Hello and welcome to another round of Snaps from the WooCommerce Store Editing team! 🎇
Every couple of weeks, we give an update on all the work being done on WooCommerce Blocks from behind the scenes.
Let’s take a look at some highlights of what we’ve done since our last update.
Note that the linked #numbers that accompany each item below point to the relevant issues and pull requests on the GitHub repository.
What We’re Working On 🚧
We’ve worked on a number of things in the last two weeks but here are some specific items we want to highlight.
Product Collection Block
Product Collection block offers an improved experience for displaying your products. The block is already feature-rich, covering all the cases Products (Beta) or All Products blocks offered. Now, we’re working on new features and further improvements that will allow for even easier setting up your store.
Add Price Range Filter (#11931)
Maybe you’d like to offer Christmas gifts for $20-$40? Or great deals in your store with all products cheaper than $15?
We’re working on a new Editor filter for the Product Collection block. As a merchant, you’ll be able to set a price range of products you’d like to display for your customers. The filter will allow you to set MIN and MAX prices with simple inputs.
It’s still a work in progress but it should be available for you soon. Let us know if you expect some other filters for Product Collection blocks!
Reorganize Columns controls and fix undefined problem in Product Collection settings (#11937)
Not that long ago, we added a “Shrink columns to fit” option in the Product Collection block. This makes your product grid responsive. The option has now been renamed to “Responsive” which we found to better explain its purpose.
You can still find it in Product Collection’s inspector controls, next to the “Columns” setting:
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Enable shrink columns option in Product Collection by default (#11821)
Follow up to the previous point – from now on Product Collection is responsive by default!
Product Gallery Block
This project builds off of our previous work and aims to introduce additional functionalities to the blocks and enhance their interactivity. We plan to achieve this utilizing the Interactivity API and the Behaviors API, alongside enhancing block reliability through the development of e2e tests within the new Playwright infrastructure.
Remove alignment from template part (#11891)
Removes the alignment from the template part. The template part has to have the same attributes as the main block’s save function. Since the template part is not a block variation, we have to keep them both the same for now.
Product Gallery: Add a Product Image fallback (#11978)
This PR introduces a fallback for scenarios where the Product Image is not set, but some Product Gallery images are present. In such cases, a placeholder image will be displayed as the first image in the Product Gallery.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
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Store Customization
This project aims to create a brand new Store Customization experience by introducing new key features, such as an updated design hub, onboarding experience, and more. While many different teams are working on this initiative, our primary focus in this phase is to start implementing AI-driven flows, helping users design their stores with the power of AI.
During this cycle, the goal is to have AI manage the images displayed in patterns, ensuring they dynamically change depending on what the user decides to add as a description for their business in the settings.
Over the past couple of weeks, we primarily focused on pattern improvements. While there are too many to list here, below are a few highlights.
[Store Customization] Ensure the price for products is also AI-generated (#11859)
Here, we’ve updated the product generation AI prompt to also generate the product price. Previously, we were generating the prices randomly between 5 and 50, which produced some unexpected results. With these changes, we can ensure the prices make sense with the product.
[Store Customization] AI-generated store name (#11878)
Here, we’ve added a new endpoint (/ai/store-title) to update the store title during the store customization process if it is empty.
Frontend Filters
The goal of this project is to improve the performance of all filters that impact the products blocks. We want to make the filters’ context aware, so we only query the products we need and make overall user experience better and smoother by exploring the use of interactivity API.
Add default template for Collection Filters block (#11805)
Here, we’ve added a simple template for Collection Filters block to add all filter blocks with heading as the default template when merchants insert the block to the page.
WooCommerce Blocks Releases ✨
- 11.6.0 – Many of the changes noted in this post are included in the 11.5.4 release of the WooCommerce Blocks feature plugin from March 13th. You can find the full details in the release notes.
- 11.6.1 – This is a fix release that includes bug fixes and enhancements for WC Blocks.
Other Notable PRs / Issues ✅
- Reviews by Product: fix reviews count not appearing in product selector (#11976)
- Fix an issue that caused the Order by select in Reviews blocks to always be disabled (#11918)
Thanks for following along with us – until next time! 👋
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