Create your own comparison tables using data fields

Do you like the sound of being able to create your own comparison tables using the WordPress editor? If so, the data fields feature in AAWP will populate your table with individual product data.

Create your own comparison tables using “data fields”

A question you’re bound to have is “what are data fields and how can I use these in AAWP?” To answer this, we’re going to take a closer look at this function.

We’d like to show you how you can use data fields (individual product data) to create your own comparison table within WordPress itself. Although the AAWP plugin already offers a perfectly good and easy backend function for creating comparison tables, sometimes, you may wish to create these outside of AAWP.

To be able to compare products and their various elements in your own comparison table, you need to be able to export product data to the table. Using our data field function makes it easy to export data for individual products.

What are data fields and how can you use these to your best advantage?

Before we show you how you can easily create your own comparison tables using the WordPress Editor, let’s briefly explain what data fields are. It’s likely that one or two of your haven’t used this feature before.

Using AAWP’s data fields, you can extract individual product data. Therefore, you aren’t using classic shortcode to export things like a product box or a best-seller list. You’re simply using the product data that you specifically need.

To show you what kind of product data you can “individually” export using data fields, below are examples of the typical kinds of product information:

You’ll find further information about data fields and export options in our documentation.

To export individual values, you need to specify the ASIN, EAN or ISBN parameters within your shortcode.

Example: Exporting a product title using ASIN

[amazon fields="B07FW5Y956" value="title"]

Preview:

Create your own comparison table in WordPress

You have the following options when creating your own comparison table in WordPress.

1. Use the WordPress plugin – TablePress

The easiest way to create a table in WordPress is to use a plugin like TablePress. In the backend, simply specify your table’s name and the number of rows and columns, as well as adding a description if you want to.

Then, you can export and integrate the table into the WordPress editor using shortcode.

2. Use HTML

If you’re familiar with HTML, you can create a table using HTML code. To do this, you’ll need to use the following tags:

• <table>= to create the table
• <tr>= to add a new line
• <td>= to create a data cell

If you want to create a simple table with one row and two columns, your HTML code would be:

[cc lang=”html”]

[/cc]

Result:

You need to create or insert your HTML code using the WordPress text editor so that the program recognises the code.

Later, regardless of which method you choose, you’ll need to add the shortcode for the data fields that you want to show in the table. Also, the shortcode must contain the item number and the values that you want the table to include.

The following example shows how to create a simple table with 3 products. Using the ASIN parameter, i.e. the item number, we can use data fields to export the product’s image, title, star rating, Prime logo and price, as well as the buy button.

For example:

Preview:

Creating a table like this is quicker and easier than you may think. Basically, you need to specify the export values for the first product within the table. Then, you can simply use the copy and paste function to enter the details into the other columns and merely change the item number (ASIN, ISBN, EAN).

The advantages and disadvantages of creating comparison tables using data fields

Conclusion

As an alternative to the comparison table function that’s already part of our plugin, you can manually create tables with products at any time. You can use data fields to export the most important product data to use in your comparison.

Of course, you can also use data fields elsewhere, for example, within the body text or when creating your own external layout for Amazon products.