If you run an online store with both retail and wholesale products, you need more advanced solutions than most. Having a restricted customer area can help you control the pricing and visibility of certain items. However, building a WooCommerce private store from scratch can be difficult.
Luckily, with our WooCommerce Wholesale Prices plugin, you can easily set up a private store for your wholesale customers. You can decide who gets access to your bulk buying inventory in a matter of a few clicks.
In this post, we’ll show you how you can use our plugin to give your wholesale customers a WooCommerce private store experience. Let’s go!
Why You May Need A WooCommerce Private Store For Wholesale
Creating a private store may seem counter-intuitive. After all, most online sellers aspire to drive as much traffic as possible to their websites. However, in some cases, restricting access to certain products has its benefits. Think of it as a VIP section.
Creating a WooCommerce private store enables you to:
- Offer your customers incentives such as exclusive deals that are only available when they set up an account.
- Provide additional discounts to members who pay subscription fees.
- Pre-approve customers before granting them access to a particular product.
- Differentiate your products and sell them in bulk to companies.
Finally, if you offer both retail and wholesale products, setting up a private store will make managing your site much easier. You can keep your prices and available items separate to minimize confusion among customers and simplify your administrative work.
Also, your wholesale members will be able to quickly navigate your inventory without having to browse through endless lists. This gives them a smoother shopping experience and helps you build better relationships in the long term.
How To Make A WooCommerce Private Store For Wholesale (In 2 Steps)
Now that we’ve covered the benefits of having a WooCommerce private store, let’s look at two simple steps for setting one up with WooCommerce Wholesale Prices. Before you start, be sure to install and activate the free plugin.
Step 1: Set your wholesale prices
After activating WooCommerce Wholesale Prices, you’ll be able to set discounted prices for your products that will only be available to your wholesale customers. To do so, you’ll need to edit each of your product pages individually.
In the product page editor, scroll down to Product data > General. Here, you’ll see a new Wholesale Prices field:
Enter your discounted price in the relevant field, then click the Update button.
Step 2: Assign wholesale customer roles
Next, you need to assign wholesale customer user roles to members you want to have access to your discounted prices. The role is created for you by default when you install the plugin, which saves you a few extra steps.
Go to Users > All Users. Click on the name of the customer whose account you want to convert. Under Role, select Wholesale Customer from the dropdown menu:
Don’t forget to save the account settings. You can also assign user roles as you create new members by clicking the Add New button on the All Users page.
Now, anyone who is logged into their wholesale customer account will see the discounted prices you set for your products:
Wholesale pricing is automatically hidden from anyone without a wholesale customer account, making this portion of your store private.
Access Advanced Visibility Settings With WooCommerce Wholesale Prices Premium
If you’d like even more control over the visibility of your products, you can upgrade to Wholesale Prices Premium for more advanced features. Note that you will need to activate the license before you can use this plugin.
There are many wholesaling techniques you can implement with WooCommerce Wholesale Prices Premium, but let’s take a look at the ones that can make your store more private. First, navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Wholesale Prices in your dashboard.
Set product visibility for wholesale customers only
Under General, scroll down to the Wholesale Products section and check the box next to Only Show Wholesale Products To Wholesale Users. Then, click on Save Changes:
This will make your retail products invisible to your wholesale customers. Instead, they’ll only see items for which you’ve provided wholesale prices.
You can also hide wholesale products from your retail customers by using the options in the product page editor. In the Publish section, you’ll see a Restrict to Wholesale Roles field. Enter Wholesale Customer in the box, then click on Update:
This item will then become unavailable to the general public. Only customers with wholesale accounts who are logged in will be able to see it.
Conclusion
Having a WooCommerce private store gives your wholesale customers a more exclusive experience. It also helps you manage your inventory and control who can access discounted prices. Our free WooCommerce Wholesale Prices Plugin can help you achieve that, and the premium version includes even more advanced functionality.
To recap, here’s how to set up a WooCommerce private store with our plugin:
- Set your wholesale prices, which will only be accessible to wholesale customers.
- Assign wholesale customer roles to users who have registered for bulk buying.
Additionally, we explored other ways you can tailor your WooCommerce store to address the needs of your wholesale buyers. For example, you can customize product visibility to make them exclusive to wholesale customers and hide wholesale products from your retail buyers.
Powerful tools like Wholesale Prices Premium allow you to create a seamless wholesale buying experience for your B2B clients. With this powerful plugin, you can set and manage wholesale prices, tailor product visibility, and more!
Do you have questions about creating a WooCommerce private store? Let us know in the comments section below!
