Creating an online store using WooCommerce gives you several ways to store and display product data. You want your website to be designed based on a clean, clutter-free approach. Alongside this, you want to display sufficient information about the products to help the customers in making the buying decision.
One way to increase sales on your WooCommerce store is to sell variations of various products. You can do that by displaying the product variation-related information in the front end using multiple fields. Also, you can allow customers to choose a specific type of product. But that does not mean you have to create variable products with WooCommerce. You can choose an alternative way to add WooCommerce custom fields for variation.
What is a WooCommerce Custom Field?
A custom field in WooCommerce is any kind of form field that allows the end-users to provide personalized information about the product they want to buy. It can be of the following types:
- Text field
- Dropdown
- Checkboxes
- Radio button
- File upload
- Date or number field
Many store owners prefer adding WooCommerce custom fields programmatically. However, it is possible to WooCommerce custom fields for variations without writing a single line of code. In this blog, we will talk about the latter way to add advanced custom fields on a single product, shop, and category pages.
WooCommerce Custom Fields – Example
Think of an example to understand what WooCommerce custom fields are –
On an online personalized gift shop, you can customize a cake as per the occasion. When you reach the product detail page of a specific type of cake, you find a field that asks for the name or text to be written over the cake. Similarly, there are options available to choose the shape of a cake – square, rectangle, circle, and others.
In this example, the field that asks for the name or text is a WooCommerce custom field. Let’s dig deeper to find out more about the custom fields.
Use Cases for WooCommerce Custom Fields
If you have never thought of using custom fields, you might be wondering why you would need these fields to be added to your WooCommerce store. Here are a few typical use cases of WooCommerce custom fields you should know about:
- To sell branded, monogrammed products, be it apparel or accessories that require custom text or logo
- To offer customized gifts, including jewelry, cakes, and assorted gift boxes with a name or message given alongside
- To allow the customers to build a specific product like pizzas or sandwiches with the options to add cheese, veggies, and bread type.
Difference Between Attributes and WooCommerce Custom Fields
Many people argue on the use of WooCommerce custom fields over product variations and attributes. They think they can add attributes to a product in WooCommerce, thus eliminating the need for any of the WooCommerce checkout fields, which is not entirely true.
Whether you create a simple or variable product for your WooCommerce store, the product information you add will be fixed for all customers. The product description, price, or attributes will not change for different customers.
However, by adding WooCommerce billing fields or custom price fields to any product, it gets the potential to be different for every buyer in your store. For instance, if you are selling cakes online that can be personalized with a photo on it, then every customer will give you a unique photo to be printed. This cannot be done using attributes in WooCommerce.
You can see how to create a WooCommerce variable product here.
How to Add Advanced WooCommerce Custom Fields?
As said above, it is possible to add custom fields to your online store by writing the required code for the same. However, just like many other possibilities of adding need-based functionalities to a store, you can find plugins for this need as well.
Here, we will talk about the 2 plugins that you can use to add WooCommerce custom fields.
WooCommerce Custom Product Addons Plugin
It is a lightweight WooCommerce product add-on plugin that simplifies the process of adding custom fields to the product pages on your online store. It comes with an easy-to-use custom form builder using which you can add product options without facing any hassles.
WooCommerce Custom Product Addons plugin is meant to help you personalize the WooCommerce product ordering page. The data submitted by the customers in these extra custom fields will get stored in your store’s backend along with other product details. It supports the following form elements:
Features of Woocommerce Custom Product Addons
Can include multiple custom fields in the product front-end page such as:
- Normal text field
- Number input field
- Radio field to allow the buyers to choose one option amongst multiple choices
- Checkbox field to allow selection of more than one options available
- Dropdown field
- Text area field to enable the buyers to add details more than a line
- Date field
- Color field
- Password field
- Email field
This plugin is available in free as well as the premium version, each of which differs in terms of the features.
| Free Version Features | Features Available with Premium Version |
|---|---|
| Drag and drop form builder | Improved UI with drag and drop, and one-click support |
| One-click field add feature | Conditional logic support to show or hide fields |
| Forms for a single product as well as the product category | Changeable field width |
| No limit to create fields | Insertion of global forms |
| Easy to add HTML class to the custom fields | Capability to bind the Quantity field to a custom field |
| Ability to make the fields mandatory | Support for multiple pricing methods |
| Easy to show/hide product options from the cart | Custom formula insertion for paragraph field |
Flexible Checkout Fields for WooCommerce
Although WooCommerce gives a myriad of features to add to your online store, it does not allow customization of checkout fields as one of its core features. However, you can add this feature with the help of Flexible Checkout Fields plugin that comes with an easy to use interface. Using this plugin, you can not only edit the default fields but also add WooCommerce checkout fields alongside. You also get the flexibility to set the order of fields on the checkout page.
Primary Features of the Free Version of Flexible Checkout Fields Plugin
- Seamless integration with the WordPress dashboard
- Reordering of WooCommerce built-in as well as custom fields
- Change labels
- Easy to show/hide fields from the checkout page
- Facility to display fields on pages other than the checkout, be it Thank You page, My Account, or emails
- Manageable settings to make various fields ‘required’ or ‘optional’
- Custom CSS class addition to the fields
- Addition of new WooCommerce custom fields in the checkout process
Pro Version Features:
The Pro Version supports more form elements, they are:
- Checkbox
- Radio button
- Dropdown
- Multi-Select
- Date
- Time
- Color Picker
- File Upload
- Headline
Other Pro Features
- Compatible with WPML and Polylang to translate field data into other languages
- Built-in field validation for custom fields
- Additional WooCommerce billing fields
- Enables conditional logic for fields based on the value in other fields, chosen products/product categories, and shipping method
The Bottom Line
Before using any plugin to add WooCommerce custom fields to your site, you must understand the need for it. Any addition you make to your WooCommerce store must be based on some quantitative research. Make sure you only add custom fields to your store if your business calls for it.
If you have any questions or comments please share in the comments section