You can add product filters to a WooCommerce store using the native Filter by Attribute, Price, and Rating blocks/widgets, or a dedicated filter plugin for AJAX-based multi-select filtering across attributes, categories, and custom fields at once.
Why Product Filters Matter for Larger Catalogs
- Customers who can’t quickly narrow a large catalog tend to bounce rather than browse manually
- Filters reduce the number of clicks between landing on a category and finding a relevant product
- Well-used filters correlate with higher conversion rates on catalogs beyond a couple dozen items
- Filter usage data itself is useful — it shows which product attributes shoppers actually care about
Step 1: Enable WooCommerce’s Native Filter Widgets
WooCommerce ships with Filter Products by Attribute, Filter by Price, and Filter by Rating blocks/widgets that can be added to a shop sidebar or a dedicated shop page built with the block editor. These require product attributes to be set up as taxonomies first (Products > Attributes) for the attribute filter to have anything to filter by.
Step 2: Consider a Dedicated Filter Plugin for AJAX Filtering
Native widgets reload the page on every filter change by default. A filter plugin typically adds AJAX filtering (no page reload), multi-select checkboxes, and the ability to combine several filter types (price + attribute + category) in one sidebar panel — worth it once your catalog and filter needs grow past the basics.
Step 3: Make Sure Filters Are Indexable
If filtered URLs generate meaningfully different, valuable pages (e.g. “Red T-Shirts”), consider whether they should be indexable and linked internally, or canonicalized back to the base category to avoid diluting SEO across near-duplicate filtered URLs.
/** Add a canonical tag pointing filtered category URLs back to the base category */
add_filter( 'wpseo_canonical', 'canonicalize_filtered_category_urls' );
function canonicalize_filtered_category_urls( $canonical ) {
if ( is_product_category() && ! empty( $_GET['filter_color'] ) ) {
return get_term_link( get_queried_object() );
}
return $canonical;
}Troubleshooting
Attribute Filter Widget Shows No Options
Confirm the attribute is set up as a global taxonomy attribute (used for variations or filtering) rather than a custom per-product text attribute — only taxonomy-based attributes populate the native filter widgets.
Filters Reset When Combined With Pagination
Some themes and filter plugins don’t preserve active filter query parameters across pagination links — check the plugin’s documentation for a setting to persist filters across paginated results.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do product filters slow down my store?
Native filter widgets add minimal overhead; AJAX filter plugins add some JavaScript and query weight, but the UX gain typically outweighs the modest performance cost on catalogs where filtering is genuinely useful.
Can I filter by custom fields, not just standard attributes?
Native WooCommerce widgets only filter by taxonomy attributes, price, and rating — filtering by arbitrary custom fields (like a custom “material” meta field) usually requires a dedicated filter plugin or custom query code.
Should filtered pages be indexed by search engines?
Only if the filtered result represents genuine search demand (like “blue running shoes”) — otherwise canonicalizing back to the base category avoids diluting SEO signal across near-duplicate filtered URLs.
Conclusion
Native WooCommerce filter widgets cover basic attribute, price, and rating filtering out of the box; a dedicated plugin is worth adding once you need AJAX behavior or multi-type combined filtering. Either way, think through the SEO implications of filtered URLs before letting search engines index every combination. Getting this right is really what add product filters to a woocommerce store comes down to.
See also How to Add Elementor Widgets to a WooCommerce Store. Then read Why and How to Improve Product Filters in WooCommerce.
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