We recently had a conversation with a client that really helped our team gather our thoughts on how the various taxonomies work in WooCommerce and how we should think about them and plan for them. So it seemed like a good time to put those thoughts into writing. Hopefully this will serve as a good guide for you when planning out the structures of your product inventory in WooCommerce.
What are taxonomies
If you remember back to high school biology class, there was the pneumonic device that we were taught to remember the ranks in biology: Kings Place Crowns On Family Grave Sites >> Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. See Mr. Smith, I was paying attention. Granted this was the first time I’ve used that pneumonic in **thinks about it for a second, shudders** let’s just say its been a long time. But it stuck. Anyway all of that is designed as a way to help classify all life on the planet. Hopefully your product inventory isn’t quite that complex.
What are taxonomies in WooCommerce
In WooCommerce there are three (3) primary taxonomies that we can use to classify product inventory. These are CAT: Category, Attribute, and Tag. Categories and Tags are natural extensions of the WordPress content classification system and work more or less the same. Attributes are specific to WooCommerce product inventory items.
What is the Category taxonomy in WooCommerce
Categories are the top level classifying element of WooCommerce. They exist as parent / child, nested hierarchies. It’s generally a best practice to avoid having categories of the same name. You really want to avoid them in the same parent / child chain. It’s not the end of the world to have them in unrelated parent / child strings. For example a clothing store may have Mens and Womens as top level categories and have separate categories for Shirts under each: Men’s >> Shirts, and Women’s >> Shirts. Given the choice we would probably recommend Men’s >> Men’s Shirts and Women’s >> Women’s Shirts to keep things tidier when manually editing products.
How do Categories Work in WooCommerce
Categories are taxonomies that bundle together similar products. When you set the category of a product, that category can have a title, description, and featured image, Some theme and page builders allow you to access these in the process of creating unique category archives. Used to display all products within that category.
What is the Attribute Taxonomy in WooCommerce
Attributes are descriptive taxonomies that define a specific variation between individual SKUs within a single product. Following the shirt example from earlier, think of these as elements such as Size and Color. A single shirt product may have Variations, with unique inventory and pricing, based on attributes. A single Shirt product could have 20 Large, Blue, SKUs and 15 2XL, Orange SKUs. Attributes are the core element of the Variable Product system with WooCommerce
How do Attributes Work in WooCommerce
Attributes are either globally (accessible to all products) or at an individual product level. Some plugins alter this to work at a category level as well. Attributes are often used as a part of the product filtering process. This allows a visitor to see all of the products that have shirts that are a certain size. For example 2xl. When you use attributes to create variations, it creates variations for every unique combination of attributes. So a product with 3 colors (Blue, Red, Green) and 5 sizes (Small, Med, Large, XL, 2XL) would have 15 variations (Blue Small, Blue Medium, Blue Large, Blue XL, Blue 2XL, Red Small, Red Medium, Red Large, Red XL, Red 2XL, Green Small, Green Medium, Green Large, Green XL, and Green 2XL). Each with their own photo, pricing, and inventory fields.
What is the Tag Taxonomy in WooCommerce
Tags work essentially the same in WooCommerce as they do throughout WordPress. Tags are a descriptive taxonomy that can be used to group products in WooCOmmerce that doesn’t have parent / child relationships or create unique variations. In the clothing example, you might tag a shirt as “Lightweight” or “Eco Friendly”. Things that could exist separately from one another or together.
How to Tags Work in WooCommerce
When a tag is assigned to a product it creates a connection between itself and other similarly tagged products. These products can be viewed together in Tag archives. Tags are unique and literal. So a typo will create a new unique tag that is separate from the intended tag. So whenever possible select the existing tag instead of fully typing out the tag value. Certain Theme and Page builders will allow you to create layouts that are unique to individual tags.
How Do We Use These Taxonomies To Plan Out Inventory and Products
The key to planning out your inventory is understanding that make make your individual products unique and understanding how your clients and prospective buyers are expecting to look for and see the inventory displayed. All taxonomies are descriptive. But understanding how they relate (parent / child, creates variations, or independent) will help you determine what elements of your product needs to be assigned to which taxonomy. Once you have set up the taxonomy structure. Then it is simply a matter of making sure that the visitor experience allows you to deliver the product contents to your site visitor in a way they are expecting and in a way that helps them with the purchasing process and decision. Set up filters. Build saved searches. Use these taxonomies to carve up the inventory and make it easy for the customer to find and purchase what they are looking for.
Does this sound complicated?
We aren’t going to sugar coat this. It can be. The structures you decide on can have long lasting implications and impact on how your inventory is sold. The more products that are involved, the more complex a process, the more work involved, the more time involved in pivoting from one structure to another. But you know your products and your customers better than anybody else.
One of the biggest challenges we encounter is when businesses are trying to bring product data together from multiple sources, into a common structure.
Not sure where to start? Reach out. MS Digital Solutions would be happy to help you understand how to make sense out of your product and inventory and help you through the process of getting the most out of your WooCommerce website.