Configure WooCommerce Product Settings
Step 2 of the Configure WooCommerce Settings series.
Before you start adding products, you'll need to set up a shop page and choose how to manage stock. The Products tab has three pages to help you configure product settings for your store: General, Inventory, Downloadable products.
General products settings
Navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Products tab > General page to set up the Shop pages, Measurements, and Reviews.
Shop pages
Your shop page is one of the most important part of your shop. It's the main page in your store that displays all products currently available for sale. When you install WooCommerce, the shop page is automatically created.
- Shop page: Set the default shop page for your store. This should be set to 'Shop' by default. To use a custom page that you've created, choose it from the dropdown menu.
- Add to cart behaviour:
- Redirect to the cart page after successful addition - Enable this to automatically take the customer to the cart page when they add an item to the cart.
- Enable AJAX add to cart buttons on archives - Enable to prevent the page from reloading after the customer adds a product to the cart. When disabled, the page will reload after a product is added to the cart.
- Placeholder image: Set a default product image to use for the shop page when a product in your shop doesn't have an imaged attached to it. Set this by uploading the placeholder image to your WordPress media library, and add the attachment ID or image URL to this field.
Measurements
Select the unit of measurement for the weight and dimensions of products. This is helpful to calculate shipping fees.
- Weight unit: Define the unit of measurement for the weight of products. Choose from kg, g, lbs, oz.
- Dimensions unit: Define the unit of measurement for the dimensions of product. Choose from m, cm, mm, in, yd.
Reviews
Enable or disable reviews and ratings on your product pages. If enabled, customers will be able to leave reviews and rate products.
- Enable reviews:
- Enable product reviews.
- Show "verified owner" label on customer reviews.
- Reviews can only be left by "verified owners".
- Product ratings:
- Enable star rating on reviews.
- Star ratings should be required, not optional.
Click Save changes and move on to the Inventory page.
Inventory
Navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Products tab > Inventory page to configure your store's inventory details.
- Manage stock:
- Enable stock management to automatically manage inventory and statuses for physical products. WooCommerce will subtract items from inventory as sales are made, and product statuses will display: Stock, Out of Stock, or On Backorder. If enabled, you have these options:
- Hold stock (minutes): Hold products for unpaid, pending orders for X minutes. When the time limit is reached, the pending order will be cancelled. This will not work for "On hold" orders. Leave blank to disable holding stock.
- Notifications: Enable low stock and/or out of stock notifications. Only notification recipients will be notified.
- Notification recipient(s): Enter email address(s) to receive the stock notifications.
- Low stock threshold: Trigger a low stock notification when the stock quantity reaches this amount.
- Out of stock threshold: Display the out of stock status on product pages when the stock quantity reaches this amount. This allows customers to see that a certain product is out of stock.
- Disable stock management to manually enter the inventory and status for physical products. Automatic stock management can still be enabled on a per-product level. Learn more at Managing Products.
- Enable stock management to automatically manage inventory and statuses for physical products. WooCommerce will subtract items from inventory as sales are made, and product statuses will display: Stock, Out of Stock, or On Backorder. If enabled, you have these options:
- Out of stock visibility: Choose to hide out of stock items from the catalogue.
- Stock display format: Choose when to show the amount of stock remaining on the product page.
- Always show quantity remaining in stock (12 in stock).
- Only show quantity remaining in stock when low (Only 2 left in stock).
- Never show quantity remaining in stock.
Click Save changes and move on to the Downloadable products page.
Downloadable products
If you sell virtual and downloadable products, you can control how your store provides downloadable files to customers. Navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Products tab > Downloadable products page to configure the settings.
- File download method: Choose a download method to provide downloadable files to your customers. Most stores use the first two methods to keep files safe from outside access. Some servers may not be reliable in serving large files, so make sure you have enough server resources if selling large, downloadable files.
- Force Downloads: Files are downloaded via a PHP script. Files are only accessible to customers and direct links are hidden.
- X-Accel-Redirect/X-Sendfile: Similar to forced downloads, though with better performance and can support larger files. Server requires
mod_xsendfile. Check that your hosting provider supports either X-Sendfile or X-Accel-Redirect. - Redirect only: A download URL links the customer to the file. Files are not protected from outside access. Redirect should only be used if you encounter issues or don't mind non-secure downloads.
- Access restriction:
- Downloads require login - does not apply to guest purchases.
- Grant access to downloadable products after payment - enable this to allow customers to access downloads when orders are processing, rather then completed.
Click Save changes and move on to the Tax tab.
