How to set up and promote WooCommerce featured products

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Featuring specific products is a great way to highlight new items, get rid of excess inventory, and inspire repeat customers to make additional purchases.

WooCommerce makes it easy to showcase specific products and even gives you several options to do so, including dedicated shortcodes and blocks. You can use these built-in tools to highlight your bestsellers, new products, and high-margin items around your site.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about WooCommerce featured products, including how to set them up on your store and promote them with email marketing. 

What are featured products in WooCommerce?

Featured products are items that are made to stand out in order to increase sales. Merchants typically handpick these products and highlight them in a variety of areas, including the homepage, Shop page, shopping cart, related products section, or at checkout. 

The aim is to encourage shoppers to add these items to their carts and therefore drive more sales. You might showcase products that are doing very well, new items that you think your clients will love, or SKUs with excess inventory you’d like to move.

Benefits of using WooCommerce featured products

WooCommerce doesn’t require you to set featured products, so it might fall down your priority list. However, ignoring this opportunity is likely costing you sales. Here are some key benefits of WooCommerce featured products:

• Increased visibility: Highlighting featured products earns them more exposure, especially if you put them on your homepage. This can be very useful if you have an item that’s struggling to get traction. 
• Upselling: You might use featured items to draw attention to high-margin products. For instance, if you have a popular body cream, you could upsell a version of that item that includes a premium ingredient.
• Promotion for new products: There are no rules when it comes to showcasing your featured products — you can pick any items you want, including new ones. Using this feature for product launches will help you create buzz and interest. 

You could also leverage the WooCommerce featured product section to showcase seasonal items and gifts. For example, if you sell artisanal sweets, you might feature your heart-shaped chocolates in the run-up to Valentine’s Day.

How to set up featured products in WooCommerce

By default, WooCommerce provides two main ways to display featured products — with a block and a shortcode. If you’re looking for more creative ways to showcase your featured items, like using sliders or videos, you’ll need an extension. 

Let’s look at three main ways to set featured products in WooCommerce: 

1. Using WooCommerce blocks

WooCommerce offers two blocks — Featured Product and Featured Products. 

With the first one, you’ll manually select a product you want to feature. You can only list one item per block.

The featured product will look something like this:

You can select what product information to display, change the image, and more.

Let’s move on to the Featured Products block, which lets you display multiple highlighted items. 

Before you add the block, choose the items you want to feature. Go to Products > All Products and click on the star icon to mark an item as a featured product.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see the selected star icons for the Ninja Hoodie and T-shirt: 

Return to the page where you want to showcase these items and add the Featured Products block. This will automatically display the items that you marked as featured.

To customize this section, select an element within the block, such as the product image or add-to-cart buttons, and use the settings on the right.

Then, apply your display preferences. For example, you have the option to only show featured products that are on sale and filter items by stock status.

The block also lets you order your featured products by various factors — including price, sales, and customer ratings — and choose the number of items to display per page. 

Feel free to explore the rest of the settings for the Featured Products block. When you’re ready, save your changes. 

2. Using shortcodes

Another way to display featured products is by using shortcodes. You can insert these into pages, posts, or widgets, and add parameters to customize the items. Again, you’ll need to select the star icon for the products you wish to feature.

Then, navigate to the page or area where you want to show your featured items and add the shortcode block. Here’s what this will look like:

Let’s start with the following basic shortcode:

[products limit=”3″ columns=”3″ visibility=”featured”]

This instructs WooCommerce to display a limit of three products, organized into three columns. 

Change the numerical values in the shortcode to reflect your preferences, but leave the visibility=”featured” part as is. This tells WooCommerce to show the products that you’ve marked as featured. 

Add that shortcode to the block.

Then, preview your page to see what it looks like for visitors:

You might have noticed that you don’t have the Featured Products heading, as you did with the block. You may want to add this title just above the shortcode. 

Here’s an example:

The above shortcode displays your featured products in a grid format. If you want to use a list layout instead, replace columns=”3” with columns=”1”. 

This will stack products vertically, as you see in the image below:

By using a shortcode rather than a block, you’ll have more control over how your products display.

If you want to filter them by category or tag, add the following to the code:

• category=”clothes” (or category=”clothes, tshirts” if you want more than one category)
• tag=”waterproof” (or tag=”clothes, leather” if you want more than one tag)

Replace “clothes” and “waterproof” with your own category and tag labels.

If you want to order your featured products by popularity or rating, use the following attributes:

• orderby=”popularity”
• orderby=”rating”

So, here’s what your final shortcode might look like:

[products limit=”3″ columns=”3″ category=”clothes” orderby=”popularity” visibility=”featured”]

You can find a full list of WooCommerce shortcode attributes on this page.

3. Using plugins and extensions

If you want more sophisticated featured product capabilities, there are some great extensions that will come in handy. Let’s look at some examples.

Featured Products First for WooCommerce moves your featured products to the top of category pages, shop pages, and search results. 

After you install and activate the plugin, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Featured Products First and choose where you want to enable this feature. 

For example, you can display your featured products first everywhere or in select areas, such as the shop and category pages only. 

Product Video for WooCommerce is an extension that lets you customize your product pages with videos. You can even set a video in place of a product’s featured image. 

Then, when you add your featured products, you’ll have videos as your thumbnails, like this:

This can be very handy if you sell digital items, such as software and want to use videos to demonstrate how your products work.

If you’re looking for more creative ways to display your products, use an extension like All-in-One Product Slider & Carousel. This lets you create an interactive slider for any items you want, including featured products.

There’s also Product Badges for WooCommerce. With this extension, you can add badges over product images, including featured items.

This is ideal for highlighting bestsellers or limited edition products. There’s a large selection of pre-made badges to choose from, and you can also create your own. 

Promoting featured products through email marketing

Setting up featured products is just the first step. To truly boost sales, you’ll need to promote them effectively. 

Highlighting featured items on your store can improve conversions from those already on your site, but it doesn’t do anything to attract visits in the first place.

This is where email marketing comes in. 

You might already send automated transactional emails, such as purchase confirmations and order updates. However, if you’ve been building your subscriber list, you can also set up automated promotional emails that send customized recommendations at the perfect time, whether you’re at your desk or fast asleep. 

These kinds of email marketing campaigns are a great way to promote your WooCommerce featured products. 

Here are some ideas:

• Personalized recommendations: Suggest featured products based on customer behavior. For instance, if a customer bought shoes from your store, recommend items in the shoe category.
• Cart abandonment recovery: Remind customers about items in their carts while sharing your featured products in the same email. This way, even if they’re no longer interested in their items, they may be tempted to check out the new products.
• Seasonal campaigns: If you have time-sensitive featured products, let your subscribers know. Include a countdown timer in your email, as well as phrases like “last chance to grab X” or “these items will disappear soon” to create a sense of urgency. 
• Upsells and cross-sells: Another strategy is to promote featured products that offer added value, such as custom items. Similarly, you could recommend products that complement a client’s recent purchase. 

This may all sound difficult, but an email automation tool like Omnisend will help you build more effective campaigns in less time.

Using Omnisend to maximize your impact

Omnisend helps WooCommerce store owners automate and enhance their email marketing campaigns. This includes featured product promotions.

Let’s take a close look at the things you can do with Omnisend:

1. Create targeted campaigns

Omnisend helps you design beautiful emails to share your featured products. 

Start by setting your campaign goal. In this case, it’s to promote products. Omnisend will then give you a selection of professional templates.

Once you select a template, use the editor to customize it.

Besides adding your featured products, you’ll also want to change the colors and fonts to align with your branding. 

When you’re ready, select the segment of your audience that you want to email. For example, you might message all of your subscribers or just recent buyers.

Finally, choose whether to send your email right away or schedule it for later. 

Now, let’s talk a bit about audience segments. These are customers who are grouped based on their demographics (like US-based shoppers) and user behavior (such as frequent buyers or those who abandoned their cart). 

Audience segments are essential for creating targeted campaigns. They help you send the right featured products to the right people. For instance, you could send your most expensive featured items to your biggest spenders. 

As you’ll see in the image below, Omnisend lets you choose from a variety of pre-built segments.

These include frequent store visitors, people who stopped visiting your store, high-value buyers, and more. You also have the option to create a segment from scratch.

2. Automate your promotions

As mentioned earlier, Omnisend lets you automate your campaigns. This means less work for you. 

With Omnisend’s pre-built automation workflows, you can:

• Send welcome emails featuring your best products
• Automate abandoned cart emails with featured product recommendations
• Set up post-purchase follow-up emails to encourage repeat purchases

Let’s look at an example. You might choose a post-purchase email workflow to cross-sell featured products:

Omnisend will automatically use an individual’s order history to showcase items that are most likely to interest the shopper. You could also use this workflow to display your most trending products and newest arrivals.

3. Boost engagement with text message marketing

You might consider using SMS or MMS marketing to promote your featured products. Omnisend lets you add GIFs and images to your messages to make them more engaging. 

These texts are fully automated, based on specific actions or events, like cart abandonment and birthdays. As with emails, you can choose from different pre-built workflows. 

For instance, you might text customers a discount code on their birthday that they can use on any of your featured products. 

4. Measure performance and refine campaigns

Once you’ve set up your email and SMS campaigns, you’ll want to track their performance. Omnisend provides a detailed analytics dashboard that shows you key metrics like open rates, click rates, and placed order rates.

Use this data to adjust your campaigns accordingly. For example, if your welcome email includes featured products and you notice a low click rate, you might need to replace those items. Perhaps they’re not exciting enough.

It’s worth noting that Omnisend lets you A/B test your email campaigns. So, you could set up two versions of the same email, with different sets of featured products in each one.

Then, refer to the metrics to see which email had the highest number of clicks and conversions. This might indicate that the featured products in that email are more desirable than the other set.

Conclusion

WooCommerce featured products are an effective way to display select items in prominent areas of your store, like the homepage and the Shop page. You can use built-in features like the Featured Products block and shortcodes, or install a WooCommerce extension to display your items in more creative formats, such as videos and sliders.

To promote your featured products, you’ll need an email and SMS marketing solution like Omnisend. This lets you create targeted campaigns with pre-built workflows and audience segments, saving you a lot of time and work.

Take your WooCommerce store to the next level. Start using Omnisend today.

FAQs

Let’s answer some of the most common questions about WooCommerce featured products: