How to add the WooCommerce wishlist feature to your store
This guide explores what the wishlist feature in WooCommerce is, and steps on how to add it to your store.
What is a WooCommerce wishlist?
Beyond having a professionally set up WordPress site, there’s an additional feature that can enhance your online store.
The wishlist feature enables your store’s visitors to save their favourite products. This is beneficial for both you and your customers/prospects. They can share their liked items with others which could boost awareness and traffic, while you get insight into which items are most popular.
Monitoring trends from your product wishlist can help improve how you stock, ensuring in-demand products are available, thereby maximising sales.
To add a wishlist to your WordPress WooCommerce store:
Step 1: Choose a WooCommerce wishlist plugin
YITH WooCommerce Wishlist and TI WooCommerce Wishlist are the two most popular wishlist plugins on WordPress. Be sure to check each plugin’s features and ensure it’s compatible with your version of WordPress.
Step 2: Install the plugin
The easiest way to do this is by navigating to the Plugins option in WordPress. Click on Add New. Search using the keyword “woocommerce wishlist”. YITH and TI will be the top results. Click Install and then Activate.
Step 3: Customise the wishlist
For YITH WooCommerce Wishlist:
- In the WordPress dashboard, click YITH then Wishlist
- Select ‘Add to wishlist options’
- Automatically, the plugin will add the wishlist option to all products
- Configure how the wishlist option appears to visitors in the settings
- On ‘Product page settings’, choose where you’d want the wishlist to appear on the product pages e.g. after users add an item to their cart
- Use the ‘Text customization’ setting to modify the text users will see once an item has been saved
- Save options
Note that the YITH WooCommerce Wishlist plugin will add a new page for your store’s wishlist links. You can customise this by adding this shortcode: [yith_wcwl_wishlist].
For TI WooCommerce Wishlist:
The installation and activation process is the same. The wishlist page will be created automatically as part of the set-up process. You also have the option to create a new one by adding a page and then using the shortcode [ti_wishlistsview].
Settings for the TI WooCommerce plugin enable you to customise the user experience. You can change the default wishlist name, enable the option to remove items from the wishlist when added to the cart, and change the positioning and appearance of the wishlist button.
Conclusion
Once your plugin of choice is configured, visit your WooCommerce store and check whether it works as desired. You can go a step further to leverage your store’s wishlist by using it to tailor personalised email marketing messages. Since users typically have to sign up in order to save items, you can send them reminders of items in their wishlist, share promotional offers to encourage them to check out, or encourage them to share their saved products with others.
