How to Set Default WooCommerce Attributes for Products in Bulk?

Suppose you’ve got dozens (or maybe hundreds) of products in your store, and you just realized you need to set default attributes for all of them.

Maybe you forgot to do it when you first uploaded them or perhaps you’re adding new variations and need to update everything at once.

Either way, the thought of clicking through each product individually makes you want to cry.

It’s time-consuming, especially when you have 50, 200 or even 5,000+ products waiting for updates.

There’s a cool trick to make it happen. You can bulk-set default attributes for products — and save yourself hours of repetitive, soul-draining work. The same applies to changing price, stock or any other field.

How ‘not’ setting default WooCommerce attributes cause a high bounce rate?

This is one of the overlooked things. If you don’t set a default attribute for variable products, the ‘Add to Cart’ button will be disabled until you select an attribute.

For example, if your product has variations — say T-shirts with Color (Red, Blue, Black) and Size (S, M, L) — WooCommerce needs to know which combination should appear first on the product page.

That first pre-selected option is your default variation.

So, whenever a visitor lands on the product, the default variant (say blue color T-shirt) will be selected and the ‘Add to Cart’ button will be active. Visitors can then select other T-shirts as per their choice. You can also set a variation you want your user to see first as the default variation.

If you don’t set a default attribute for these thousands of T-shirts as mentioned, visitors will bounce off. And yes, without attributes, you can’t create product variations.

In a nutshell, setting default WooCommerce attributes helps improve UX, reduce friction in shopping and increase sales and conversions.

How to set default WooCommerce attributes without coding?

The core WooCommerce allows you to add information to your products through attributes. You can apply these attributes to any new or existing product.

But the biggest drawback is that you need to go to each product and do it for each one. You don’t have the provision to set attributes from one place or bulk set them.

That’s why thousands of store owners use the Smart Manager plugin to bulk-set default attributes for WooCommerce variable products. Everything happens instantly with Smart Manager.

Smart Manager provides you with an Excel-like spreadsheet. It shows all your products in one place or dashboard. So navigating and making changes is quite simple.

You can directly set attributes for a product (inline edit) or use the bulk edit feature to set default attributes for variable products in bulk.

How to set default attributes’ for variable products directly (inline edit)?

Select Products from the dropdown on the Smart Manager dashboard, and you’ll see all the important product-related columns – name, featured image, regular price, sale price, stock status, quantity, default attributes and others.

The Default Attributes is the column name where you can set the default attribute. If you can’t see this column, enable it by clicking on the Columns icon.

Here’s more about enabling/disabling columns in Smart Manager’s dashboard.

Now, click on the Default Attribute column cell in the Smart Manager grid. It would open a dialog box where you can enter the attribute slug and its value in a {key: value} format, as shown in the screenshot.

You can also locate a product using the Advanced Search functionality and directly edit the default attribute as mentioned above.

How to set default attributes’ for variable products in bulk?

If you’re dealing with thousands of variable products that share the same attributes, Smart Manager’s bulk editing feature is a huge time-saver.

For example, if all your T-shirt products have a Color attribute and each includes Blue as a variation, you can quickly set Blue as the default color for every T-shirt in just a few clicks using bulk edit — no need to update products one by one.

Here’s how to do it:

First of all, with regards to the ‘Default Attributes’, the same is the database field name in which WooCommerce stores the ‘Default Product Variation’ attributes. So, you can surely try editing the same.

You could also try to set the ‘Default variation’ for any product using the WooCommerce > Products menu and then simply check its value in the ‘Default Attributes’ column in the Smart Manager grid.

• Go to the WordPress Admin panel and then go to Smart Manager > Products dashboard.
• Select the products you want to set it for. Or use the Advanced Search option (toggle at the top) to locate the required products or variations and select them.
• Click on the Bulk Edit option.
• Under the Actions tab, in the first combo box, choose Default Attributes. Choose set to in the second box. Now, enter the value in a PHP serialized format in the value text box. For example – a:2{s:8:"pa_color";s:4:"blue";s:7:"pa_size";s:5:"large";}



• Click on Update.

That’s it. If you face any difficulties while setting attributes, reach out to us here.

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More benefits of using Smart Manager

• Manage any WooCommerce and WordPress post type and custom fields – orders, coupons, pages, users, subscriptions, vendors, memberships, bookings, etc.
• Bulk edit, inline edit for all post types.
• Export data as CSV as per your requirements – entire store or based on date, search and column filters.
• Duplicate: Easily make a copy of selected records or all the existing records for any post type.
• Add and delete: Easily add or remove data rows as per requirements. You can also trash or bulk delete WooCommerce products and other post types.
• Column management: Sort data in ascending or descending order, show or hide data columns you like to deal with.

Conclusion

Not setting default attributes for your variable products can directly hurt conversions — and ultimately cost you sales.

The good news? Smart Manager makes setting default attributes incredibly simple. No coding, no manual work.

If you need to bulk-edit default attributes for hundreds of products, Smart Manager is a lifesaver.

Even if you have only a small product catalog, it still saves you the hassle of opening each product page individually.

Sure, you can set default attributes with custom code. But why spend time (or hire a developer) when Smart Manager lets you do it instantly—with just a few clicks?