WooCommerce, being a highly popular WordPress plugin to set up an online store, comes with a wide variety of features. In general, no WooCommerce backed website utilizes all its features in its entirety. In general, if you have plans to set up an online store using WordPress CMS, you will only make use of WooCommerce functionalities that are best suited for your business.
Particularly when it is about categorizing the range of products, WooCommerce comes with a bewildering array of choices. Sometimes, people find it difficult to identify the right way of categorization of WooCommerce products. They experience categorizing their products in one way only to realize later that they need a different way out. For instance, you can categorize products based on their attributes or create variable products to create different versions of one product that are slightly different from each other in terms of specifications.
However, WooCommerce grouped products are different. Here, we will talk about this type of product categorization and how to set it up.
What are WooCommerce Group Products?
WooCommerce grouped products is a product type that is used when you want to sell a product that has different versions. Using this product type, you can enable the end customers to find each version of a product on the main grouped product page.
WooCommerce Group Product – Example
Consider this example to get a clear understanding of this product type :
Let’s say you run an online bookstore and sell various editions of books from different categories. One way to sell different editions of a specific book is to create a product page for each edition and sell them separately. However, with the help of grouped product type, you can create one group product page to make it easier for the customers to find all the editions of the book in one place. Also, the customers will find it easier to submit reviews about individual products within the group easily. In other words, grouped product type is recommended when you want to sell unique but very similar products through the main product page.
You must also know that with the WooCommerce plugin, you get the choice to show the individual products or just the grouped product in the front-end of your online store. Selecting the latter option will improve navigation on your site while the former one results in more choices for the buyers.
Steps to Create WooCommerce Grouped Products
Setting up grouped products asks for a little more work. It is because you have to create several simple products for each version, an overall grouped product to cover up all the variations, and then add the simple products to the grouped product type. WooCommerce grouped products work similarly to the categories or tags you create in WordPress. It also means they can be created and edited whenever you need them.
Start with creating products using simple product type in WooCommerce, if you already have a product go the product edit page
In the WordPress dashboard, click Product –> Add New, here you add the product details.
- Scroll down to product data section to select the ‘Simple Product’ dropdown option
- Add the details related to one of the product versions and save them up
- Create similar other simple products for different versions of the same product
- Create a new product, and from the ‘Product Data’ section, select the ‘Grouped Product’ option. Since it is not an actual product, you will find any general settings for price or stock.
- Next to it, add the products that you have created before into this grouped product type by clicking on the ‘Linked Products’ section
- Once you are done with adding multiple products into the grouped product, save the changes and you are done!
Adding Attributes to the Group Products
Attributes are more like features or categories which you can assign to a product. They are commonly used with variable products. A good example to understand the attributes would be shoes sold online on a WooCommerce store. Here, the shoes are the product, while the size and shoe model type are its attributes. The best part is about adding them to the grouped products as well.
Consider this guide on how to create variable products in detail.
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Grouping Products Using Premium WooCommerce Plugins
Creating grouped products when you have multiple versions/editions of the same product available is not the only way to group products. As for any other additional WooCommerce functionality, there are premium plugins you can use to do more than just grouping products in the most basic manner.
If you have already found some plugins for product grouping, the chances are that you are not sure which one to choose. You might feel they work almost similarly and have some overlapping features. But it is crucial to dig deeper into the differences between each one of them and their use cases. In other words, knowing how to do product grouping using WooCommerce extensions/plugins will help your online store stand out.
Let’s talk about some of the popular WooCommerce product grouping plugins you can add to your online store.
WooCommerce Chained Products
Other than allowing your customers to buy from amongst different versions of the same products, you also want to attract them towards your store. For this purpose, you offer rewards in one way or the other, which ultimately results in higher sales. One way to reward buyers on your WooCommerce store is to offer a free product with every purchase. This functionality can be added to your site using the ‘Chained Products’ extension.
Using this extension, you can tie additional products to a ‘main product’ on your site, hence the name. When a customer buys the main product, the chained one gets automatically added to their cart, mostly for free. This way, you can offer the chained products as rewards unless bought individually. A good example of using this extension is when you want to attract people to the tailored suits you offer online through a free tie or a set of ties. Here, the suit becomes the main product, while the tie(s) is ‘chained’ to it.
Primary Features of WooCommerce Chained Products plugin:
- Easy to chain multiple products
- Inventory management based on chained products sold along with the main product
- Auto-update on past orders, which is best suited for membership sites and digital downloads
- Optimized for performance
- Tested for compatibility with other WooCommerce plugins and themes
WooCommerce Product Bundles
One of the most popular business marketing strategies is to bundle a few products together and sell them at a discounted price. This works well particularly when you sell products in a specific niche on your WooCommerce store, like assembled products, product kits, and gift boxes.
WooCommerce Product Bundles is a flexible, general-purpose product grouping extension you can use to add this feature to your online store. It lets you sell multiple products grouped in bundles that are customizable in terms of quantity and optional items. You can add simple, variable, and subscription-based products to the bundles, which makes this plugin best suited for a wide range of applications.
As an example, consider selling pairs of socks online. Instead of selling each pair individually, you can create a bundle of say, five socks pairs and sell them at a discount.
Primary Features of WooCommerce Product Bundles plugin:
- Best suited to offer product packages on bulk discount
- Configurable bundles created in seconds
- Control over the minimum or maximum number of items that a user must buy to form a bundle
- Multiple layout options
- Compatible with WooCommerce Subscription and ‘All Products for WooCommerce subscriptions’ add-on
- Useful for cross-selling by creating bundles with recommended products
- Easy to create digital/downloadable bundles
- Bundled product inventory reports
Also see:Â Best WooCommerce Related Product Plugins
WooCommerce Composite Products
Giving the power to create a product kit in the hands of your TG is yet another way to make the sales soar. You can easily do this with the ‘WooCommerce Composite Products’ extension, which lets you create assembled product kits by grouping products of different product types – simple or variable, with configurable components.
Using this plugin, you can give your customers the power to build composite products on your WooCommerce store. It has been designed for product-kit building purposes and various other use-cases.
One example where composite products extension fits best is when you sell computer hardware through your online store. Assembling a computer system requires multiple components, like motherboard, cabinet, keyword, and monitor. Using this extension, you can allow the buyers to choose what they want and build their kit.
Primary Features of WooCommerce Composite Products plugin:
- Easy to add product selection constraints based on a conditional logic
- Advanced product grouping features
- Customization of flows and layouts possible
- Paginated response option view for an interactive browsing experience
- Adaptable architecture
WooCommerce Mix and Match Products
WooCommerce Mix and Match Products extension, as the name suggests, is best suited to offer a wide variety of similar products in one container. You can use this extension to encourage the targeted customers on your online store to buy in bulk from you without forcing them to do that. You set the assortment limit or the number of items to be selected in a container, and you are good to go to offer products in bulk. Alongside, you manage full control over defining which items to be selected.
Consider the example of selling shirts for men online. You want the customers to create their pack of 5 shirts for purchase. Set up Mix and Match Product plugin to allow five shirts from your catalog and leave the rest into the hands of your buyers.
Primary Features of WooCommerce Mix and Match Products plugin:
- Supports both simple as well as variable products in the container
- Possible to add static price for the assortment or as per the items chosen
- Flexibility to ship the assortment in one package or separately
- Inventory management to track sales and stocks
WooCommerce Force Sells
WooCommerce Force Sell extension lets you link multiple products together so that when bought, they get added to the cart simultaneously. From a business perspective, it may seem like an excellent idea for upselling. But the choice of products linked together must be chosen carefully to make the container useful as a whole for the buyer.
You must know that the price of force sold products are retained during the purchase. It means if the main product is $50 and the force sold product costs at $15, then the cart price for the customer will be $65. This is what differentiates this extension from chained products.
Primary Features of WooCommerce Force Sells plugin:
- Option to added normal force sell and synced force sell products
- Allow the buyers to change the quantity of these products in the cart or sync them up with the main product
Choosing the Right Product Grouping Extension for Your Store
Product grouping on a WooCommerce store is advantageous in many ways. However, the selection of the right extension based on the type of products you sell online is the key to increasing sales this way. Make sure you dig deeper into the details of the use-cases of each extension before buying it. Be smart when you work on adding more functionalities to your WooCommerce store through premium plugins.
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