Have you noticed how most of WooCommerce stores are very similar? Sure, you can adjust some styling and move things around a bit, but it’s hard to extend them with advanced features. With Toolset, you can not only design custom WooCommerce layouts but also add unique custom features – no coding required.

If you look at any major retail store, you will see a lot of features that you don’t see in typical WooCommerce stores. For example, here’s a typical product page on Amazon.

As you can see, it has a number of customizations that you cannot easily add to a WooCommerce shop:

• Custom fields based on the article’s category
• Upsell items
• Special custom fields displayed conditionally
• Links to share on social media
• Related products

And herein lies the power of creating a WooCommerce store with Toolset. Instead of being boxed in by the platform, add any custom features you need.

Inspiration For Custom Store Features

Here are some examples of popular custom features that you can add to your online store using Toolset.

Add Custom Elements to Single-product Pages

Let’s continue straight from the Amazon example and look at an example of a single-product page built using Toolset.

As you can see, you can add virtually any custom element to your Product pages.

How you can do it with Toolset:

• Add custom taxonomies to WooCommerce Products
• Add custom fields to WooCommerce Products (i.e. easy return, home delivery, etc.)
• Create a Content Template for single-product items
• Use Toolset blocks to display custom taxonomies, dates, and other elements
• Add the Toolset Social Share block to the template

Add Custom Search and Filtering to Your Shop Pages

Every good store needs a custom search with filters that allow clients to easily find products they’re looking for. With Toolset, you can create search filters based on your Product custom fields, taxonomies, and even post relationships.

How you can do it with Toolset:

• Create a WordPress Archive for Products
• Enable the Search option and add search fields to create your custom search
• Design how the search results should display (just like for a View)

Add Customer Questions and Answers Per Product

Another popular feature you’ve probably seen on big online stores is the “Customer Questions and Answers” section when viewing a product.

How you could do it with Toolset:

• Create a custom post type called FAQ and use post relationships to connect it to Products. 
• Create a post form for creating FAQ posts so users can submit their questions. 
• Admins and/or editors can add answers from the backend or through another post form for editing submitted FAQ posts. 
• Finally, add a simple View to the single-product template and set it to display all FAQ posts related to the current Product.

Display Upsells, and Cross-sells

Displaying Upsells and Cross-sells helps visitors find other products that might interest them and also help the store owner sell more products.

How you can do it with Toolset:

• Edit the Content Template for displaying single Products
• Insert a View block, select it to display Products, and then select the cross-sell or upsell option.

Display Content Using Conditional Blocks

Displaying custom content conditionally looks simple but can be an extremely powerful tool for an online store. For example, you could conditionally display different special offers only for Products that have a certain value for a certain field.

How you can do it with Toolset:

• Add a custom field for special offers to WooCommerce Products
• Edit the Content Template for Products
• Insert the Toolset Conditional block and set the conditions based on the custom fields you added

Connect Any Post Type to Products Using Post Relationships

You can connect Products to any other post type using Toolset post relationships. This is great because you can promote products through different types of content, like posts and news articles.

In our example, we have custom Outfit posts that show a nice combination of different products as fashion inspiration. When visitors read these posts, they can see the products and go get them in the store immediately. And also, when they are browsing a certain product, they also see links to “outfit” posts that feature that item.

Product pages list related Outfit posts

Custom Outfit posts list related Products

How you can do it with Toolset:

• Create the custom post type you need (i.e. Outfits).
• Use Toolset post relationships to connect Outfits with WooCommerce Products.
• Create a Content Template for displaying Outfits and insert a View that displays all products related to the current Outfit post.

Use Different Templates for Specific Products

You can create additional templates and assign them only to specific Products. For example, you might use a different template for displaying Products that are out of stock.

Template for displaying in-stock items

Template for displaying out-of-stock items

How you can do it with Toolset:

• Create a separate template for Products
• In the Usage section, click to set the conditions for displaying this template

Use Different Archives for Specific Product Categories

Similar to templates, you can create different archives for displaying WooCommerce Products belonging to different product categories. For example, you might want to display the list of heels shoes differently than the list of bags.

Shop page for heels

Shop page for bags

How you can do it with Toolset:

• Create a separate WordPress Archive and assign it to specific product categories.

Show Your Store Locations On a Map

If the store also has physical locations, customers will appreciate finding them easily on a map.

How you can do it with Toolset:

• Create a custom post type for Stores
• On the page where you want to display store locations, insert a Toolset View block and make it display all Stores posts.
• Insert a Toolset Map block and make it display locations coming from the View you created

Wrapping Up

And there you have it! Building WooCommerce stores with custom features but without the need for custom coding is possible with Toolset. We hope this post got you inspired for building your own custom WooCommerce stores.

To get started with building custom stores, take our course about creating custom WooCommerce sites. It features detailed instructions and includes videos.

And in case you were wondering, in this article, we used our Toolset Blocks and WooCommerce demo site. You can install and play with it on our Discover WP site (it’s free), or install it on your own server.

There’s More!

This article is a part of an ongoing series where we present interesting and powerful ideas of what you can build with Toolset. We’re publishing these every few weeks, so stay tuned!

Other articles in this series:

• How Block Patterns Can Help You Build WordPress Sites Easily
• How To Let WordPress Users Create Their Own Profiles in Your People Directory
• How To Create a Custom WooCommerce Checkout Experience
• How To Create a Custom List of WordPress Pages
• 3 Tips For Creating Magazine-Like Layouts
• 3 Non-Obvious Applications of Post Relationships in WordPress
• Design Beautiful Headers and Footers For Your Toolset Site
• How To Build A Custom Category Tree With Toolset
• 3 Dynamic Designs Using Kadence Blocks To Inspire Your Website
• 5 Advanced Uses of Toolset’s Conditional Block in WordPress

Feedback? Suggestions?

Have you already built a WooCommerce store using Toolset? What are the biggest challenges you face when building WooCommerce sites?

Let us know in the comments and we’ll reply!