Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I may receive compensation when you click on links to products in this post. For an explanation of my Advertising Policy, visit this page. Thanks for reading!
What is a WooCommerce Purchase Note?
A WooCommerce Purchase Note is more than just some text that WooCommerce store owners may want to use just as an afterthought, for WooCommerce order details on WooCommerce product pages.
WooCommerce notes are not required, so WooCommerce store owners don’t normally include WooCommerce Purchase Notes on their products or purchase orders. So why use them?
WooCommerce Purchase Notes are actually a hidden gem that can help you streamline and increase your ecommerce business online, if you know how to use them correctly. It’s easy to do too. But there’s so much more! In this post, I will show you:
- What does a WooCommerce Purchase Note look like?
- When should WooCommerce store owners use WooCommerce Purchase Notes?
- Where WooCommerce order notes are stored in WooCommerce.
- Why add a Purchase Note in WooCommerce?
- When should WooCommerce Purchase Notes be added?
- Where are WooCommerce order notes stored in WooCommerce?
- How do I set up WooCommerce Purchase Notes?
- How to view WooCommerce order notes.
- What’s the difference between a receipt and a Purchase Note in WooCommerce?
- How to add WooCommerce Purchase Notes.
- How to edit WooCommerce Purchase Notes.
- How to delete WooCommerce Purchase Notes.
- The WooCommerce Purchase Note, a “Marketing Hidden Gem”.
- Adding a WooCommerce Purchase Note, benefits summary.
Plus answers a few FAQs about WooCommerce Purchase Notes before summarizing at the end.
What does a WooCommerce Purchase Note look like?
The WooCommerce Purchase Note is basically a WooCommerce text area.
WooCommerce store owners can add WooCommerce notes of any WooCommerce Font size or color.
WooCommerce Purchase Notes are shown just below WooCommerce order details.
This WooCommerce order note lists WooCommerce Order number – WooCommerce order date – WooCommerce customer name – Total amount of WooCommerce order – Shipping address for WooCommerce order, etc.
When should WooCommerce store owners use WooCommerce Purchase Notes?
Here are some traditional reasons WooCommerce store owners might want to use WooCommerce Purchase Notes.
WooCommerce store owners can add WooCommerce Purchase Notes if they have specific messages for customers about a WooCommerce order.
WooCommerce WooCommerce Purchase Notes are shown just below WooCommerce order details.
Why add a Purchase Note in WooCommerce?
Adding a WooCommerce Purchase Note is a great way of collecting customer feedback.
It’s also a good method of making sure that your customers get more support from you.
As a WooCommerce store owner, it’s likely that you will come across an issue at some point or another with regards to your products or service.
You can use Purchase Notes as a tool to allow your current customers to report their WooCommerce problems.
By adding WooCommerce Purchase Notes you can ensure that your support team is well informed and able to process requests efficiently.
When should WooCommerce Purchase Notes be added?
Purchase Notes in WooCommerce can be used for many different situations. You may want to add WooCommerce Purchase Notes throughout the following situations:
– New customer inquiry.
– After someone has created an account on your WooCommerce store. This is particularly useful because it allows you to stay in touch with your WooCommerce customers after they make their first purchase.
When someone files a return or requests refunds for WooCommerce purchases. You can use WooCommerce Purchase Notes to gather more information on the problem they are experiencing.
After a WooCommerce order that contained multiple items has been shipped. You could add a WooCommerce Purchase Note that contains all the details of what was ordered and when it got sent out. This acts as an excellent reference point if there is ever anything wrong with an order.
Note: WooCommerce Purchase Notes can also be added based on product category, product ID, email address or the user ‘s WooCommerce role (a WooCommerce administrator could add a WooCommerce Purchase Note that allows other WooCommerce users to leave feedback).
How do I set up WooCommerce Purchase Notes?
WooCommerce Purchase Notes are set up on a per product basis. WooCommerce Purchase Notes are not part of WooCommerce default settings.
So you will need to enable WooCommerce Purchase Notes for each individual WooCommerce product that you want to use it on.
1) After logging in to your WordPress admin area, navigate to WooCommerce > Settings.
2) In the WooCommerce settings page, click on the Product tab.
3) Scroll down to the ‘Product Data’ section and enable WooCommerce Purchase Note by ticking the box next to ‘Enable WooCommerce Purchase Note.’
On the bottom of this WooCommerce setting page, you will see a message that reads: ‘Note: This is an advanced feature – make sure you know what you’re doing before you enable WooCommerce Purchase Notes.‘ Click on the ‘Save changes’ button when done.
4) Click on WooCommerce > Products from your WordPress admin area.
5) In the WooCommerce products page, select a WooCommerce product that you wish to add a WooCommerce Purchase Note for and click on ‘Edit’ button.
6) In the WooCommerce product editing page, scroll down to WooCommerce Product Data section and tick the box next to ‘Enable WooCommerce Purchase Note.’ Click on the ‘Update’ button when done.
7) WooCommerce Purchase Notes can be added either from WooCommerce products edit page or from WooCommerce Order Edit page (for WooCommerce orders that contain WooCommerce products with WooCommerce Purchase Notes enabled).
– To add WooCommerce Purchase Note on a WooCommerce product edit page: When inside WooCommerce products (with WooCommerce Purchase Note Enabled), hover over the WooCommerce product and click on ‘Add/Edit Purchase Note.’
– To add WooCommerce Purchase Note on WooCommerce order edit page: When inside WooCommerce order (with WooCommerce products with WooCommerce Purchase Note Enabled), click on the WooCommerce Purchase Note button.
(You will see this link only if WooCommerce Order contains WooCommerce Products with WooCommerce Purchase Notes enabled).
WooCommerce Purchase Notes are then written into each product’s respective ‘Additional Information’ field.
Where are WooCommerce order notes stored in WooCommerce?
When WooCommerce orders are placed, WooCommerce places a WooCommerce note on the WooCommerce > Orders page in WordPress.
This WooCommerce note lists the WooCommerce Order number – WooCommerce order date – WooCommerce customer name – Total amount of WooCommerce order – Shipping address for WooCommerce order (this may be incomplete).
The WooCommerce note is stored as a WooCommerce Meta Data. WooCommerce stores all WooCommerce meta data in the WordPress database.
You can view this WooCommerce order note on the WooCommerce > Orders page of your WordPress site. The WooCommerce Order notes are shown just below the WooCommerce Order details.
How to view WooCommerce order notes?
WooCommerce displays WooCommerce Order Notes on the WooCommerce > Orders page in WordPress.
The WooCommerce order note is shown just below the WooCommerce order details. This WooCommerce order note lists WooCommerce Order number – WooCommerce order date – WooCommerce customer name – Total amount of WooCommerce order – Shipping address for WooCommerce order, etc.
What’s the difference between a receipt and a Purchase Note in WooCommerce?
A WooCommerce Purchase Note is a text message that can be sent to your customer along with the purchased product.
A WooCommerce receipt, on the other hand, has some mandatory fields and also identifies the products sold along with their quantities, prices etc.
A WooCommerce Purchase Note differs from a WooCommerce receipt as it does not have compulsory fields and can be used to identify a product or a service or even for marketing!
The WooCommerce Purchase Note is also very useful when you have WooCommerce Product Add-ons and Plugins as WooCommerce Purchase Notes will automatically get associated with the products once they are added.
A WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin for example, adds WooCommerce Purchase Notes automatically, each time a WooCommerce subscription is renewed.
How to add a WooCommerce Purchase Note?
Adding a WooCommerce Purchase Note is a three step process.
Follow these WooCommerce add WooCommerce Purchase Note steps.
Step 1 – Add WooCommerce Purchase Note Content : The WooCommerce order note is shown just below the WooCommerce order details. This WooCommerce order note lists WooCommerce Order number – WooCommerce order date – WooCommerce customer name – Total amount of WooCommerce order – Shipping address for WooCommerce order (this may be incomplete).
To add WooCommerce notes to WooCommerce or edit WooCommerce notes, Click the ‘Update WooCommerce Purchase Note’ link just before the WooCommerce order details. This will display the WooCommerce order note editor.
The WooCommerce Order note is shown just below WooCommerce order details. This WooCommerce order note lists WooCommerce Order number – WooCommerce order date – WooCommerce customer name – Total amount of WooCommerce order – Shipping address for WooCommerce order (this may also be incomplete).
Step 2 – Add WooCommerce Purchase Note Reference : The WooCommerce Order note is shown just below WooCommerce order details. This WooCommerce order note lists WooCommerce Order number – WooCommerce order date – WooCommerce customer name – Total amount of WooCommerce order – Shipping address for WooCommerce order (this may also be incomplete).
Step 3 – You can also add a WooCommerce Purchase Note by adding text in the WooCommerce ‘WooCommerce Order Notes’ text area.
WooCommerce WooCommerce Purchase Notes are shown just below WooCommerce order details.
This WooCommerce order note lists WooCommerce Order number – WooCommerce order date – WooCommerce customer name – Total amount of WooCommerce order – Shipping address for WooCommerce order (this may be incomplete).
Here’s an example WooCommerce Purchase Note, “Hi WordPress WooCommerce customer. Thank you for your order from WooCommerce.com.”
But, there’s more you can do with WooCommerce Purchase Notes as you will see below.
The WooCommerce Purchase Note, a “Marketing Hidden Gem”.
This simple little Woocommerce hack that most WooCommerce users overlook, you may find very useful.
This is essentially a way where you can add some extra information to an order so that the customer can see this after they have made the purchase.
Now when would you want to use this?
Well, for example, maybe you’re selling a product and it also has a file that you want them to download, or a webpage that you also want them to see, but you only want them to see this once they’ve made their purchase.
You can add this information to the order details, so that they will
receive this after they have made the order. After they’ve made their purchase, they can receive this by email and there’s a good way to add this very simply.
Just add the information to the customer once the purchase has been made.
So to do this, you simply go to products, click on your product and go down to product data. Now in the product data, there are several tabs.
One of the tabs is the Advanced tab. In the Advanced tab there is this very useful area here called the “Purchase Note”.
Now you can add, “please go to this link here to download your extra file.”
So for just an example, you can put a link to an extra file.
Obviously you can put whatever you want. You can add some secret information about the product, maybe a secret code, a “Special Offer” to another product or something like that.
Once you’ve done that, you can then simply update the product so that when somebody purchases this product or once the order has gone through in the order details, this extra information will show up in the “Purchase Note”.
Also, if you set up the emails so that the customer receives an receipt once the order is complete, that information will also be in the email.
This is very useful and can be used for many different types of products and different types of information.
Hopefully, you can start to see the potential here. It’s another way to stay engaged with your customer, instead of just having to send them “one extra email” that may end up in their spam box.
These “Purchase Notes” have a much higher likelihood of being read than, say, an email, because the customer is already engaged with you and the product since they’ve just made the purchase!
You won’t get a better opportunity to add extra value without coming off spammy or even being mistaken for spam.
Obviously there are limits to what this is able to do.
It’s only a very simple little area that most WooCommerce users overlook. But the potential can really push your bottom line.
There are other products extra extensions that you can use to further customize your emails and your order receipts as well if you want to dive deeper into this marketing strategy.
For example, maybe you want to send a different colored email, a different style of email, depending on the type of product that is being purchased.
Also, maybe you want to send extra emails for different products at certain times after they have purchased the product.
For those there are other paid extensions that you can use.
Here is a link to WooCommerce Marketing Extensions so you can see the possibilities of what you can add.
But for this post, the above were just a few simple examples of how you can add useful information to a product and that they are only able to see once the product has been purchased. The opportunities for this type of “Insider Marketing” are endless!
Use your imagination!
Adding a WooCommerce Purchase Note, benefits summary.
As you can see, within WooCommerce, “Purchase Notes” can be added as a way of customers adding messages to their transactions.
WooCommerce will look for this field when the order is being processed and attach it to the order for reference.
A WooCommerce Purchase Note can be a just note for the customer to be included in the WooCommerce order email that WooCommerce sends out when an order is complete.
WooCommerce looks for this Purchase Note by default. However, you can also include it on transactions manually if needed (for example, with WooCommerce extensions like WooCommerce Subscriptions).
The benefits of WooCommerce Purchase Notes are normally not so obvious to its users. But if you use them right, they can be a powerful tool in your online ecommerce business.
