A WooCommerce product slider that displays products in a slideshow is one way to help visitors easily browse your online store. Product sliders also group certain products together to highlight special deals and encourage more purchases.
Now that we have an idea of the benefits of a product slider for WooCommerce, let's take a closer look at this design element. Below, we'll define what it is, best practices for designing one, and the best WordPress plugins for automating the styling and embed process.
What is a product slider?
A product slider, or carousel, is a slideshow displaying product images and details for website visitors to scroll through. Product sliders allow you to showcase multiple products at once, feature related products, and make it easier for visitors to browse your online store.
Here's an example of a product slider with sale badges, quick view options, multiple CTA buttons, and more.
Best Practices for Creating WooCommerce Product Sliders
An effective WooCommerce product slider can generate more sales for your store. That’s why it’s important to design your product sliders to fit the needs and interests of your website visitors.
Here are a few strategies to build your product slider:
- Add a shopping cart button. By adding an add-to-cart button to your product slider, you make it easier for shoppers to purchase without hesitation. This technique will help increase your sales.
- Highlight special deals. Today’s shopper is always on the hunt for a discount. Rather than have customers leave your site to find deals, you can showcase your limited-time offers on your product sliders.
- Adjust to mobile screens. Consumers shop at their homes, on their jobs, and even during their lunch breaks. Shoppers are using their smartphones and tablets to browse products. Your goal is to design a responsive product slider that adapts to a smaller website layout. That way, your visitors aren’t zooming in and out just to see your products.
- Add user-generated content. Customers are your best advocates to persuade other shoppers. Ask your loyal customers to post their brand experiences on social media using a specific hashtag. Then, you can import those images into your product slider to convince reluctant buyers.
- Conduct placement experiments. It’s important to position your product sliders in a highly visible spot on your website. To find that location, you may have to run A/B tests to find the best placement. Try adding your product slider in the middle of your homepage or at the bottom of your blog.
Now, let’s take a look at several plugins that can help you create a product slider.
Best WooCommerce Product Slider Plugins
- Product Slider for WooCommerce
- Depicter for WordPress
- PickPlugins Product Slider for WooCommerce
- Product Slider and Carousel with Category for WooCommerce
- WooCommerce Product Carousel, Slider, & Grid Ultimate
- WPB WooCommerce Product Slider Pro
- Smart Slider
- Soliloquy
1. Product Slider for WooCommerce
Product Slider for WooCommerce lets you create product sliders with product images, prices, ratings, and add-to-cart buttons. You can display these sliders in pages, posts, custom templates, and widgetized areas to best suit your layout. You can also display more than one slider per page with this plugin.
What we like: The free version is mobile-friendly and lets you set the number of product columns on different devices.
Price: Free
Check out this video by ShapedPlugin to learn how to create a slider with the Product Slider for WooCommerce plugin:
2. Depicter for WordPress
Depicter is a drag-and-drop slider builder that has fast become one of the most highly-reviewed slider plugins for WordPress. It now comes with the ability to create beautiful, dynamic sliders for WooCommerce products that can be easily animated and designed for every device. Choose from pre-built templates or start from scratch by combining WooCommerce elements like Product Title, Product Image, Product Sale Price and more.
What we like: Depicter sliders are touch-enabled, delivering unique animation effects while swiping on mobile devices.
Price: Begins at $39/year for access to WooCommerce slider functionality
3. PickPlugins Product Slider for WooCommerce
With the PickPlugins Product Slider for WooCommerce plugin, you can create unlimited product sliders and display them anywhere via shortcodes. You can also set the slider to autoplay, rewind, loop, or stop on hover, and add navigation or pagination dots to make these sliders as easy to browse as possible.
What we like: The free version offers advanced features, like creating sliders with product IDs and hiding out-of-stock products from sliders.
Price: Free
4. Product Slider and Carousel with Category for WooCommerce
Using the Product Slider and Carousel with Category for WooCommerce plugin, you can create a product slider to sort and display products by category on your ecommerce site. You can even draw visitors to specific products with a slider dedicated to highlighting your best-selling products. This feature works well when you want to spotlight promotional products, too.
However, you will have to be comfortable with shortcodes to embed and style sliders on your site.
What we like: The free version offers three custom widgets for displaying featured, recent, and best-selling products sliders.
Price: Free
5. WooCommerce Product Carousel, Slider, & Grid Ultimate
You can create unlimited product carousels, sliders, and grids using the WooCommerce Product Carousel, Slider, & Grid Ultimate plugin.Like the Product Slider for WooCommerce, this plugin lets you display sliders in pages, posts, custom templates, and widgetized areas.
There’s also the option to display or hide the product title, price, star ratings, and add-to-cart button.
What we like: The free version lets you display badges like On Sale, Best Selling, Top-rated, Featured, or Out-of-Stock over products in your slider.
Price: Free
6. WPB WooCommerce Product Slider Pro
The WPB WooCommerce Product Slider Pro is ideal for showing your latest, featured, or tagged products. It also comes with a custom widget to display your product slider in the sidebar.
What's unique about the plugin is that you can create product sliders based on a wide range of criteria, including categories, tags, product SKU codes, keyword search, and more. You can also remove out-of-stock products from your sliders.
What we like: You can add quick view, compare, and add-to-wishlist options in your product sliders.
Price: $39
7. Smart Slider
Smart Slider is a premium WooCommerce product slider plugin that's rich in functionality. To build your sliders, you can choose from over 180 templates or build one from scratch.
One of the biggest perks of Smart Slider is that it allows you to dynamically create slides from your WooCommerce product pages. Meaning, the plugin automatically generates slides with the product details so you don't have to manually type them in or maintain product information in two places.
What we like: This premium plugin offers the most templates and flexibility so you can truly create unlimited sidebars.
Price: $49
8. Soliloquy
Soliloquy is one of the most popular WordPress slider plugins that offers a WooCommerce add-on so users can display sliders on their ecommerce sites. With this add-on, you can filter products by category, price, availability, and other criteria.
You can also configure the plugin to only include specific products, or to exclude specific products that you don’t want appearing in your sliders.
What we like: You can display the products as an image, an image and an excerpt, and a linked image with a title and excerpt, among other display options.
Price: $89
Using Product Sliders to Enhance Visitors' Online Shopping Experiences
An effective product slider can help shoppers browse your products and alert them to special promotions. Take advantage of product sliders to improve your site's UX and potentially increase your store revenue.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
