In episode 154 of our podcast, I chat with Kathie Keith from Barn2 Media about how the WooCommerce store owner can customize their WooCommerce-specific pages, such as the shop page, archives, etc. This has been a growing market for plugins and page builders over the last few years.

We talk about:

• The benefits of customizing these pages and what it means to the shop owner.
• Customizing your templates without knowing code.
• A few WordPress plugins that help you to customize these pages.
• Whether there are dangers in giving the non-designer these kinds of choices.
• How A/B testing plays into using these plugins.

A Few Thoughts from Katie

Customizing WooCommerce pages

Pretty much all WooCommerce-ready themes come with this standard layout. My issue with that is that it’s fine for some shops, but are site owners using it without thinking about whether that’s the right way to sell their specific products?

WooCommerce is the perfect vehicle for many sorts of products, but the default layout may not be.

Customizing without a plugin for the non-coder

Unless it’s some sort of theme that comes with stuff built in… But even these days, themes come with plugins that allow you to customize layout. It’s not part of the theme. So there will always be a need for some sort of plugin to customize your layouts.

Plugins for customizing the pages

WooCommerce Product Table lists products in a table layout instead of the standard grid that you get with WooCommerce. You can either use it with the standard grid like on a different page, or you can use it to completely replace the layout that comes with your theme.

A lot of page builder plugin these days are integrating more and more with WooCommerce. So for example, Elementor, a page builder plugin, lets you redesign the shop and category pages. Some themes come with tech page builders. So a lot of themes are having features that allow you to change your WooCommerce layouts.

IconicWP has a plugin called WooCommerce Show Single Variations. It keeps the grid layout, but lists each variation as if it was a separate product. So that’s quite clever. Let’s say you had a tee shirt available in red, white, and blue. Well, it would actually show on the shop pages separate products so that people don’t have to go through to a separate page to buy each variation or to see a picture of it.

Too much control for non-designers

People should choose how to list their products based on a real understanding of what they’re selling and the target audience. You need to think about the best way to present it. You shouldn’t do it the other way around, which is to see a plugin and think, oh, that looks cool, and install it. You should do it from the perspective of your users and what you sell and the products that you’re trying to get them to buy.

Find Katie at:

Barn2 Plugins

On Twitter @barn2media

Plugins and Page Builder Mentioned

WooCommerce Product Table Plugin

WooCommerce Lead Time Plugin

WooCommerce Show Single Variations

BeaverBuilder

Elementor

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