options like price, category, colour, size, and more, they get their desired products faster. Eventually, this helps to make them more engaged on your website.

Why should you add product filters in Woocommerce?

Adding product filters in Woocommerce to your online store brings several benefits, primarily enhancing the user experience and increasing conversion rates. Here are some of the top benefits:

• Product filters allow customers to quickly find products based on attributes like price, colour, size, and more. This saves time and keeps them engaged.
• Filters simplify browsing, so customers don’t have to go through irrelevant products. A smoother experience often translates into happier customers.
• Shoppers who spend more time on your site, exploring filtered results, are more likely to buy, and thus there is a boosted user experience.
• Filtered pages (if managed well) can sometimes be indexed by search engines, providing more entry points for customers searching for specific product variations.
• Suggesting filters like "Frequently Bought Together" can encourage customers to explore and add more items to their cart. And this helps in increasing the average order value.
• Filters can highlight clearance items or overstocked inventory, making it easier to promote and clear these products.
• Special filters for “New Arrivals” or “Bestsellers” make it easy for customers to explore fresh or popular items.

Some top-tier plugins to add product filters in Woocommerce 

Apart from using the “Super Woocommerce Filter," there are some more plugins you need to know when adding product filters in Woocommerce: 

WOOF: Woocommerce Products Filter

The WOOF-WWooCommerce Products Filter plugin is a popular and powerful tool for adding advanced filtering options to WooCommerce stores. It provides customers with various filtering options, making it easier for them to find products based on specific criteria. WOOF supports multiple filtering options, including categories, attributes, tags, prices, custom taxonomies, and more. This variety helps customers narrow down their smart product filter and search more precisely. WOOF is highly customizable, letting you style the filters to match your store’s theme. Advanced users can also access a settings panel to control the visibility, order, and type of filters displayed. Developers can use hooks and filters within the plugin to add custom modifications if needed.

Themify: Woocommerce Product Filter

The Themify-WooCommerce Product Filter plugin is a user-friendly and feature-rich solution for adding filters to a WooCommerce store. It helps customers quickly find products by various attributes, categories, prices, and more, enhancing the browsing experience and potentially boosting conversions. Themify’s filter plugin includes an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for setting up filters. This makes it easy to configure and customize filters, even for users without coding experience. Themify also offers premium WordPress themes and plugins compatible with this product filter, providing additional customization options and enhanced design layouts. The premium themes from Themify integrate well with their filter plugin, ensuring a seamless design experience across your site.

Woocommerce Product Filter by WooBeWoo

The WooCommerce Product Filter by WooBeWoo plugin is a highly customizable and user-friendly option to add product filters in WooCommerce stores. It is designed to help users quickly find products based on multiple criteria like categories, attributes, prices, and custom fields. With its flexible customization options and advanced features, it’s an excellent choice for both small and large WooCommerce stores. With WooBeWoo, you can choose from vertical, horizontal, and grid filter layouts, making it easy to adapt the filter’s appearance to match your store’s design. This plugin offers shortcode and widget support, allowing you to place filters anywhere on your website, including sidebars, product pages, or custom areas.

YITH Woocommerce AJAX Product Filter 

The YiTH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter plugin is a popular tool for adding powerful, real-time filtering options to WooCommerce stores. It’s known for its user-friendly interface and AJAX-based functionality, allowing customers to browse and filter products without refreshing the page. This can help improve the shopping experience, streamline the search process, and increase conversions. The plugin provides widget and shortcode options, allowing you to place filters in sidebars, product pages, or custom locations on your website. This flexibility in placement means you can integrate filters seamlessly into any layout.

How to Add Product Filters in Woocommerce on your Woocommerce Website?

Here is a complete guide where you will learn how to add product filters in Woocommerce on your Woocommerce website.

Well, we can add Woocommerce Product Filters using a plugin.

Step 1: Install a WooCommerce Product Filter Plugin

To add product filters to your WooCommerce website, the first step is to install a WooCommerce product filter plugin. Start by logging into your WordPress Dashboard, then navigate to Plugins > Add New. In the Woocommerce search bar, enter keywords like “WooCommerce Product Filter” to find a selection of plugins tailored for this purpose. Some popular options include WOOF – Products Filter for WooCommerce, which offers a free version with extensive filtering options, YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter for more advanced features available through a paid plan, or Product Filters for WooCommerce by WooCommerce, which is an official WooCommerce plugin that provides dependable functionality and compatibility. Once you’ve identified the plugin that best suits your needs, click Install Now followed by Activate. This activation will make the plugin’s functionality available on your site, setting you up for configuring filters that enhance user navigation on your WooCommerce store.

Step 2: Configure the Product Filter Plugin

Once the plugin is active, it’s time to configure the filters according to your needs. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Filters, or the designated settings page that corresponds to the specific plugin you selected. Here, you’ll see options to customize various types of filters that shoppers can use, such as Price, which allows customers to search within a specified price range; Categories, which enables filtering by product categories like “Clothing” or “Electronics”; Attributes like color, size, or brand; and Ratings, which can be helpful if you want users to filter products based on customer reviews. Select the filter types you want, and customize each one to match your website’s design and user experience. Most plugins provide multiple display options, such as checkboxes, dropdowns, sliders, or radio buttons, giving you flexibility in how filters appear on your website. Taking the time to thoughtfully configure these settings will ensure that filters are user-friendly and beneficial for your customers.

Step 3: Add Product Filters to Your Shop Page

After configuring the filters, you’ll need to add them to your shop page or any other page where you want them to appear. Head to Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress Dashboard to place the filter widget in your site’s Shop Sidebar or other widgetized areas where they’ll be visible to users. Locate the Product Filter widget from the plugin, and add it to the appropriate area. For users of the Block Editor (Gutenberg), you can also use the Product Filter block, which can be added directly to your page layout, allowing for a more custom placement and design experience. Alternatively, many plugins provide shortcodes that let you add filters directly to any page. This flexibility lets you control where filters appear and how they align with the rest of your site’s layout, optimizing the shopping experience for your customers.

Step 4: Enable AJAX Filtering (Optional)

An optional but highly recommended step is to enable AJAX filtering if your chosen plugin supports it. AJAX filtering allows filters to update product results in real-time without requiring the page to reload, providing a faster and more seamless experience for users. To enable this, go to the plugin’s settings and find the option for AJAX filtering. Enabling AJAX will give your customers a smooth, uninterrupted experience as they refine their product search, which can encourage longer browsing times and increase the likelihood of conversions.

Step 5: Test Your Filters

Once everything is set up, testing your filters is essential to make sure they work as intended. Visit the Shop page or any page where you’ve added filters, and try applying different filter options to ensure that they display the correct products. Make sure to check the functionality on mobile devices as well to verify that the filters are responsive and user-friendly on smaller screens. Testing allows you to catch any issues early on, so your customers enjoy a flawless experience while shopping on your website.

Lastly, consider some best practices to optimize your product filtering. Only include relevant filters to avoid overwhelming users with too many choices; for instance, add size filters only if necessary for your product types. If you have multiple product categories, create category-specific filters that make sense within each grouping. Also, prioritize mobile usability by ensuring filters are easy to use on smaller screens, as a significant number of users shop from mobile devices. Following these practices will help you make the most of your filters, leading to a better shopping experience and potentially boosting your store’s conversion rates.

Conclusion 

Adding product filters in WooCommerce is a powerful way to improve the shopping experience, helping customers quickly find products that meet their needs. 

Adding product filters in WooCommerce not only enhances the user experience but can also increase conversions by making it easier for customers to find products quickly. Selecting a flexible and customizable filter plugin that matches your store’s needs combined with thoughtful layout placement and responsive design will set up your store for a more engaging and efficient shopping experience.

We have made a complete guide on how you can add product filters in Woocommerce by simply using the Super Woocommerce Product Filter plugin. Also, we have mentioned more qualitative plugins letting you add product filters in Woocommerce.