WooCommerce for one of a kind items.

April 10, 2018 11:24 AM

I am setting up a small jewelry site, but am having trouble figuring out how to set up the item pages for one-of-a-kind items specifically.

I’m trying to set up a small jewelry/Craft website using word press and woocommerce. I have 3 small businesses and want to have them all wp/wc so it’s easy for me. My problem is is that most everything is going to be a one-of-a-kind item and I’m concerned about the pages after they are sold. I don’t want to generate a ton of empty sold out pages or broken links from other sites if I just take them down. I thought of repopulating the page with a new similar item although I’m concerned about creating confusion. Do people do that? Do people change the title, image, price and product? Or do they just ignore the sold pages, put a link back to the product category and that’s it?

I just don’t know what the best practices are with keeping it clean, simple, and easy.

Thank you.

posted by Vaike to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Someone with more experience with WooCommerce may have better info, but in my shop, by default there are related items on every product page. An item being sold out will show an "Out of Stock" message, but the description and related items remain.

You can use the Upsells option in the Linked Products area of the WooCommerce dashboard to recommend one or more alternate products with the heading "You may also like..." (I added it to this product as an example.)

I wouldn't delete the pages, because, as you said, you could end up with broken links. Additionally, leaving the sold out page shows your skill and talent, and gives you more content to be indexed in search engines.

Regarding adding a similar but new item to the page in place of a sold out one: if they are similar enough that the description and page slug can be the same, then you won't have broken links, and the visitor will still see a handmade item that's available. For example, if you have a handmade "leather and nickle bracelet" and replace it with another one, then the slug can remain ".../leather-nickle-bracelet" without causing confusion.

If that's not an option, you can leave the page, but on the product edit page you can change the status to "Hidden" in the "Catalog visibility: Shop and search results" on the right hand sidebar. It won't show up in your lists of products, but the link will still work. This will avoid your catalog looking like it's full of sold out products, but will leave the page intact for external links and indexing. I would still add the upsell items to any sold out page in case someone comes across it.

Hope this helps!
posted by The Deej at 12:03 PM on April 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Just turn on Inventory Management and set the stock QTY to 1. Set Backorders to NO and you're good. Once you sell the item, WooComm will remove it from public display.

Broken links from other websites isn't your concern (IMO). You don't want users following those links to your out-of-stock item anyway. Make a fun 404 page if you're a bit worried about that.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:49 PM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

You know, The Deej's response is better than mine. As strictly a developer, I sometimes fail to look at these questions enough from the business owner's point of view.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:53 PM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]