Dokan powers over 10,000 websites worldwide and is the perfect multi-vendor plugin to transform your online store into a WooCommerce online marketplace.

When you install Dokan, your product vendors' products are listed in a 4-column grid. This is ideal for selling a wide range of products. However, there are lots of reasons why you might want to list products from your marketplace in a different layout.

Today, I'm going to tell you how to use Dokan with the bestselling WooCommerce Product Table plugin from Barn2. First, we'll look at why a WooCommerce product table layout can improve your online marketplace and increase sales. Next, I'll explain how to set it up and use the plugins together.

What is a WooCommerce Product Table Layout?

The average WooCommerce store lists products in grid layout with a medium sized image, product name, price, and add to cart button.

A product grid layout is ideal for many types of products. However, other products sell better when listed in a more structured format, with extra data about each product, and more products displayed in the same amount of space.

How Can Product Tables Increase Sales in a WooCommerce Marketplace?

There are lots of reasons why you can boost sales by adding product table layouts to a WooCommerce online marketplace.

List your entire marketplace on a single page

When you create a Dokan marketplace, each vendor gets their own store listing their products. This can be divided into categories as required, creating a shop-within-a-shop for each vendor.

In addition to this, you might want to create a single page listing everything in the entire marketplace. A product table is a perfect way to do this. You can automatically list products from all vendors in a table, keeping everything in one place.

Customers can see everything that is on offer, regardless of the vendor. They can then purchase products from different vendors as usual.

Provide Extra Product Data to Help Customers' Buying Decisions

First of all, the default marketplace store layout displays the product image, name, price, seller and add to cart button. That's fine for some products, but not all.

By listing products in a table layout, you can show extra columns. You can show attributes, custom fields, taxonomies, weight, dimensions, stock, star rating, embedded audio and video players, and more.

This gives customers everything they need to make a buying decision, all on the main marketplace listings page.

Select Quantities & Variations Directly from the WooCommerce Marketplace Listings

Normally in WooCommerce, you can add simple products to the cart straight from the product listings page. However, you have to click through to the product detail page to select quantities and choose variations.

By listing your online marketplace products with WooCommerce Product Table, customers can do all this directly from product listings pages. This transforms your marketplace into a one-page WooCommerce order form. As a result, customers can buy much more quickly, which is great for improving conversion rates.

Make it Easier for Customers to Find Vendors' Products

Finally, it's worth mentioning that most WooCommerce online marketplaces grow faster than single vendor stores. This is because every time a new vendor signs up, they add their own products. Before you know it, your store is huge!

WooCommerce is built to scale, so it can handle an unlimited number of products.

However, these products will only sell if you make it easy for customers to find them.

By listing products in a structured layout with sorting, keyword search and multiple filters, customers can quickly find products based on data such as seller, category, tag, attribute, etc. This makes a big difference to conversion rates because if a customer can't find what they want quickly, they'll give up and look elsewhere.

You can learn more about WooCommerce Product Table in this video:

Next, I'll tell you how to use Dokan with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin and add table views to your online marketplace.

First, Set Up Your WooCommerce Online Marketplace

Before you can start using WooCommerce Product Table, you need a WordPress website with a theme installed. You also need WooCommerce because this provides the overall e-commerce functionality, checkout, shipping, payment gateways, etc.

Once you've set up WordPress and WooCommerce, it's time to install Dokan. Get Dokan and set it up today.

Finally, it's time to install the WooCommerce Product Table. Get the plugin and install it by following the instructions in the getting started email. Then it will be time to start adding product tables to your WooCommerce online marketplace.

Adding WooCommerce Product Tables to Normal WordPress Pages

The simplest way to create WooCommerce product tables is to add them directly to a standard page in WordPress.

First, go to the plugin settings page (under WooCommerce -> Settings -> Products -> Product Tables) and choose all the default settings for your WooCommerce product tables. There are over 50 options, so you have plenty of choice. Use them to control every aspect of your product table layouts.
Second, create a new page where you want to list your marketplace products. If you're using Gutenberg, add the shortcode [product_table] to a ‘Shortcode' block. If you're using the Classic WordPress Editor, click the ‘Insert Product Table' toolbar button to add the shortcode.
Publish the page, then take a look!

At this stage, the WooCommerce product table will list all the products in your entire online marketplace. Next, I'll tell you how to tailor the product tables to the Dokan plugin. This includes listing the vendor name in the table; adding options for customers to filter the list by vendor; and listing products for specific marketplace vendors only. We'll look at these one at a time.

Add a ‘Vendor' Column to the Multi-Vendor Product Table

You can add a ‘Vendor' column to the product table. This tells customers who is selling each product without having to click through to the single product page.

First, you need to decide where you will be storing the vendor name which is displayed in the table. The simplest way to do this is to use the product tags that come with WooCommerce itself. If you're already using product tags for something else, then you should create a custom taxonomy called ‘Vendor' instead.
You'll find your product tags or taxonomy on the right-hand side of the ‘Edit Product' screen in WordPress. Use this to tag each product with the name of the vendor.
Now, expand your WooCommerce Product Table shortcode to include a ‘Vendor' column. For example, this shortcode will list all products with columns for product name, vendor (we're using tags for this, but we have renamed the column to ‘Vendor'), price, and add to cart:

[product_table columns=”name,tags:Vendor,price,add-to-cart”]

This will add a Vendor column to the WooCommerce product table. If a product has multiple sellers, then all the vendors will be listed. When a customer clicks on a vendor in the table, it will filter the list to show products for that vendor only. Neat!

Let Customers Filter the Marketplace by Vendor

In the previous section, I told you how customers can click on a vendor in the table to view all products for that vendor. Let's be honest – not everyone will realize they can do this!

Even better, you can add a ‘Vendors' filter directly above the product table. Customers can select a product vendor from the dropdown list to view all products for that seller.

To do this, you need to have used product tags or a custom taxonomy to record which product relates to which vendor. I told you how to do this in the previous section.

Once you've done this, you need to add the ‘filters' option to your WooCommerce Product Table shortcode, for example:

[product_table columns=”name,tags:Vendor,price,add-to-cart” filters=”tags”]

This is a good way to list marketplace products. When the WooCommerce product table first loads, it will show all the products in the marketplace. That's a lot, so customers need to be able to refine the list. That's why you need a Vendors filter.

To make your product table even better, add other types of filter too. For example, you can add filters for things like categories, attributes, variations and even other custom taxonomies. You can show as many filters above the table as you like. It's a great way to help customers find products more easily, so take full advantage.

List Products for Specific Marketplace Vendors Only

So far, I've shown you how to create a single product table listing the inventory for all your vendors together. That's fine, but it's not the only option.

If you prefer, you can create a separate table listing products for a specific vendor only. Again, to do this you need to have used tags or taxonomy to record the vendor for each product. Then, you just need to specify a vendor in the WooCommerce Product Table shortcode:

[product_table tag=”vendor1″]

This will list products for a vendor called vendor1. Obviously, you need to replace ‘vendor1' with the actual name of your vendor.

Adding Product Tables to the Vendor Shop Pages

As we saw earlier, the Dokan Multi-Vendor Marketplace plugin comes with its own layouts for your vendors' actual store pages. So far, we've focused on how to list your vendors' products in a table which you would list on a page elsewhere on your site.

If you prefer, then you can add product tables globally throughout your store and use them on your vendors' store and category pages. That's a bit more technical because it involves editing template files, which is outside of the scope of this article. However, any good WordPress developer will be able to do this for you. Or if you want to do everything yourself, then you can list your marketplace products using the methods described above.

Perfecting Your Multi-Vendor Product Tables

I hope this has given you everything you need to start using Dokan with WooCommerce Product Table.

For further instructions on different ways you can use the plugins together, please see Barn2 Media's tutorial on how to use WooCommerce Product Table in a multi-vendor marketplace. This looks at extra options such as how customers can select product variations directly from the product table, and activating lazy load to improve performance in large marketplaces.

I'd love to hear how you use the plugins together. Please leave a comment below.

Tag Archives: woocommerce product-tables

A Smart Way of Adding Product Tables to a WooCommerce Online Marketplace