How to turn WooCommerce into a product catalog

Decide whether every visitor should see the same catalogue, or whether logged-in users and specific roles should see different products. Also decide whether to show prices, replace them with text such as Contact us for a quote, or hide them completely.

If you only need to hide a few products from the Shop page or search, WooCommerce's built-in product visibility settings may be enough. A full catalog mode also needs purchasing and checkout controls removed.

For an individual product, go to Products, edit the product, and open the Publish panel. Edit Catalog visibility, then choose Shop and search, Shop only, Search only or Hidden.

Use Hidden when the product should remain available on its own URL but disappear from shop, category and search listings. This controls where products appear; it does not by itself turn WooCommerce into a catalogue.

Replace sales-focused copy with useful catalogue information: product specifications, dimensions, downloadable brochures, lead times, availability notes and a clear enquiry instruction. If prices are hidden, explain what visitors should do next instead of leaving an empty space.

Check variable products carefully. Each variation may have its own price and purchase state, so hiding a button in one location can leave another variation selector or purchase prompt visible.

WooCommerce does not provide one core setting that disables every buying feature across the store. A developer can make products non-purchasable through WooCommerce's woocommerce_is_purchasable filter, then customise the price and add-to-cart output and block access to cart and checkout as appropriate. WooCommerce's own code reference confirms that this filter controls whether a product can be bought.

Put custom code in a small site-specific plugin, a child theme or a suitable snippets tool, not directly in the parent theme's functions.php. The manual route is reasonable for a simple, permanent catalogue, but it needs maintenance when your theme, WooCommerce templates or cart and checkout blocks change. CSS alone is not enough because it hides the controls without changing the underlying purchase logic.

Open the site in a private browser window and test the Shop page, category pages, search results, single product pages, variable products, grouped products, the mini-cart, cart URL and checkout URL. Also test a logged-in customer account and an administrator account if their access should differ.

Clear page, object and CDN caches after changing catalogue rules. A cached product page can continue showing an old price or button, which is the sort of failure that often appears after the change has been forgotten.

For the fast route, install WooCommerce Catalog Visibility Options and configure its visibility settings. It is designed for role-based product visibility and can disable purchases, remove cart and checkout behaviour, hide prices, replace button text and display alternate content for visitors who need ordering instructions.

This is the better fit when guests, registered customers and different user roles need different access. Configure the rules, save them, clear caches and repeat the buying-path tests before making the catalogue public.