5 Best WooCommerce Search by SKU Plugins

Find an effective way to manage inventory for your WooCommerce store? Then, WooCommerce search by SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) is a must thing to consider here.

By default, WooCommerce allows adding WooCommerce SKU search from the backend but it does not offer this feature from the frontend. It means your customers cannot search for their items based on colour, type, size, and other attributes.

We bet that you don’t like that and desire to hunt for some tool that can help improve customer experience.

Luckily, there are dozens of WooCommerce search by SKU plugin out there to help you complete this task.

Come on! We will spend time exploring the top 5 best plugins for WooCommerce SKU search right now.

Table of Contents

What are SKUs? How Are SKUs Important?

SKU which stands for Stock Keeping Unit is a code used for classifying items for sale. It includes letters, numbers, and symbols that present different attributes such as material, colour, size, pattern, and manufacturer.

For example, your WooCommerce store sells medium blue Polo T-shirts. Then, you can build an SKU like that TEE/PO-BLMEWO.

Cross and Dash help separate main types of information
TEE (T-shirt) refers to the product type
PO (Polo) refers to the product brand
BL (Blue) refers to the color of the product
ME (Medium) refers to the size of the product
WO (Women) refers to the gender attribute of the product

As you can see, the SKU code will help identify all the unique points of a specific product. Therefore, it plays an important role in improving inventory management. In the other words, without product SKU, you are likely to feel confused to ensure the accuracy of all the items in stock. In case you can make the WooCommerce search by SKU work on the frontend, there will be many other benefits coming to your store.

Importance of WooCommerce SKU

For WooCommerce businesses

Help WooCommerce owners identify specific items quickly while serving customers
Easily classify the products that come with multiple variations as well as the same products that come from different warehouses
Limit out of stock situations or loss of product
Track stock more effectively, thus working out better sales strategies
Determine the revenue each product of your store brings in
Useful for sellers to develop a multi-channel sales strategy

For customers

Allow customers to easily find their expected items
Recommend similar products to customers based on their demands and the given SKU
Motivate people to sell more necessary items, increasing the revenue.

How to Specify Product SKUs in WooCommerce

WooCommerce makes it easy to add SKUs to any of your products. Just follow the instructions below:

First, you need to navigate to Product > All Products from the WordPress dashboard.

Now, choose the product you want to add the SKU to.
In the Product Data element, select the Inventory tab.

Now, you should see the SKU field at the top. Fill it out.
Lastly, do not forget to click the Update button when you are happy.

WooCommerce allows you to add any type of SKU in the world. And as long as each of them is unique, you should not have any problems.

After you type in the SKUs and save the changes, they should appear on the product pages. You must ensure that the product SKUs show up in front of the visitors’ eyes.

With them visible, wholesale customers can note your product SKUs down and save them somewhere. By knowing the SKU for each product they want to buy, your customers can ensure they do not order the wrong items.

Why need a smart WooCommerce Product Search Plugin for your WooCommerce?

You can add SKU codes to WooCommerce products by selecting the product name in the Admin area and scrolling down to Product data. Select Inventory and fill in the SKU section with the SKU code.

In that way, the default SKU feature is helpful enough to manage your inventory. But as mentioned above, WooCommerce search product by SKU is necessary for both store owners and customers. Yeah, your customers will need it to find the products based on their attributes. If your store cannot give them a chance to do that, you are prone to lose potential sales. Oh, what a pity.

Therefore, to improve customer experience, you should get a product search plugin instead of using the default search in WooCommerce. If you select a smart plugin, it will help a lot in suggesting appropriate products to customers and even boosting upselling and cross-selling.

Right now, we will introduce you to the excellent WooCommerce Search by SKU plugins that you should add to your WooCommerce site as soon as possible.

Introducing 5 Best WooCommerce Search by SKU Plugins

Here are the top 5 WooCommerce product search plugins you should consider. All of them consist of WooCommerce search by SKU function as a must.

Ajax WooCommerce Search
FiboSearch – Ajax Search for WooCommerce
YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search
WOOF – Products Filter for WooCommerce
Advanced Woo Search

Ajax WooCommerce Search

Outstanding Features

Set up search by product title and SKU
Customize search results
Support various products
Show the images and prices of the products in live search results
Increase search speed with the index-based search engine for the Woostify v1.5.0

Ajax Product Search, which works as a responsive live search engine to improve user experience, is an advanced add-on offered by the Woostify team.

Designed with a user-friendly Ajax-powered search form, the WooCommerce search by SKU add-on provides customers with live search suggestions and a range of smart filters. Your customers can find any products by SKU and title. They will get the expected results in a flash. Besides, the function of keyword autocomplete is also made available to your customers.

Especially, the Woostify pro version 1.5.0+ offers an inverted index-based search engine that helps improve the search speed considerably, particularly, it will be 10x faster than the older versions.

How to use Ajax Product Search in WooCommerce sites

To use Ajax Product Search, please follow the steps below:

Step 1: Active the add-on

On the dashboard, go to Woostify Options to activate the Ajax WooCommerce Search add-on as below.

Step 2: Set up Product Search

After activating the add-on, there will be search options for you, including category filter, Product title, and Product SKU. Put a stick in the feature you want to enable. Click on Index Data to update the data.

The data here will be updated automatically from the backend if you edit the current items or add a new one. However, when importing the products from somewhere else, you have to enable the Index data button again.

So now check how the product search works on the frontend.

Finally, it is noted that Ajax Product Search is specifically made for those who are using the Woostify theme. It is unable to be compatible with any other themes.

Pricing

Please see all the pricing plans of Woostify Pro here.

As an advanced add-on offered by Woostify Pro, Ajax Product Search requires users to update to the premium version for use. Once taking one of the Woostify pro plans, you can use the feature of WooCommerce search by SKU and many other striking features.

You may be also interested in the following posts:

How to add AJAX search for WooCommerce stores

Best plugin to create AJAX product filters for WooCommerce

FiboSearch – Ajax Search for WooCommerce

Free features

Set up WooCommerce search by SKU, title, description
Show SKU, image, price, and description in live search results
Offer mobile search mode
Limit a specific number of products displayed
Personalize search form
Autocomplete suggestions
Display add to cart button and detailed information in live suggestions

Pro features

Provide an inverted index-based search engine that speeds up the search for even 100,000+ products
Show product search by tags, categories, attributes, custom fields, and brands
Shows variable products in live search

With all the remarkable features above, FiboSearch – Ajax Search for WooCommerce, which is designed based Ajax search feature, comes with almost everything that users need from a product search plugin.

Compared to the WooCommerce default feature, the free version of the plugin stands out due to its live product search, instant search, and autocomplete suggestions. As a result, your customers will gain a great shopping experience when they want to find anything in your store. “Quick” and “convenient” will be the thing people tell much about your store after they search on your site. We say that for sure. How about you? It is sure that you no longer live in fear of losing customers because of poor user experience.

This plugin will be much greater if you enjoy its pro features. There will be more search features offered. Especially, all of them will work smoothly regardless of how large the number of items is in your store.

The only disadvantage of FiboSearch – Ajax Search for WooCommerce is the ability to be compatible with other WooCommerce plugins. Some users want this point to be improved as soon as possible.

Pricing

FiboSearch – AJAX Search for WooCommerce provides you with both free and premium versions. If the free features are enough for your store, then download it for free right now.

In case you want more and more search functionalities and make your search system run with amazing speed, simply spend $49/year for a single site, $89/year from three sites, $199/year for 25 sites.

YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search

Free features

Offer multiple options to customize search form and display the number of search results
Use shortcode and widgets to show search form anywhere you want

Pro features

Provide different filters for search and allow search feature in categories, tags, product content
Include SKU search with variable products
Exclude out-of-stock items from the search results
Show the thumbnails, product prices, badges, and excerpts of the products

If you are looking for an ideal product search tool that can boost sales, then YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search should be your choice.

In addition to instantaneously showing customers product suggestions based on simple keyphrases, the plugin lets customers find their products using categories or tags combined with some filters. Besides, with the WooCommerce search by SKU function, customers can save time while selecting the favourite one among hundreds or thousands of products. Even it allows them to extend the search to the variations. The plugin is excellent at offering a great user experience, right?

That’s not all about this great plugin. This product search plugin can work as a cool marketing tool that shows product results in detail with prices, images, descriptions, and sales badges. This product preview will be so effective in encouraging your customers to add the item to the cart right at that time.

Despite having lots of outstanding features, YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search has the problem of performing well with some WooCommerce themes. In addition, search speed takes more time than expected.

Pricing

With YITH WooCommerce AJAX Search, you can choose to use the free or pro features. If you find the features of the free version limited, then pay either $85.06 /year for a single site or $253.56/ year for six sites.

WOOF – Products Filter for WooCommerce

Outstanding features

Be a product search tool powered with AJAX
Be able to work as a shortcode and widget to insert product filter anywhere on WooCommerce sites
Allow searching products by SKU, price, categories, product tags, attributes, taxonomies
Offers various taxonomy display options, including radio, checkbox, dropdown
Save the customers’ search queries
Create any html-items for the search form

With WOOF – Products Filter for WooCommerce, you will explore dozens of interesting features that are so helpful for setting product search options in your store.

Once visiting your store, visitors can easily search the items by SKU, prices, categories, attributes, tags, and taxonomies while you can show the taxonomies in different styles like dropdown, radio or checkbox. The plugin also helps save all the search queries that customers typed in the search box. It brings great convenience for their next access and your insight analysis.

Besides, the plugin lets you use it as a shortcode and widget. But what makes this plugin outstanding is the special feature it offers developers. It is called WOOF extension API, which allows building custom HTML items to create the search form to your taste. Even as a developer, you can customize product loop templates.

Pricing

You can download and use WOOF – Products Filter for WooCommerce right now. The premium version will offer you more features. Spend $39 per year, then you can get numerous product search functionalities of the plugin.

Advanced Woo Search

Free features

Choose to search in product title, content, excerpt, categories, tags, ID and SKU
Customize search results
Show search results according to the priority of source
Use shortcode and widget to search anywhere on the site
Show variable products

Premium features

Search in custom taxonomies, custom fields, product attributes
Display add to cart button
Choose from various layout
Offer the option to include or exclude certain products
Create different search form filters in search results

Regarded as one of the most powerful product search plugins in WooCommerce, Advanced Woo Search provides users with lots of striking features.

With this plugin, you can set up the search in different sources, including title, content, SKU, excerpt, category, tag, attributes, taxonomies, and custom fields. The plugin also allows customizing search results to choose what data to show for each product. Title, description, image, price, categories, tags, SKU, and stock status. Choose to display all of them or some of them. It’s up to you.

More than that, there is a smart sorting function together with a range of filters available. The search results will be ordered by the source priority. In particular, the product with the title including the phrase searched will be placed higher than the one with the description having that phrase. Meanwhile, the filters let you exclude or include certain products based on some conditions and offer other sets of filters that help users find the items more quickly.

In short, Advanced Woo Search is a great tool for managing in-store products and enhancing customers’ shopping experience.

Pricing

There are both free and premium features built for Advanced Woo Search. You can easily get the free version from the WordPress repository or right on the website. If you want to enjoy pro features, then buy it now at a cost of $59 for a single site, $79 for 5 sites, and $99 for unlimited sites.

How to Enable the Search by SKU Function in WooCommerce Without a Plugin

If you do not want to use a plugin to enable the search by SKU function on your WooCommerce store for whatever reasons, you can add code instead.

Just to be clear, we do not recommend using this method unless you are comfortable working with code. It is totally manual.

First, you need to navigate to Appearance > Theme File Editor from the WordPress dashboard.

Then, choose the theme you want to edit in the top right corner.
Select the functions.php file.
Paste the code below into the editor.

/* Add sku to product search */
function az_pre_get_posts( $query ) {
// conditions - change the post type clause if you're not searching woocommerce or 'product' post type
if ( is_admin() || ! $query->is_main_query() || ! $query->is_search() || ! get_query_var('post_type')=='product' ){
   return;
}
add_filter('posts_join', 'az_search_join' );
add_filter('posts_where', 'az_search_where' );
add_filter('posts_groupby', 'az_search_groupby' );
 
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'az_pre_get_posts' );
 
function az_search_join( $join ){
   global $wpdb;
   $join .= " LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta gm ON (" . 
   $wpdb->posts . ".ID = gm.post_id AND gm.meta_key='_sku')"; // change to your meta key if not woo
 
   return $join;
}
 
function az_search_where( $where ){
   global $wpdb;
   $where = preg_replace(
     "/\(\s*{$wpdb->posts}.post_title\s+LIKE\s*(\'[^\']+\')\s*\)/",
     "({$wpdb->posts}.post_title LIKE $1) OR (gm.meta_value LIKE $1)", $where );
   return $where;
}
/* grouping by id to make sure no dupes */
function az_search_groupby( $groupby ){
   global $wpdb;
   $mygroupby = "{$wpdb->posts}.ID";
   if( preg_match( "/$mygroupby/", $groupby )) {
     // grouping we need is already there
     return $groupby;
   }
   if( !strlen(trim($groupby))) {
      // groupby was empty, use ours
      return $mygroupby;
   }
   // wasn't empty, append ours
   return $groupby . ", " . $mygroupby;
}

Finally, click on the Update File button to save the changes.

This seems to be very tricky. And it really is! Therefore, it is better to use a WooCommerce search by SKU plugin.

Final thought

After all, adding SKU to WooCommerce product search is a very smart way to accomplish two sales tasks: managing stock and enhancing user experience. But if you only take advantage of the default search functionality in WooCommerce, then you will have some difficulties in completing the latter.

You can consider getting one of the plugins mentioned in the post. They are all of the high quality and receive lots of positive feedback. Personally, we suggest the first name in the list: Ajax WooCommerce Search, which comes with numerous product search features in addition to SKU.

If you want to find a way to get a useful WooCommerce search by SKU feature for your customers without using a plugin, try this.

Thanks for spending time on my post. Hopefully, you will get useful information from it. If you have any questions or contributions, please leave your comment in the box below. We are so happy to see your ideas.

Find out the Best WooCommerce Search by SKU Plugins for your Store