Full Post vs Summary (Excerpt) in WordPress Archive Pages?

Are you wondering whether you should use an excerpt instead of full posts in your archive pages?

A summary helps provide a quick glimpse to your visitors about your content. Users can read through the short excerpt and decide if they’d like to view the entire blog. However, using the full post may get more eyes on the content because it doesn’t require extra action on the user’s part. But which is better?

In this article, we will compare full post vs summary (excerpt) in your WordPress archive pages.

Full post vs summary in your WordPress

What is an Excerpt and How to Add It in WordPress?

An excerpt is a short summary of an article that you can display on the archive pages in WordPress. The excerpt also has a link that users can click to read the whole article.

If you have limited space on your WordPress site, then excerpts are great for showing descriptions of your content.

By default, WordPress will use the starting 55 words of a blog post and show it as an excerpt. However, you can also manually add an excerpt.

Adding Excerpts in WordPress Posts

First, you’ll need to add a new post or edit an existing one. Once you’re in the WordPress content editor, you can click the ‘gear’ icon at the top right corner to open the settings panel.

Next, scroll down to the ‘Excerpt’ section and add your text in the ‘Write an excerpt (optional)’ field.

Add an excerpt in WordPress

When you’re done, simply publish or update your blog post.

Adding Excerpts in WordPress Pages

If you need to add a summary to a WordPress page, then you’ll notice that there’s no option to add an excerpt. However, you can simply add the following code to your website:

add_post_type_support( 'page', 'excerpt' );

To add the code, you’ll need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For more details please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head to Code Snippets » Add Snippet from your WordPress dashboard, and then select the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option.

WPCode Add new Snippet

Next, you can enter a name for your code snippet.

After that, simply paste the snippet in the ‘Code Preview’ area and select the ‘PHP Snippet’ from the Code Type dropdown menu.

Add code snippet for excerpt pages

From here, you can scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section and select where you’d like to add the snippet on your site.

Next, click on the ‘Location’ dropdown menu and choose the ‘Run Everywhere’ option under ‘PHP Snippets Only.’

Run the snippet everywhere

After entering the code, you can click the toggle at the top to activate the snippet and then click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.

This will add an ‘Excerpt’ meta box in the settings panel in your WordPress editor, where you can easily provide a short summary for your page.

Save and activate code snippet WPCode

Please see our tutorial on how to add excerpts to your pages in WordPress for more information.

That said, let’s see the advantages of using a summary vs a full post in archive pages.

Benefits of Using Summary vs Full Post in Archives

When optimizing your site for a better user experience, choosing between excerpts and full posts in archive pages can play a huge role. You want users to easily browse the website, find what they are looking for, and improve search engine ranking.

With summaries, you can provide an improved user experience. It helps users find the content they want to read. Plus, it keeps your page organized and allows you to display multiple posts on a page. This would be very difficult if you show full posts in archives.

That said, here’s a closer look at why we recommend using summary (excerpts) vs full posts on your WordPress site’s archive pages.

1. Improves Page Load Time

Did you know Google now uses your site speed as a ranking factor? The search engine will rank fast-loading websites higher than the ones that take a lot of time to load fully.

By using excerpts on your archive pages, you significantly improve the page load time.

Imagine an archive page that shows 10 posts per page. If each of those 10 pages is 500+ words long with 5 images each, then your user has a lot to scroll through. The page will also load slower than normal.

By using excerpts, you can significantly improve the user experience.

Here’s a preview of how a short summary appears on WPBeginner when you view the archive pages.

Preview summary on WPBeginner

Users can load and browse through our category, tags, date, and other archive pages quickly and easily. As for search engines, you will see a boost in rankings for archive pages and improvement in WordPress SEO with faster page load times.

2. Prevents Duplicate Content

By showing excerpts on your archive pages, you can prevent being flagged for duplicate content in search engines.

For example, WordPress by default has category, tags, date, and author archives. Publishing full posts in archives will make each article appear at full length on several different pages on your site.

Even though search engines are quite smart in finding canonical URLs for each post, they can still flag the site for duplicate content which will affect your search engine rankings.

3. Increases Pageviews and Reduces Bounce rate

Using summaries or excerpts can reduce the bounce rate and increase pageviews. Users can click through to the full post in order to read the entire article.

If you just have full posts displayed in the archive pages, then people will not see any other elements that are on the blog page itself, such as a popular posts widget inside the post or page content.

By displaying the full post, users might just leave your site after looking at a single page instead of clicking around.

A summary makes your archive page more engaging and allows your readers to see find more content easily.

Disadvantages of Using Summary vs Full Post in Archives

1. Short Excerpts Provide Poor User Experience

If you don’t set an excerpt for blog posts, then WordPress will automatically create a summary using the first 55 words in the article. This is too short, and sometimes your sentences will be cut in half, resulting in a poor user experience.

You can always change the excerpt length in a WordPress theme, but that doesn’t fix the problem entirely.

One solution is to write a custom excerpt in the content editor before publication. Another solution is to write short, catchy introductions that will most likely make the user interested and can easily work as excerpts.

2. Hidden Content

Some users prefer to read everything on one page rather than having to go to a different page to read the entire article. This is useful if you have short blog posts that don’t contain many images.

These users are likely to stay on your site longer, even if they don’t click on any other pages, which is also a metric that Google uses to determine search engine rankings.

Should You Use Full Post or Summary in Archive Pages?

If your articles are short and do not contain a lot of images, then you can get away with displaying full posts on your archive pages.

However, in most cases, we always recommend using a summary or excerpts for your archive pages. Most WordPress themes come with a built-in option that allows you to choose between full posts vs excerpts from the settings.

Excerpts provide a better user experience and make your site look clean and organized. You can boost user engagement, increase pageviews, and show multiple articles on your archive pages.

We hope that this article answered the question of whether you should use a full post or summary in your WordPress archive pages. You may also want to see our guide on how to move a WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS and WooCommerce made simple.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Full Post vs Summary (Excerpt) in WordPress Archive Pages? first appeared on WPBeginner.

How to Add a Short Product Description in WooCommerce

Do you want to add a short product description in WooCommerce?

An engaging and helpful short product description can make shoppers want to learn more about your products and help you get more sales.

In this article, we will show you how you can add a short product description in your WooCommerce store.

How to add a short product description in WooCommerce

Why Add a Short Product Description in WooCommerce?

Similar to a post excerpt, short product descriptions can make shoppers interested in learning more about a product.

Most WooCommerce WordPress themes show the description directly beneath the product’s price on the individual product pages.

A short production description created using WooCommerce

Since it’s one of the first things shoppers will see, this description is perfect for sharing important information about a product such as its size, or the material it’s made from.

This can help shoppers quickly decide whether they want to learn more about the product by scrolling to its full description or checking out its product image gallery. In other words, an engaging description can act as a sales pitch for the rest of your product page.

With that in mind, let’s see how you can add a short product description in WooCommerce.

How to Add a Short Product Description in WooCommerce

To create a short description, go to Products » All Products in your WordPress dashboard.

Then, find the product where you want to add a short description and click on its ‘Edit’ link.

Adding a short product description using WooCommerce

Once you’ve done that, scroll to the ‘Product short description’ box.

You can now type a description into the text area.

Typing out a WooCommerce short product description

When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, simply update or publish the product page as normal.

Now if you visit this product page on your website, you’ll see the short description towards the top of the screen.

Most themes will show this description directly beneath the product’s price and the ‘Add to cart’ button. You may see something different depending on your WordPress theme, but usually it will be shown towards the top of the page.

How to Show Short Product Descriptions on Your Main Store Page

By default, most WooCommerce themes will show the short description on the individual product pages only.

Typically, they don’t show the description on the product category pages or the main store page, as you can see in the following image.

An online store created using WooCommerce

However, sometimes you may want to show this information on the main store and category pages. This can help customers spot products they want to learn more about by visiting the full product page.

To show the short description on the main store page and product category pages, you’ll need to add some code to your website.

If you haven’t done this before, then you can follow our guide on how to easily add custom code in WordPress.

You’ll need to copy/paste the following in the WPCode plugin (recommended) or in your theme’s functions.php file:

add_action( 'woocommerce_after_shop_loop_item', 'woo_show_excerpt_shop_page', 5 );
function woo_show_excerpt_shop_page() {
	global $product;

	echo $product->post->post_excerpt;
}

Now, the main store and product category pages will show the short descriptions for your different products.

Most WooCommerce themes will display this information between the product’s price and the ‘Add to cart’ button. You can see this in the following image.

Short production descriptions on the storage homepage

Just be aware that having too many words on your store and product category pages can make your site look cluttered and confusing.

If you don’t like the way a particular short product description looks, then you can always change it by following the same process described above.

How to Show Short Descriptions in a Custom WooCommerce Theme (Advanced)

If you are unhappy with how the description looks on your product page, then you can use a page builder plugin to create a custom WordPress theme for your online store.

SeedProd is the best landing page builder and theme builder for WordPress and allows you to build your own WooCommerce theme without having to write a single line of code. In this way, you can control exactly where the short product description appears on your product pages.

The free version of SeedProd is available on WordPress.org, but we will be using the Pro version of the plugin because it comes with the theme builder and ready-made WooCommerce blocks. These blocks include a ‘Short Description’ block.

In this section, we’ll show you how to create a completely custom Single Product layout for your WooCommerce store.

You will need to repeat this process and create a unique layout for every page of your online store. For example, you’ll use SeedProd to create a design for your store’s homepage and archive page.

This gives you complete control over your entire store’s layout. This makes it a powerful and flexible option for anyone who is looking to design a totally custom WooCommerce store.

After you install the WordPress plugin and activate it, SeedProd will ask for your license key.

SeedProd license key

You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website and in the purchase confirmation email that you got when you bought SeedProd.

After typing in your key, go to SeedProd » Theme Builder. Here, you will click on the ‘Add New Theme Template’ button.

The SeedProd theme builder

In the popup that appears, type in a name for your product page design into the ‘Name’ field and open the ‘Type’ dropdown and click on ‘Single Product.’

Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘Save’ button. Doing so will load the drag-and-drop SeedProd page builder.

Creating a single product template with SeedProd

SeedProd shows a live preview of your product page on the right side of the page. This will be blank to begin with.

The left side shows a menu of the different blocks and sections that you can add to your custom WooCommerce product page.

A custom WooCommerce product page created with SeedProd

SeedProd comes with lots of ready-made blocks including some special WooCommerce blocks. You can build a completely custom product page within minutes using these ready-made blocks.

Since we’re using a blank template, you’ll be adding all of the WooCommerce product page elements yourself. These include the ‘Product Featured Image’ and ‘Product Title’ as well as the ‘Short Description.’

In addition to those, you can also use SeedProd blocks like spacers, columns, and dividers to give your WooCommerce page a nice structure and organized layout.

Next, find WooCommerce Template Tags in the left-hand menu and choose a block to add. You simply need to drag one into the SeedProd builder to enable it.

SeedProd's WooCommerce template tags

If any block needs additional customization, you can click on it in the SeedProd editor. The left-hand menu will now update to show all the settings that you can use to customize the selected block.

For example, if you click on a ‘Product Title’ block then you’ll be able to change the size of the font, the text alignment, and more.

Adding a product title tag to your custom WooCommerce product page

To add a short description to your design, simply find the ‘Short Description’ block in the left-hand menu.

Then, simply drag and drop this block anywhere onto your design.

Adding a custom short product description with SeedProd

As you’re building your product page, you can move blocks around your layout by dragging and dropping them. This makes it easy to create a WooCommerce product page with a totally custom layout in SeedProd.

When you’re happy with your WooCommerce product page’s design, you can click on the ‘Save’ button in the upper-right corner.

Finally, you can click the ‘Publish’ button for your WooCommerce product page to go live.

Publishing a WooCommerce single product template

You’ve now created a completely custom product page design for your online store.

You can now create a template for all the different WooCommerce pages by following the same process described above. If you’re unsure what design to create next, then simply click on the Add New Theme Template button.

Creating a new SeedProd theme

In the popup that appears, click on the ‘Type’ dropdown menu.

You will now see a list of all the different templates that you need to create such as header, footer, and single post.

Creating a custom WooCommerce theme

After creating a design for each of these content types, you’re ready to make your custom theme live.

Simply head over to SeedProd » Theme Builder, and then click on the ‘Enable SeedProd’ slider to turn it from ‘no’ (grey) to ‘yes’ (green).

Enabling your custom WooCommerce theme

We hope this article helped you learn how to add a short product description in WooCommerce. You can also go through our guide on the best WooCommerce plugins for your store and the best live chat software for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add a Short Product Description in WooCommerce first appeared on WPBeginner.