How to set up product settings in WooCommerce

In the previous tutorial of this guide, we showed you how to configure currency and location in WooCommerce General Settings.

Now you’re ready for the next step in the process: how to configure product settings in your WooCommerce based store. These settings allow you to set up some product options and inventory control notices in WooCommerce.

Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products, you’ll see 3 main tabs in this section: General, Inventory and Downloadable products.

1. General

In the General tab, there are 3 sections: Shop Pages, Measurements and Reviews, allowing you to control checkout settings, select units of measurement, and enable product reviews and ratings.

Shop pages

• Shop page: This is the main page in your store that displays your products.
  • The default is Shop, which has been created by WooCommerce and which automatically displays your products. If you want to use a custom page that you’ve created, you can choose it in the dropdown as below:

And it’ll show up like this:

• • If you’re using another method to display products, such as using a Product Table plugin, you can skip this step.

• Add to cart behaviour: It has 2 options:
  • Redirect to the cart page after successful addition: Customers are redirected to the cart once they add an item to cart
  • Enable AJAX add to cart buttons on archives: this allows customers to stay on the page they were browsing without having to reload the page. This makes the navigation through your website a lot easier.

Measurements

• You can select a unit of measurement for weight and dimension of products here. This is essential to calculate the shipping fees.

Reviews

Now we can check out the Reviews section, in which your settings are going to define the reviews shown on your website. You can choose to:

• Enable product reviews
• Select whether to display if reviewer bought the product
• Control if anyone can leave a review or only buyers

Don’t forget to `Save changes` then discover the next tab: Inventory.

2. Inventory

Inventory tab is where you can configure the inventory details of your WooCommerce store.

If you choose to Enable stock management, inventory for physical products is managed automatically. You enter quantity, and WooCommerce subtracts items as sales are made, displaying: Stock, Out of Stock or On Backorder.

Other options:

• Hold Stock (minutes): Hold products (for unpaid orders) for X minutes. When limit is reached, the pending order is canceled.

• Notifications
  • Enable low stock notifications: allows shoppers to be notified once a certain product is about to out of stock.
  • Enable out of stock notifications: allows the seller to be notified once a specific item is out of stock.

• Notification Recipient: Enter email address that will receive notifications.
• Low Stock Threshold: Set the number of products to trigger low stock notification
• Out Of Stock Threshold: Set the number of products to trigger out of stock status.
• Out Of Stock Visibility: Choose to hide out of stock items from catalog.

• Stock Display Format: Allows you to choose what to show in the product page, when to display the amount of units remaining.

‘Save changes’ to finish this tab!

3. Downloadable products

If you sell virtual / downloadable products, this is where you can control how your store provides downloadable files to customers.

• File download method: decide what kind of download method you want to offer your customers. There are 3 methods available:
  • Force Downloads: Files are ‘forced’ to download via a PHP script. Files are not accessible to anyone but customers, and direct links are hidden.
  • X-Accel-Redirect / X-Sendfile: It has better performance than `Force Downloads` and can support larger files. However, it requires that your hosting provider supports either X-Sendfile or X-Accel-Redirect, so you need to check with them first.
  • Redirect only: A download URL performs as a connector between the customer and the file. Files are not protected from outside access.
  • Most store owners should use one of the first two methods to keep files safe from outside access. Redirect should only be used if you encounter problems or don’t mind downloads being non-secure.

• Access restriction:
  • Downloads require login: This option won’t allow guest purchases on your store.
  • Grant access to downloadable products after payment: If you prefer not to make the download available until after payment has been processed, you can choose this option.

Don’t forget to `Save changes` and you’re done!