How to Change Your WooCommerce Shop Page Title
If WordPress is anything, it is versatile: there‘s hardly any part of your website you can‘t customize, tweak, and modify to your liking. That includes changing page titles, and, in the particular case of this tutorial, the shop page title. We will be showing you two methods you can use to change a WooCommerce shop page title on your WordPress website.
But before we sink our teeth into the juicy flesh of the tutorial, we‘d like to whet your appetite with a light hors d‘oeuvre of prior considerations, such as what a page title actually is and what is there to be gained from changing it, if anything. Here‘s what we‘ll be talking about:
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A page title is a part of any page. It is typically displayed at the top of a browser window when a page is loaded (though you can hide a page title), or as the principal textual part of a search results page. It can contain any number of characters, but it is usually considered best practice to keep it under 70 characters.
As far as the WooCommerce shop page title is concerned, it is simply the title of the main page of a WooCommerce store. As you probably know (and, if you don’t, you should check out our comprehensive guide to WooCommerce), the WooCommerce plugin creates several pages once installed and activated. This includes the shop page.
When you install and activate the WooCommerce plugin, a shop page, with all its requisite features and functionalities, is created for you. Its title is, as can rightly be expected, Shop. Clear and simple. Why would anyone want to change that?
Two main reasons, actually. On the practical side, you need to consider your website‘s SEO: a more descriptive shop title might be better for your SERP rankings and possibly more informative for your visitors. It‘s just how search engines work.
On the branding side of things, a different title might be more suitable for your website depending on what you‘re selling and to whom. You could translate your page title into a different language, or give it a more appropriate name for other reasons. You wouldn’t, for instance, expect the same sort of goods from an emporium, a store, a salon, an outlet, and a boutique, would you?
If you think simpler is better, you could just leave it at Shop. But, if you are confident you should go for something different for a shop page title, keep on reading.
If WordPress is anything, it is customizable. It should come as no surprise to anyone that there is a core WordPress functionality that allows you to change the title of any page, including your WooCommerce shop page.
To change the title of your WooCommerce shop page using WordPress’s core functionalities, navigate to the Pages screen on your WordPress dashboard. Once there, find the shop page on the list of pages, hover over it with your mouse, and select the Edit control.
The page will now be open in your page editor. Users of the default Gutenberg editor can simply click the title to edit it.
Then, once you have entered your preferred title, click the Update button to update the page.
And, just like that, your shop page title has been changed to your preference.
You can also change the WooCommerce shop page title using code. However, adding code snippets to your WordPress website is something that should be done judiciously. We suggest you create a fresh backup of your website before trying it.
Additionally, take care not to edit your website’s code directly. As your theme or plugins update, old files are replaced with new ones, and you will need to reinsert your code. Instead, use a child theme or a plugin to add your code.
Having said that, you need to add the following code to your functions.php file:
function new_woocommerce_page_title( $page_title ) {
if ( $page_title == 'Shop' ) {
$page_title = 'Even Better Shop Title';
}
return $page_title;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_page_title', 'new_woocommerce_page_title' );
Note that you need to replace the Even Better Shop Title in the code above with your preferred shop title.
Without getting into too much detail about the code in question, we will briefly explain what it does. Basically, it adds a function that checks whether there is a page titled Shop and, if there is such a page, returns a different page title. This means that it will change the title of any page whose title is Shop, even if it is not actually your shop page. This code will also only work in case the shop page title is the default Shop.
That said, we will reiterate that changing your website‘s code is something you should be very careful about. If you are a WordPress beginner, we suggest you use WordPress‘s core functionalities described in the first tutorial section.
In Conclusion
As you can see, there are benefits from changing your WooCommerce shop page title, both on the SEO side of things and when it concerns branding. However, in many cases, simpler is better, both where SEO is concerned and in the case of branding and overall user experience. If you believe your website could benefit if you decide to change the WooCommerce shop page title, you will find two very easy ways to do it in this tutorial. We have prepared for you a code snippet you can add, but, if you are wary about fiddling with your website‘s code, you can always use WordPress‘s default functionalities. In either case, now you know how it‘s done – and why.
