A Complete Guide to Efficient Bulk Editing and Managing Variable Products in WooCommerce

Previously, we talked about how to add theWooCommerceUpload variable products, now let's see how to batch edit them.

Batch Edit

When working with a large number of product variants, you can edit all of them at once using the Batch Actions drop-down menu at the top of the Variants tab:

• From the drop-down menu, select the action you want to take.
• If the change requires input (e.g. to set a price or discount), a pop-up window will appear asking for the value.
• Changes will be saved to all variants immediately.

These batch operations will apply to all variants of the current product.

The following available batch operations can be applied to manage product variants faster:

• Delete all variants

• status
  • Toggle "Enabled"
  • Toggle "downloadable"
  • Toggle "virtual"
• cost
  • Setting regular prices
  • Increase in normal price (fixed amount or percentage)
  • Reduction of normal price (fixed amount or percentage)
  • Setting the sales price
  • Increase in sales price (fixed amount or percentage)
  • Reduction of sales price (fixed amount or percentage)
  • Setting up scheduled sales dates
• inventory (of material)
  • Toggle "Manage Inventory"
  • Inventory (number)
  • Setup Status - In Stock
  • Set Status - Out of Stock
  • Set Status - Out of Stock
  • Low inventory threshold
• sea freight
  • lengths
  • height
  • high degree
  • weights
• Downloadable Products
  • Download Restrictions
  • Download Due

What the customer sees

On the front-end, when a customer views a variable product, they are presented with drop-down fields to select variable options. Once the customer selects all options, the available inventory and prices are displayed. To add a variable product to the cart, the customer needs to select all options.

If the user tries to click the gray Add to Cart button before selecting an attribute, the system displays a message asking the user to select some attributes.

On the main store view or product profile page, customers see the "Select Options" button instead of "Add to Cart" because they have to select a variant before they can add the product to their cart.

Variable Products - Advanced Themes

When defining the attribute options for each variant, you will notice that there is an option to select "Any {property}...". This option allows some additional flexibility, such as fallbacks. It also allows multiple variants to be effectively treated as copies of each other. This can lead to confusing behavior, especially on products with many attributes and variants.

In general, weIt is highly recommended that you define all properties for all variants. This is by far the simplest approach. However, if instead of defining all attributes on each variant, you use "any {attribute}..." on any variant, then the following approach can be used, which is much simpler:

• Use inventory quantities at the product level rather than at the change level.
• Set the same price for all variants.
• Sort the changes in the management view from most specific to least specific.
• Test thoroughly to make sure you understand how the variants match.

How WooCommerce Handles Duplicate Variants

If there are valid duplicate variants, WooCommerce will use the first matching product data from top to bottom in the variant sort list. Therefore, when using the "Any {attribute}... (any {attribute})...) "When defining variants, the sort order of product variants in the admin area is very important.

Sort the "repeat" variants appropriately. Place more defined variants above less defined variants. The less defined variant will effectively act as an alternate variant if the shopper's choice does not match the defined variant.

The changes are not ordered correctly.Sorting variants with the "Any..." attribute at the top of the list means that lower variants will never be matched and their product data will never be used.

Improperly categorizing variants where duplicates exist, or having too many duplicates, can lead to confusion about stock levels, pricing, shipment data, and any other variant-level product data. Be careful!

Dynamic attribute drop-down menus for over 30 products

By default, if a variable product has 30 or fewer variations, the front-end drop-down menu for selecting variations will be dynamic. For example, a T-shirt with a Size and Color attribute, once the customer selects a size, the Color drop-down menu will update to show only the options available for the selected size.

However, if there are more than 30 variations, the drop-down menu will be static and will display all attributes, independent of previous selections. Following the example above, if there are more than 30 variations of a T-shirt, the Color dropdown will continue to display all color options even if there are no color options for the selected size. Instead, after the customer selects an unavailable combination, they will see "Sorry, no products match your selection. Please select another combination."

This action improves site performance. For products with a large number of variations, calculating the available combinations after each selection can significantly reduce speed.