Default WooCommerce sorting options barely scratch the surface of what’s possible for strategic product organization. While the platform’s built-in options—popularity, rating, latest, price, and name—provide basic functionality, they severely limit your ability to implement sophisticated merchandising strategies that truly drive conversions and revenue.

The Limitations of Default WooCommerce Sorting

Standard WooCommerce installations offer just a handful of sorting options:

• Default sorting (usually by menu order/featured status)
• Sort by popularity (sales)
• Sort by average rating
• Sort by latest
• Sort by price: low to high
• Sort by price: high to low
• Sort by name (A-Z)
• Sort by name (Z-A)

While these cover basic scenarios, they fall dramatically short for serious e-commerce operations in several critical ways:

1. Single-Factor Limitations

Each default option considers only one dimension (popularity OR rating OR price), forcing you to choose between equally important business priorities. You can’t combine multiple factors—like showing products that are both popular AND highly rated.

2. No Weighting Flexibility

The standard options provide no control over how strongly each factor influences product order. A product with one more sale appears above another regardless of price point, margin, or strategic importance.

3. No Inventory Consideration

None of the default options consider stock levels, leading to potential scenarios where out-of-stock or low-inventory items receive prime visibility while well-stocked alternatives remain hidden.

4. Limited Strategic Control

Default sorting provides no mechanism to boost visibility for specific product types, tags, or strategic initiatives, forcing manual intervention to highlight key merchandise.

Extra Sorting Options That Transform Merchandising

Advanced WooCommerce stores require more sophisticated sorting capabilities to implement truly effective merchandising strategies:

Revenue-Based Sorting

Unlike the standard “popularity” sorting (based on unit sales), revenue-based sorting considers the actual monetary value of sales. This crucial distinction ensures that high-value products receive appropriate visibility:

Example Scenario:

• Product A: 10 units sold at $25 each = $250 revenue
• Product B: 5 units sold at $100 each = $500 revenue

With default popularity sorting, Product A would appear first despite generating half the revenue. Revenue-based sorting correctly prioritizes Product B, optimizing for actual business impact rather than just unit movement.

Stock-Weighted Visibility

Inventory-aware sorting creates powerful merchandising opportunities that standard options can’t match:

For Clearance Optimization: Boosting visibility for higher-stock items accelerates inventory clearance without requiring discounting.

For Scarcity Marketing: Highlighting low-stock items creates purchase urgency and reduces lost sales from stockouts.

For Balanced Inventory Movement: Giving moderate weight to stock levels helps prevent inventory imbalances while still respecting performance metrics.

Multi-Factor Balanced Sorting

The most sophisticated stores need sorting that considers multiple factors simultaneously, with controllable weighting:

Sales + Reviews Balance: Products receive positioning based on a weighted combination of sales performance and customer ratings, creating a more reliable quality signal than either metric alone.

Newness + Performance: Recent products get visibility boost while still respecting proven performers, creating the perfect balance between fresh content and reliable revenue generators.

Featured + Data-Driven: Featured products receive priority but are still ordered by performance metrics within the featured group, combining manual curation with data intelligence.

Strategic Tag and Attribute Boosting

Advanced sorting strategies often include the ability to boost specific product attributes:

Sale Item Promotion: Products with sale tags receive visibility boosts during promotional periods.

Seasonal Relevance: Items with seasonal tags (“summer”, “holiday”, etc.) gain appropriate visibility during relevant periods.

Strategic Initiatives: Products aligned with marketing campaigns or strategic initiatives receive temporarily elevated positions.

Implementing Advanced Sorting Without Plugin Overload

Store owners seeking these extra sorting capabilities typically face several implementation options:

Option 1: Multiple Specialized Plugins

Some stores install 3-5 different plugins to handle various aspects of product sorting:

• One for sales-based sorting
• Another for inventory consideration
• A third for featured product management
• Yet another for review-based sorting

This approach creates significant drawbacks:

• Plugin conflicts and compatibility issues
• Performance degradation from multiple sorting plugins
• Inconsistent interfaces and settings locations
• Higher maintenance and update requirements

Option 2: Custom Development

Other stores commission custom code to implement advanced sorting:

php// Example of custom sorting code
function custom_advanced_sorting( $args ) {
    // Complex logic mixing revenue, stock, and rating data
    // Often requires 50-100 lines of custom PHP
    return $args;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_get_catalog_ordering_args', 'custom_advanced_sorting' );

This development approach brings its own challenges:

• High initial cost ($1,000-$4,000 for comprehensive sorting)
• Ongoing maintenance requirements
• WooCommerce update compatibility issues
• Difficulty making adjustments without developer assistance

Option 3: Unified Sorting Solution

The most efficient approach implements all advanced sorting capabilities through a single, comprehensive solution like WooRanker, which provides:

• Eight controllable sorting factors in one interface
• Adjustable weight sliders for precise merchandising control
• Unified dashboard for all sorting configurations
• Code-free implementation of advanced strategies

This approach delivers sophisticated sorting capabilities without the drawbacks of multiple plugins or custom development.

Advanced Sorting Strategies in Action

Let’s explore how extra sorting options translate into practical merchandising strategies:

High-Margin Product Spotlight

Goal: Increase visibility for products with better profit margins while still respecting customer preferences.

Implementation:

• Primary factor: Revenue (high weight)
• Secondary factor: Reviews (medium weight)
• Supporting factor: Featured status (low weight)

This balanced approach ensures high-revenue products receive priority positioning while still considering social proof, creating a merchandising strategy that optimizes for both customer satisfaction and business profitability.

New Arrival Showcase with Performance Balance

Goal: Highlight new products while still maintaining visibility for proven performers.

Implementation:

• Primary factor: Creation Date (high weight)
• Secondary factor: Quantity Sold (medium weight)
• Supporting factor: Featured status (low weight)

This strategy creates a dynamic “new arrivals” section that naturally balances fresh content with proven performers, ensuring new products receive appropriate visibility without sacrificing conversion optimization.

Inventory-Balanced Merchandising

Goal: Promote healthy inventory movement across your entire catalog.

Implementation:

• Primary factors: Revenue and Quantity Sold (medium-high weight)
• Secondary factor: Stock levels (medium weight)
• Supporting factors: Tags for seasonal relevance (low-medium weight)

This approach subtly adjusts visibility based on inventory status while still prioritizing performance, creating natural inventory balance without obvious manipulation of the shopping experience.

Measuring the Impact of Advanced Sorting

Implementing extra sorting options typically delivers measurable improvements across key metrics:

Conversion Rate Impact: Stores implementing advanced multi-factor sorting typically see conversion rate improvements of 15-30% compared to default WooCommerce sorting methods.

Average Order Value: Multi-factor sorting that considers revenue and cross-selling opportunities frequently increases average order value by 10-25%.

Inventory Health: Stock-aware sorting strategies typically improve inventory turnover rates by 20-35% while reducing excess inventory issues.

Customer Engagement: Balanced sorting approaches that consider customer ratings along with other factors show 15-40% improvements in return visitor rates and time-on-site metrics.

Taking Your WooCommerce Sorting to the Next Level

As your WooCommerce store grows, basic sorting options become increasingly insufficient for implementing effective merchandising strategies. Advanced multi-factor sorting capabilities provide the merchandising sophistication needed to compete effectively in today’s competitive e-commerce landscape.

WooRanker delivers these extra sorting options through an intuitive interface that eliminates the need for multiple plugins or custom development. By providing granular control over eight different sorting factors, it enables implementation of sophisticated merchandising strategies without technical complexity or code.

Don’t let default sorting limitations constrain your merchandising potential. Implement the extra sorting options your store needs to create truly optimized product presentations.