WooCommerce 9.0 – Major Step Forward

The wait is over! WooCommerce 9.0 is out! It is always exciting when a new major release for one of our favorite applications hits, and we can’t wait to tell you about it!

The team continues its strides towards improving one of the best ecommerce plugins for WordPress. The changes version 9.0 brings to WooCommerce include a better checkout experience, improved product collection blocks, API updates, and the experimental faster HPOS with full-text search indices. There is much to talk about, so let us dive right in!

Improved Checkout Experience

The checkout experience has always been a high priority for WooCommerce. It makes sense when you think about it because it is the point in the purchasing process where the customer actually commits to their order and has to pay. It is where the connection between customer and store becomes a commitment and not just browsing. So, of course, it makes sense that the checkout experience has to be as good as possible. No customer will risk their hard-earned money on a shady, unreliable checkout page. So, what has the team done to improve an already excellent checkout experience further?

Order Summary

Firstly, the Order Summary has received a facelift and a new sticky functionality for desktop (mobile coming soon). This new functionality will anchor the order summary to your screen so you don’t lose track of it if you scroll past it. Finally, free shipping will now show “FREE” instead of “$0.00.” While this seems like a small change, it is a very convenient one. Recognizing “FREE” rather than “$0.00” is easier at a glance, saving customers the need to stop and read the numbers. Here is what the new block looks like!

Checkout Address Form

Next, the Checkout Address Form has received a slight but convenient improvement. Sometimes, it is not necessary for all address fields to be visible, and that is what this change brings. WooCommerce 9.0 makes Address Line 2 (where you usually put additional information about the address, such as apartment, suite, etc.) dynamic. You can make it required, permanently pinning it to the form, or you can make it optional, turning it into an inline button instead. It is convenient for customers who don’t need to use it and just a mere click for those who do.

Delivery Options

The Delivery Options sections of the checkout UI in WooCommerce 9.0 have also received a visual overhaul and updated selectors. Additionally, what was previously a block of text under Location Information is now a Read More button. This is obviously a good change because it reduces the visual clutter on the screen without omitting any valuable information.

Checkout Step Numbers

Finally, one more step towards reducing visual clutter and improving the checkout experience. It is not a significant change, but we appreciate the option nonetheless. The team has added a switch to turn the checkout step numbers on or off. Here are two screenshots that illustrate this change.

Product Collection Blocks

Introduced in February 2024, the Product Collection blocks consolidated several different blocks in one place and allowed for quick and easy creation of, well, product collections with numerous options. Since then, the blocks have been in beta, but as of update 9.0, they no longer are and have even gotten some improvements! You can read more about what the blocks themselves entail in the post we linked earlier in this section. As for the improvements, here they are.

Firstly, there is now a much better distinction between a typical Product Collection catalog and the more specialized catalogs, such as those for sales or promotions. That way, you can have it so that certain products or collections will remain displayed on the page throughout any filtering the user does. The developers put together this video that perfectly showcases this function.

Additionally, there was some confusion about why some products appear differently in the editor and the website’s front end. Typically, that can happen when you add a Product Collection to any of these templates: Products by category, Products by tag, or Products by attribute. This issue can also occur if you enable the Sync with current query toggle in inspector mode. To help clear the confusion, the team have added a new label and tooltip to the Product Editor that will let you know when this might happen.

Experimental HPOS Additions

The WooCommerce team soft-launched the High Performance Order Storage system in 2022 and made part of the WooCommerce core in version 8.2. Put briefly, HPOS provides streamlined database structures specifically tailored for ecommerce websites. The system optimizes these structures for WooCommerce stores and the queries they make to the database, minimizing their impact on performance. In other words, HPOS allows for easier communication between the website and the database, improving speed and loading times.

WooCommerce 9 adds support for Full-text Search indexes to HPOS in its continued efforts to speed up search operations. The feature is still in an experimental phase and applies only to order address and product searches for the time being. As part of the HPOS initiative for speeding up WooCommerce websites, its ultimate goal is to provide scalability and optimization. Additionally, all other non-FTS index searches will still benefit from HPOS itself.

The team at WooCommerce has thoroughly tested this new experimental feature, and their results, as shown in the image below, are impressive.

Finally, if you would like to enable this feature and participate in the “beta,” so to speak, you can go do that from WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features.

The WooCommerce team would appreciate any feedback or suggestions you have for this new feature. You can share your thoughts on their GitHub page.

API Updates and Miscellaneous

WooCommerce 9.0 brings with it one significant API update and a few smaller ones. The major addition is that refund data will be much easier to obtain. The update introduces the new wc/v3/refunds API endpoint. Through it, users can obtain a list of refunds directly. You can sort the list by date and optionally filter it by date range. 

Previously, to obtain such data, you had to attach each refund the corresponding order, but now that the refund and order endpoints match, there is no need for that anymore. Additionally, there are a few other smaller API improvements.

• Deleting a shop coupon using API returned error 500, which has been fixed now;
• Legacy REST API removed from WooCommerce core;
• Fixed product being saved prematurely when updated via REST API;
• Added support for customer field to REST orders controller
• Added variation product type to response in REST API;
• Added missing line item schemas to the refunds endpoint in REST API.

Finally, there are a few additional updates that do not fit in any of the other sections, so we will bundle them together here.

• WooCommerce’s SSR (System Status Report) is now better than before.
  • Security: WordPress, site URLs, database prefixes, and associated tables will not be visible on the report to protect sensitive information;
  • User Experience: The format of the SSRs is better, by featuring a collapsible menu for issues;
• Text-based Setting Fields have been adjusted to remove HTML iframes when saving for all user roles correctly. Additionally, HTML iframes in the description area will not be rendered by payment methods on shortcode checkout unless an extension hook or the Payment Gateway class file inserts them;
• The primary tag in several block templates is changed from <div> to <main>. That is done in an effort to improve accessibility and support for assistive technologies, such as screen readers. Read more about this change here;
• Classic Block Templates are now renamed to eliminate confusion with modern block templates. The changed names are below.

Forging Forward

That concludes all the notable changes regarding the WooCommerce 9.0 major release. That is not all, though! WooCommerce 9.1 is just around the corner, and it is bound to build on top of this major release. We are excited to see where the ecommerce platform goes this year. It it looks like the team is looking to take some impressive strides towards improving what is already a great ecommerce solution.