The following article is not another guide to creating a WooCommerce variable product, but one that explains what lies beyond it.
Default WooCommerce falls short in managing variable products or WooCommerce product variations.
In this post, we will cover some plugins that can help store owners and their customers save time, get rid of stress, accomplish tasks more quickly and boost sales by managing WooCommerce variable products.
If you want to boost your store’s productivity, read on.
What Is a WooCommerce variable product?
Variable products in WooCommerce let you offer a set of variations on a product, with control over prices, stock, colors, sizes and styles for each variation. It is generally more challenging to set up variable products than simple products, but they offer your customers a wider range of options.
You should be familiar with the following concepts before creating a variable product. Attributes are used to define variations of products. An attribute, such as “color,” can have multiple values, such as “red,” “blue,” and “green,” for example.
Variations are combinations of attributes. An example would be “red, size M” for a shirt. In order to create a variable product, you must first create attributes and then variations for each attribute.
How to add Variable product in WooCommerce?
When you understand WooCommerce variable products well, it’s easy to create them. You can refer to this article to know how to add variable product in WooCommerce.
Ten plugins to manage WooCommerce variable products / WooCommerce product variations
The following plugins are useful for both store owners and customers. Here are some of the most popular ones with their features and pricing.
Smart Manager
Smart Manager for WooCommerce and WordPress is a popular, premium plugin that helps you manage your entire store 10x faster, using an Excel-like spreadsheet.
Any WordPress post type, including products, orders, posts, coupons and users…you can manage them from one place.
This tool stands out for its features such as bulk editing, inline editing, advanced search, CSV export for variable products / product variations.
Top features:
- View and manage product variations from one place
- Directly add as many variable products and product variations as you want
- Inline edit (make an edit directly) any product sale price, regular price, description, etc.
- Manage backorders, inventory, set stock status and quantity
- Bulk edit products – price, categories, attributes, inventory and all other product related fields. Also bulk edit custom fields. View a list of all fields you can bulk edit for products.
- Apply filters and make an edit to your products
- Delete products permanently or move them to trash
- Duplicate selected products or your entire store
- Export variable products data as CSV
- Sort products based on pricing
- Manage media directly – add, delete ‘Product Gallery Images’
- Create Excel-like custom views or segmented views for all post types
and a lot more…
Pricing: Free version on WordPress.org, premium version for $199
Bulk Variations Manager
Bulk Variations Manager for WooCommerce plugin helps you create thousands of product variations in bulk at once. And set a differential price based on attributes.
Top features:
- Add a bunch of variations to multiple products using product attributes.
- Create new variable products and add many variants to them in bulk. Add to an existing product or to all products in a category.
- Add, update and delete hundred, five hundred or even thousands of product variations from one simple form.
- Set base price and differential price. The plugin will automatically calculate the final price for each product variant and update them automatically.
- For example, set the base price of a t-shirt to $9, keep the same price for Small size but add $3 for Medium, add $5 for Large size, reduce $1 for white color.
- Bulk delete variations from products
Pricing: $79
Get Bulk Variations Manager plugin
WooCommerce Update Variations in Cart
This WooCommerce cart plugin allows users to change and update product variations based on attributes (color, size, weight, etc) directly from the cart without disrupting their flow. Cart updates with ajax, no page reloading.
Top features:
- Install and activate the plugin and all existing products & newly created variable products will automatically be enabled with the feature to change variation in the cart.
- Option to change the text for the ‘Change’ variation link. ‘Update Variation’, ‘Change Variation’…keep whatever you feel like.
- Your users can change variations for multiple / unlimited products on the cart page in one go. Select variants, click on Update. The changes will be automatically reflected along with the change in price if any.
- Have you created custom product attributes for unique products? Your user can change that too from the cart page for that product.
- If a user has added any subscription product variant and wants to update it; like update from a single year subscription license to five years license, the user can do it from the cart itself.
Pricing: $29
Get Update Variations in Cart plugin
WooCommerce Sold Individually
WooCommerce Sold Individually plugin lets you sell only one quantity of a product in an order. This is to maintain product exclusivity, prevent it from getting sold out very quickly and allow more new customers to try it out.
Additionally, the plugin allows to order multiple products at once, but again, the quantity will be one.
Consider, for example, you sell a variable product named Ship Your Idea in black and blue color variants respectively. You will then be able to offer your customers only one quantity per variant per order. That means, one blue and one black color Hoodie in a single order but not two quantities of either blue or black.
Pricing: $19
Variation Swatches for WooCommerce
The most popular swatches plugin on WordPress with 300000+ active installs. It offers an aesthetic and professional experience to select attributes for variation products. It turns the product variation select options fields into radio images, colors, and labels. So, you can say goodbye to dropdown product attribute fields.
Top features:
- Auto convert dropdown into image swatches if variation has a featured image set.
- Display swatch in catalog / archive page
- Dual color variation swatches
- Display single selected attribute on shop page
- Set MORE link to align attribute variation swatches
- Change Product Gallery Image selecting only color variation Like Amazon and AliExpress (or selected variation)
- Generate variation link
- Product-based swatch customization
Pricing: Free version on WordPress.org, premium versions from $49.
Get this Variation Swatches plugin
Variation Swatches and Photos
WooCommerce Variation Swatches and Photos plugin allows you to show colors and photos as alternatives to dropdowns for variations of variable products.
Using swatches of color and images makes it much more attractive to display variations of a product. This includes available styles, available sizes or pretty much anything else you can show using an image or color.
By using the admin interface, you can define colors and images per attribute or product.
Pricing: $99
Get Variation Swatches and Photos plugin
Variation Swatches for WooCommerce
Another popular plugin on WordPress with 80000+ active installs. This plugin will help you select style for each attribute like color, image or label. With this plugin, you can present product colors, sizes, styles and many things in a better way which is not supported by WooCommerce.
This plugin only adds more options to show product variations with swatches. It doesn’t touch the default drop-down style of WooCommerce.
Top features:
- Completely integrate with WooCommerce plugin
- Works on variable product only
- Create attribute color swatches
- Create attribute image swatches
- Create attribute label / text swatches
- Manage attribute globally
- Create new attribute swatch in product editing page
Pricing: Free version on WordPress.org, premium versions from $99.
Get this Variation Swatches plugin
WooSwatches – WooCommerce Color or Image Variation Swatches
This is the best-selling WooCommerce variation swatches plugin on CodeCanyon. You can convert your normal variable attribute dropdown select to nicely looking color or image select.
Top features:
- Supports color / image / text variation swatches and dropdown select
- Woocommerce improved variable product attributes and attribute swatches
- Global color or image values for attributes
- Inbuilt color / image product filter.
- Works on mobile devices
- Different sizes of swatch from small to large
- Square as well as round swatch support
- Option to display option name below swatch
- Show selected option name on single product page
- Shows color or image swatches on shop / category / tag archive pages
- Inbuilt direct variation link feature
- Slider for shop swatches if swatches number is higher than set value
Pricing: $19
Improved Product Options for WooCommerce
Improved Variable Product Attributes for WooCommerce is a plugin on CodeCanyon that improves attributes selection in your shop. Set up your shop attribute styles and never show the Out of stock option. Use text, HTML, images or color to show product variation selectors to your customers.
Top features:
- Force users to always get the Add to cart button
- AJAX add to cart support for variable products within the product archives
- Add custom product options
- Product backorder notification support
- Override as many attributes and their terms as you have in your shop. Select one of the available Attribute styles (text, thumbnail, color or HTML), set a customization for each term, override attribute name and add attribute descriptions.
- Reorder your shop attributes on the single page. Use the drag and drop customization manager to customize your attributes.
- WPML support
Pricing: $24
Get Improved Product Options plugin
YITH WooCommerce Color And Label Variations
With YITH WooCommerce Color and Label Variations, you can replace standard WooCommerce selects with custom images, icons and dynamic labels. The plugin is versatile and can be used with any type of product.
Top features:
- Select a color picker for each variation
- Create an image attribute
- Different image gallery per variation
- Add a tooltip to your attributes
- Create a description attribute
- Show variations also on the Shop page
- Update the product image in a dynamic way
- Enhance the “Additional information” tab
- Create a custom label
- Show single variations on archive page
Pricing: Free version on WordPress.org, paid version for $70
Get this Color And Label Variations plugin
Conclusion
Voilà, we have covered the top, most popular, and highly rated WooCommerce variable products plugins.
And yes, they are not limited to variation swatches, but also to managing product variations.
Choose wisely. If you have additional plugins you believe should be added to this list, please leave a comment below.
FAQs
How do I get variable product price in WooCommerce?
- Log in to your WordPress Admi panel
- Go to Products and choose the product you want to view the price.
- Under Product data section, click on the Variations tab.
- Expand the Variation to see the price.
Can I add a set of default attributes for products in bulk?
Yes, you can set the default attributes in WooCommerce for products in bulk.
How do I add images for each variation in a WooCommerce variable product?
You can easily add images for each variations with WooCommerce Additional Variation Images plugin.
How to display product variations in WooCommerce?
- Create a variable product in WooCommerce.
- Add attributes to the product, such as size, color, or material.
- Assign values to each attribute, such as small, medium, large for size, or red, blue, green for color.
- Create variations for the product based on the attributes and values.
- Set the price, stock, and other details for each variation.
- Save the product, and it will automatically display the variations on the product page.
How to Import Variable Products in WooCommerce?
To import variable products in WooCommerce, you need to use a CSV file with all the product details and variations, and you can use the built-in product importer tool or any third-party plugin.
For more details, refer to this blog.