Before adding your first product, let’s get familiar with how product categories, tags, and attributes work.

Product categories and tags work in much the same way as normal categories and tags you have when writing posts in WordPress. They can be created, edited, and selected at any time. This can be done when you first create a product or come back and edit it or the category/tag specifically.

These can be added per product, or you can set up global attributes for the entire store to use (e.g., in layered navigation).

With attributes and categories set up and stock management configured, we can begin adding products. When adding a product, the first thing to decide is what type of product it is.

• Simple: covers the vast majority of any products you may sell. Simple products are shipped and have no options. For example, a book.
• Grouped: a collection of related products that can be purchased individually and only consist of simple products. For example, a set of six drinking glasses.
• Virtual: one that doesn’t require shipping. For example, a service. Enabling this, disables all shipping related fields such as shipping dimensions. A virtual product will also not trigger the shipping calculator in cart and checkout.
• Downloadable: activates additional fields where you can provide a downloadable file. After a successful purchase, customers are given a downloadable file as a link in the order notification email. This is suitable for example for a digital album, PDF magazine, or photo.
• External or Affiliate – one that you list and describe on your website but is sold elsewhere.
• Variable: a product with variations, each of which may have a different SKU, price, stock option, etc. For example, a t-shirt available in different colors and/or sizes.
• Other types are often added by extensions. For example, WooCommerce Subscriptions adds new product types as does WooCommerce Bookings.

When we talk about taxonomy in relation to WooCommerce, what we’re referring to is how you classify and organize your products so that shoppers can find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.

There are three types of taxonomy used in WooCommerce:

• categories,
• tags, and
• attributes.

Categories are the broadest product classifications, followed by tags, and finally attributes, which are the most specific methods of organizing items. Using all three taxonomies allows shoppers to sort through and filter items broadly, then very specifically, depending on what they want to find.

For example, you might have a category named “shirts.” All of your shirts, regardless of their cut, sleeve length, fit, size, and so on fall under this broad classification.

The first solution to this problem is to create category pages that you link instead. Another option is to take advantage of the sub-menu option in WordPress, which allows you to create multiple choice menus that slide out or drop down (depending on your theme) of a given top-level link.

So let’s say that instead of only linking to a shirts category, you now want to link to T-shirts, sweaters, and dress shirts. No problem — you can simply add the three new categories as sub-menu items of the shirts category already present in your navigation. When a shopper hovers over “shirts,” the three additional items will show up for them to click on, too.

Adding tags to products in WooCommerce is a quick process: edit the product of your choice and type the tags you want to use into the “Tags” field, separated by commas. That’s it! (If you’re familiar with WordPress — yep, same deal.) To start filtering down the selection, a shopper could look at your tags. All shirts with short sleeves might share a tag of “short sleeved shirts.” Clicking on this tag would only show — you guessed it — shirts with short sleeves.

Finally, a shopper could then use attributes, which are typically specific product aspects like color, size, fit, and so on to only review the specific items they want. So your shopper could click “red” and look only at red short-sleeved shirts.

Now you should have a good idea of how you can use categories, tags, and attributes separately to help shoppers browse your store. But there’s something to be said about putting them all together, too, and the kind of magic that happens when your taxonomy matches up like pieces in a puzzle.

For starters, having a strong understanding of what should be a category, a tag, and an attribute will go a long way. In 99% of stores, there should be no overlap between these taxonomies.

Making better use of the taxonomy on your store — your categories, tags, and attributes — won’t just make your navigation look more professional (although it will!). Clearer taxonomy is one of the best ways to boost sales, and it takes very little time to make improvements in this area.