How to Add WooCommerce Category Filter Dropdown?

Do you wish to group your products into different categories to improve shopping experience?

When it comes to product taxonomy for your WooCommerce store, categories and filters are crucial. Categories decide which products appear on the eCommerce website, and filters are accessible for browsing those products. Filters cut down shown products by category and are combinable, allowing users to tailor their search to their specific needs and locate the product they need faster.

Providing product filters and categories has a direct impact on site usability, which affects consumer experience, and, as a result, affects stores’ conversions and revenue.

In this article, we’ll explain the advantages of utilizing category filters and how to add WooCommerce category filter dropdown on your WooCommerce store.

Why you should add WooCommerce Category Filter Dropdown?

WooCommerce category filters can increase online shoppers’ desire and experience for immediacy and provide the following benefits:

A better user experience

Entering product terms each time is inconvenient and time-consuming. Customers’ opinions of your catalog are influenced by a lack of filtering options or the absence of popular filtering alternatives. Faster is always preferable!

Decreased bounce rate and cart abandonment

One of the reasons online buyers abandon carts is because the website navigation is too complicated. A simple browsing experience encourages users to stay on the site longer.

SEO Advantages

Indexed filters are preferred by Google over pagination or navigation menus. Adding product filters to your website can boost your search engine rankings.

Product review enhancement

Customers will be more inclined to explore more of what you offer if they realize how quick and easy it is to find your products based on their own tastes.

Increased conversions

The more time customers spend on your website and the more they explore your selection, the more likely they are to locate the correct product for their needs. This directly affects your sales and revenue.

Does WooCommerce offer a built-in category filter?

There are built-in product filter widgets in WooCommerce by default. If you want to use these widgets, you can choose “Widgets” under “Appearance“.

The Filter Products by Price, Filter Products by Attribute, and Filter Items by Ratings widgets can then be dropped into your sidebar. 

However, they just provide you with the basic function for your customers to search on your site. To enhance the buying experience, you should consider the upgraded product filters. There are two reasons why you should think about WooCommerce category filters in addition to the standard product filter options.

Limited features

There are only these three default widgets available for use. If your products are straightforward and of a comparable kind, this might not be a big deal. But as you start introducing additional product types to provide buyers more options in terms of sizes, colors, and fabrics, it rapidly turns into an issue. You need sophisticated WooCommerce category filters so that customers may search for products using additional product parameters.

Page reload

The page reloads every time one of your customers conducts a filtered search, which is another issue. This is due to the filters’ lack of usage of Ajax, a group of web development tools that avoid the need for page refreshes. Ajax product filters are better for overall user experience because they don’t require a page reload.

How then do you add these filters? In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to use Woostify’s Smart Product Filter extension to build a WooCommerce category filter dropdown. The easiest way for you to provide more options that are relevant to your clients’ interests, so they can locate what they require fast without the use of a third-party plugin is to use this built-in theme feature.

Smart Product Filter: A brief introduction

Woostify’s Smart Filter is a helpful add-on. This WooCommerce product filter includes a variety of features that speed up and simplify the product search process, improving the shopping experience and increasing sales.

Smart product filter offers various outstanding features:

• Filters products based on any criteria, attributes, taxonomies, prices, or other product information. 
• Both vertical and horizontal layouts are supported.
• Adopts product data automatically and displays only the remaining filter terms
• With WooCommerce shortcodes, you can work on both the normal store page and bespoke shop pages.
• Ajax loading eliminates the need to refresh the page.
• Designed with mobile in mind

With these awesome functions, it is worthy implementing smart product filter of Woostify on your WooCommerce store. To use this premium addon, you need to download and install Woostify pro with the price starting at $49.

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How to add the WooCommerce category filter dropdown by using Woostify Smart Product Filter

Once purchasing Woostify theme pro and installing it on your WooCommerce site, you can start using the smart filter addon by following the steps below:

Step 1: Enable the Smart Product Filter addon on your site

From your WordPress dashboard, go to Woostify Options, then you will see the list of premium options provided by Woostify. Just find out Smart Product Filter, and click Activate.

Step 2: Setting up the Smart Product Filter

After activating the addon in your online store, now you can make some settings for it.

Go to Settings, and you’ll be taken to a new box where you may make some General and Style settings, as seen below:

In the General section, you can:

• Set the layout as Horizontal or Vertical, but to create WooCommerce category filter dropdown, you should select Vertical.
• Display shortcode: This section will be default set as Woostify_product_filter. You can’t edit it.
• Exclude: tick this box if you do not want to display the out-of-stock items for customers while they are searching for their desired product.
• Index Data: This section shows whether the status of the update is indexed or not.
• Last Update: This is the time when you last save the product filter settings.
• Total Product Index: the total number of products that are implemented category filters.

In the Style section, you can make changes to all the following options:

• Enable or Disable Collapse option
• Enable or Disable Scroll option
• Change the Scroll Height
• Select Item Count Color
• Customize the Color and Font Size of Filter Title and Text,
• Edit the size, text color, and background color of Button
• Change the background color of Checkboxes
• Change the background color and icon color of Radio
• Change the color, background color, and border style of Input
• Change the Primary and Secondary color and the UI handle of Ranger Slider
• Change the border style of Visual

Once finishing, you need to update all settings by clicking on the Save button at the page bottom.

Step 3: Add WooCommerce Product Filter dropdown to the shop page sidebar

First, copy the [Woostify_product_filter] global Shortcode.

In the WordPress the dashboard, navigate to Appearance > Widgets

Find out the WooCommerce Sidebar widget and paste the shortcode you have copied before in the text editor tab.

And, remember to hit the Save button.

Step 4: Add a new Filter

After the basic setting stage, you now can create a filter and include it in the searching product process.

From the sidebar menu in the dashboard, go to Smart Product Filter, then press the Add New button to create a new filter.

In the new tab, you need to type in the name of your product filter, select the Filter Type and Label.

Following the selection of the filter type, a new dropdown menu section will appear (this will vary depending on the filter type you choose). In this example, I’m making a Visual type that will display Data Source options for you to choose from.

Step 5: Publish your WooCommerce category filter

Once finishing all things, do not forget to save your WooCommerce category filter dropdown by clicking on the Publish button. 

Here is the WooCommerce category filter I have successfully created.

Follow the process mentioned above to add other filters to your WooCommerce store as you desire.

Step 6: Check how your category filter dropdown works on your store

That is how to add WooCommerce category filter dropdown on your eCommerce site. It’s time to visit the store to check if the WooCommerce category filter dropdown works well on your shop page.

Final Words,

Now that you know how to create a sort by category filters dropdown for WooCommerce.

By employing this strategy, you may increase the visibility of all your products and improve customer satisfaction with their purchase. Consumers will be able to browse the products by category and filter results with just a few clicks.

In case you have any questions or recommendations, you can ask us by leaving a comment in the box below.