It is clear that WooCommerce offers many types of products that we can sell, from simple to variable, through hotel reservations for example or periodic payments, but if something is not prepared by default is to sell in bulk or cut, something that many stores need because it is the usual model of selling in most stores in the traditional market.
Think, for example, of a delicatessen, a fish store, or your favorite store that sells by weight. For this type of store it seems that WooCommerce doesn’t have a solution, but in reality, we will see that it does, that you can sell by weight, by cut, in bulk, with WooCommerce.
So, with this little introduction, let’s see how we can sell by weight, in bulk or cut with WooCommerce.
Sell prepared weights or cuts
The first and simplest solution, which requires nothing more than a WooCommerce installed by default, without any additional plugins, is to adapt to the types of products we already have and sell our products accordingly.
You will see that this is not uncommon, and it is a very practical and fast solution.
All you have to do is adapt to the online environment and offer packages or units with a predefined weight or cut.
In addition, it is something that your usual supermarket or grocery store is already doing, offering heavy packages ready to go, if you do not want to wait for a turn to buy by cut or weight.
What you have to do is offer these weights or cuts in your online store.
And the way to do it is as simple as with any other simple or variable product.
The most logical and simple thing to do would be to do it as a variable product. First we would create the attributes, one for each pack of prepared/cut/heavy product we have for sale.
Remember to check the “Used for variations” box and save them.
Now you just have to create variations for all the attributes and edit each variation with its image, weight, price, etc.
When you are done, save all the changes in the variations and you can publish your product.
You will have a cut, bulk or weight product that you can start selling in convenient pre-weighted/cut packages, just like in the supermarket.
Sell by quantity and units
Another solution is to get into the unit sales, weights or cuts, and for that there is a fantastic free plugin, Quantities and Units for WooCommerce.
It installs like any other WordPress plugin, and once it’s active you’ll see a new menu called Quantity Rules, which is where you create the rules for applying quantities according to product, category or product label.
You can create as many rules as you need, the way to do it is simple:
- You set the minimum quantity (then in the products you will determine if it is grams, kg or whatever)
- You can set a maximum amount.
- You can set a minimum and maximum from which no stock is considered.
- Set the step value, how much by how much you can choose quantity for each unit.
- You can set a priority, in case there are several rules applicable to the same category or product label.
- When you finish setting the options for the quantity rule, select the category(ies) or label(s) to which the rule will apply.
Let’s see the example in the previous screenshot, where there is a minimum quantity of 100 (I’ll determine later that it’s grams, but I know that beforehand, which helps), a step of 50 (again grams), and it will be applied to the categories of choice.
Once you have created your rules, I recommend you to set up a detail in each product of the category affected by the rules.
And I mean the name of the unit to which the rule applies, so that it is visible next to the price of the product.
All you have to do is go through the product data and write down which unit the visible price refers to (gram, kg, etc.), to avoid scaring your customers.
Once this is done, and if you have taken into account the price, the unit and the steps of the quantity rule, your product will be ready to be sold by weight, cuts, whatever you specify.
As you see in the previous captures, we show the weight per gram and, according to the rule we defined, the minimum initial unit is 100 (grams), being able to add steps of 50(grams).
Once this is done, the calculation is done correctly and it is reflected in the cart.
We can create all kinds of rules and units, depending on the type of product.
In addition, the plugin allows you from the same page of the product editor to skip the existing rules and create your own rules for specific products, even if there are rules that apply to that category.
Just check the second box and apply your custom rules for that product, in the example below not yet filled in.
As you may have seen it is a very interesting plugin, which allows lots of rule customizations to sell products by weight, in bulk or by cut.
Did I say it’s free?
It has everything. It’s a shame it hasn’t been updated in a long time, but it works perfectly.
Sale at price according to weight, area, volume selected by the customer
Perhaps the normal method would be for the customer to specify a weight measurement amount and the price would be calculated, which will be added to their cart.
This is the usual way when we buy products by weight: we select an amount, weight it and we get a resulting price for it.
Well, this is the logic under which the most widely used plugin works by far for all types of weight stores.
This is where all types of stores of this type come in, from butcher stores to online stores selling products with cannabis derivatives.
I am referring to the Measurement Price Calculator, from the creators of WooCommerce.
After installing the plugin, the first thing to do is to configure the base units of measurement, for which the plugin adds some additional fields in the WooCommerce product settings.
Once you set these basic options according to the needs of your store, the potential of the plugin is actually on the create/edit products page.
Add a new tab to the product data box, in which you define how to measure this product: Measurement.
You can choose the type of measure among those available.
And configure the texts and measurement parameters for the client.
Initially it seems to have some basic options but simply checking the option for the measure to be editable by the client (Editable) opens up a world of possibilities, and options.
In the previous capture, to give you an idea, we have marked the following:
- The measure is of weight.
- The customer will be shown the price per unit.
- The price label will be 5.20 and the price unit will be kg.
- We define that the customer can specify their own quantity (Calculated price), for which, below, we define …
- The visible label: Choose the weight
- The unit: g
- Selection options of minimum 100 (gr.) with intervals of 50.
And here the thing does not finish, now we can specify the table of prices, to apply if we want a different price according to the ranges of quantity that the client buys.
Once configured the client will be able to buy by weight, by meter, whatever it is.
To know and to be able to value their enormous possibilities I encourage you to take a look at their documentation page and see the demos they have, they will give you a wider vision of the different types of products that you can sell with this jewel of Measurement Price Calculator.
Read this post in Spanish: Cómo vender al peso, granel o al corte con WooCommerce #SemanaWooCommerce
