An introduction to conditional logic for WooCommerce products

Most websites have dynamic content, such as accurate dates, times, and pricing. However, you can also adapt your design and layout based on user input. With the help of a WordPress plugin, you can even add dynamic content to your WooCommerce store. In this article, we will talk about conditional logic for your WooCommerce products.

Using conditional logic gives you a way to show or hide fields based on what your customer chooses. This can go much further. For example, you’re able to show different product options, or hide entire product options if you wish. Best of all, a WordPress plugin can help you implement this in seconds.

For this tutorial, we’ll discuss what conditional logic is, and why you’d want to use it. Then, we’ll talk about when you’ll use it, and how.

What conditional logic is

In a nutshell, conditional logic is a form of automation for your site. It uses a technique called ‘If statements’ to guide a user through a specific workflow. Your customers can interact with your site, and the conditional logic will make automatic choices based on that input.

For example, if a user clicks the Yes button on your site, they’ll head to a specific page or see a new and relevant field based on what they agreed to. In a moment, we’ll talk about some of the use cases for conditional logic that go far beyond this basic example.

Even better, you don’t need code or programming knowledge to implement conditional logic on your WooCommerce site. We’ll have more to say about this later on.

Why you’d want to use conditional logic

Conditional logic is more than a nerdy programming tool! It is valuable for a number of reasons:

• First, you can help guide your customers down a path you prefer. For instance, you can choose to only display certain products or fields in your store, which reduces option paralysis.
• Speaking of which, the reduction of options means your customers can flow quicker through your sales funnel. This has a direct knock-on effect on your sales figures.
• You’re able to enhance the User Experience (UX) and deliver a site that connects better with your customers.

Using logic on your site has lots of practical and relevant uses, not only for site owners, but for WooCommerce stores too. Let’s look at this next.

Use cases for conditional logic

You’ll find lots of everyday uses for conditional logic on your WooCommerce store. Here are some straightforward ideas for you to consider:

• You could display a signup form based on user selection.
• In the same way, you can ask the user for feedback once they complete a purchase.
• If you offer time-specific products and services, you can display a date picker or options to your customers.

There are plenty of advanced user cases too. For instance, you could implement an engraving option for house signs, complete with a text box. In clothing stores, you might choose to showcase age-specific or -appropriate garments based on the customer’s input.

Using conditional logic, you can implement almost any type of workflow or UX decisions you wish. However, you’ll also need to consider how you implement this within WordPress.

How to add conditional logic within WooCommerce

If you have coding and WordPress development knowledge, you might be able to add conditional logic functionality to your site. However, there are lots of drawbacks to this. For instance, if you don’t have the required skill, time, or budget to implement conditional logic in the right way, this could negatively impact your site.

Instead, you’ll do better with a WordPress plugin. It is developed by a quality WordPress developer, you’ll get long-term support and updates, and you’ll benefit from a greater all-around feature set. What’s more, you’ll save time, money, and effort.

There are a lot of plugins that can help you add conditional logic to WordPress, but let’s showcase one that can enhance your WooCommerce store on the whole.

Introducing Advanced Product Fields for WooCommerce

The Advanced Product Fields for WooCommerce (APF) plugin doesn’t only focus on conditional logic. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to customize the product fields for your store.

The plugin gives you the ability to add extra options to your product pages. There are a number of different types of fields available, such as number fields, ratio buttons, image and color swatches, file uploads, and much more.

The plugin also offers other features:

• You can adjust the final product price based on user selection. You can also insert additional fees and other complex pricing schemes.
• The plugin integrates with multi-currency and multilingual plugins such as Polylang and WOOCS.
• There’s also the option for a customer to edit products from the cart page. This means they won’t have to leave the screen to change their purchase.

To use conditional logic within Advanced Product Fields for WooCommerce, you’ll need to purchase the Pro plan. Throughout the rest of the article, we’ll show you how to implement it.

How to use Advanced Product Fields for WooCommerce to add conditional logic and rules to your WooCommerce store

For this example, we’ll assume you have the following in place:

• The Advanced Product Fields for WooCommerce plugin should be ready to roll after installation and activation.
• You’ll want to have a field group assigned to a product with variations.
• You’ll also need to have at least two other fields within that group. These represent the different variations for your product.

We talk about how to do the latter two in our article on using conditional logic and product options within WooCommerce. It’s essential reading if you want more knowledge about conditional logic, and how to use Advanced Product Fields for WooCommerce (APF).

The product field group will use the other two fields, but you’ll connect them with conditional logic. To do this, you’ll want to create a conditional rule group. Head to the WooCommerce → Product Fields screen, then select your product field group. Within, scroll down to your first variation field, then check out the Conditionals section:

Next, use the drop-down menus to set up your conditional logic. For our hoodie’s monogramming option, we want to show a text box if the customer selects it:

Once you do the same for your other variations, look to the Conditions metabox on the main product field group page. Here, you’ll determine when your conditional logic displays. In our example, we want to show it whenever a customer looks at a product within the Hoodies category. However, you can set this up as per your store’s needs.

Wrapping up adding conditional logic in WooCommerce product options

Advanced Product Fields for WooCommerce has a superweapon within its feature set. Conditional logic is a powerful, advanced way to create dynamic content for your store. This means your pages will react to the your customers’ input.

You’ll see a lot of benefits with using conditional logic. For example, you can boost the UX of your site, and reduce the time and effort required to make a purchase. Overall, you could see a greater number of sales in return for a few minutes’ work.

If you’re ready to add conditional logic to your store, check out Advanced Product Fields for WooCommerce today!