How t​​o add recommended products in WooCommerce [step-by-step]

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Want to increase your sales by recommending products in your WooCommerce store?

Product recommendations are a tried-and-tested method, with plenty of studies confirming how effective they are. A study from 2018 shows that customers who click on a recommended product are 70% more likely to convert into paying customers as compared to customers who don’t.

There are various kinds of recommended products including related products, product upsells, product cross-sells, and featured products, which we’ll look into more in-depth in this article.

For full flexibility when it comes to recommending products on your WooCommerce site, you will have to use plugins. In this article, we’ll tell you about two plugins, the WooCommerce Order Bump plugin and the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin, and show you how to use them.

There are many types of recommended products in ecommerce that are commonly used by online stores.

Related products are essentially products that your customers might consider purchasing in addition to the item they’re currently viewing or are interested in.

For example, if a customer is buying a t-shirt then you may show them a cap as the related product. Similarly, if a customer is interested in purchasing a book, you can showcase a different book from the same author as the related product.

Cross-sells

Cross-sells are similar to related products but they are most commonly used to display complementary products or to extend the functionality of the product customers are viewing.

For instance, if you sell an electrical appliance such as a laptop, you can recommend a laptop charger as the cross-sell product. Similarly, you can display a belt product as a cross-sell to customers who want to buy a pair of jeans.

Cross-sell products are always complementary to the focal item customers are interested in and, usually, are lower in value. This makes it the perfect product recommendation for encouraging customers to add more products to their cart before checkout out from your online store.

Upsells

Upsells are another type of product recommendation that displays a more expensive version of the focal product your customers are viewing. This way, you can entice the customers to purchase the higher-value upsell product instead of the original product.

For example, if a customer is interested in a laptop with a Core i3 processor then you can recommend the same model laptop but with a Core i5 processor. This is a great way to increase the average order value on your online store.

While the product recommendations outlined above are usually displayed on product pages, cart pages, and checkout pages, featured products are different as they are commonly displayed on the homepage or other landing pages. This helps grab the attention of site visitors as soon as they land on your WooCommerce site and encourages them to purchase your brand’s best products.

Featured products are essentially a list or table of products that you can choose from your store catalogue to highlight on the front page of your online store. They’re often your best-selling products, new products, or (in some cases) discounted products or products that are on sale. For instance, let’s say you launch a new line of custom bike helmets and want to showcase them in the best way possible. You can display them in a featured product table on the homepage of your WooCommerce site so it’s the first thing anyone sees when they visit your online store.

While these are all different kinds of product recommendations, they have similar benefits and you can apply similar strategies to them. Let’s go over a few of the benefits of using WooCommerce product recommendations on your online store:

  • Increase AOV. You can use product recommendations to increase your online store’s average order value. This is because you’ll be encouraging shoppers to add more products or replace the products in their cart with more expensive products.
  • Easier for shoppers to quickly checkout. Product recommendations are also great for saving your customers’ time. Since shoppers don’t have to browse through the entire catalogue to find products that they’re interested in, they can quickly check out from your online store.
  • Personalised shopping experience. Recommending products on your WooCommerce site gives off the impression that the shopping experience is curated for your customers. As a result, it can help you deliver a more personalised shopping experience on your WooCommerce site.
  • Add social proof. Using headers like “Frequently Bought Together” helps add social proof to your WooCommerce site. It tells visitors that other people bought the mentioned products from your store.
  • Encourage more purchases. You can also apply discounts on recommended products to further encourage customers to make purchases when shopping from your online store.

Why you need product recommendation plugins for your WooCommerce store

While the default WooCommerce plugin lets you create simple product recommendations on your online store, it doesn’t quite cut it. This is because you get limited features for setting them up, assuming your theme’s page templates include product recommendations in the first place.

The bottom line is that it’s very basic compared to what a plugin can do. Here’s a quick breakdown of what the default WooCommerce plugin has to offer:

Related products in default WooCommerce appear on the single product pages only and under the heading “Related Products”. While this may be enough in some instances, it’s not ideal as there’s no way to change this heading.

There’s also no functionality for choosing specific products to appear on specific product pages on your WooCommerce site. They’re automatically selected by WooCommerce based on categories and tags. This means all you can do is hope that the recommended products showcased to customers are good enough.

Upsells

By default, upsells only appear on product pages as well under the heading “You May Also Like”. There’s no way to customise this heading, which can actually be a bit confusing for customers since this messaging is better suited for a related product or a cross-sell product.

Cross-sells

WooCommerce, by default, displays the cross-sells on the cart page of your online store under the heading “You may be interested in…”.

Similar to upsells, you can specify which products will be displayed as cross-sells, however, there’s no way to change the default heading text.

Displaying featured products on your WooCommerce site without a plugin depends entirely on whether your theme supports product recommendations on the front page or not.

Your WordPress theme may have some product blocks that let you display products on pages as “Featured Products”. However, it’s unlikely you will have a lot of control over setting up products the way you want to and displaying them neatly on your ecommerce site’s homepage.

When it comes to related products, upsells, and cross-sells, you ideally want to be able to define products that are recommended in all cases. On top of this, you also want to have full control over displaying them anywhere on your WooCommerce site including product pages, the cart page, and the checkout page.

Similarly, when it comes to featured products, you want to give your customers the option to filter products and let them add products directly to their cart from the landing page.

The WooCommerce Order Bump plugin offers features that let you display modal pop-ups anywhere on your WooCommerce site.

WooCommerce Order Bump featured image

WooCommerce Order Bump

Increase sales and maximise your store revenue

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Key features

Using the modal popup functionality of the plugin, you can showcase related products, upsells, and cross-sells in a fully customisable pop-up. You have full control over where the pop-up is displayed on your site.

For instance, you can display related products on the checkout page of your site so customers can quickly add more products to their shopping cart before checking out. The plugin lets you display the modal popup on any of your single product pages, cart page, and checkout page of your WooCommerce.

While you have full control over which products are displayed in your modal pop-ups, you also have a wide range of styling options that let you create unique-looking pop-ups according to your brand’s aesthetic.

The best part about the WooCommerce Order Bump plugin is that it’s very easy to use as a recommended product and checkout enhancement plugin, even if you’re not very tech-savvy. All you need to do is specify which products will be displayed in the modal pop-up and the plugin automatically displays it to your shoppers on the front-end.

How to set up related products, upsells, and cross-sells

Let’s take a closer look at how you can use the plugin to set up order bumps for related products, upsells, and cross-sells on your online store.

Step #1: Get the WooCommerce Order Bump plugin

To get started, you will need to get the WooCommerce Order Bump plugin and install it on your WooCommerce site. After installing and activating the plugin’s license key given to you at the time of purchase, you can start setting up the modal pop-up.

Step #2: Set up related products

Navigate to WooCommerce → Order Bumps and click on the Add New button.

Related products

After giving your order bump a suitable title, you can specify which product the customers have to add to their cart for the pop-up to be displayed using the Bump Applies To meta box. For instance, if a customer adds a product from the “Clothing” category, they will be shown other clothing products in a pop-up on the cart or checkout page.

Bump Content settings

Using the Bump Content meta box, you can start customising your pop-up. The Heading text field lets you display a custom message to shoppers when the modal pop-up appears on their screen. The Bump Products field lets you specify the related products you want to showcase on the pop-up. This way, it’s easier to display only the top-selling products from a specific category when users add a similar product to their cart. Once you’re ready, click on the Publish button to continue.

Step #3: Choose where to show related products

Now navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Order Bump to select where the modal popup will appear.

Show order bump settings

Using the Bump Location dropdown field, you can specify where the order bumps will be shown to customers. Ideally, you want to display the pop-ups with related products in the cart or checkout page since WooCommerce by default doesn’t let you do this. Once you’re ready, you can click on the Save Changes button to continue.

A cart upsell order bump

Customers who meet the order bump “criteria”, i.e. they add products from a specific category, will see the order bump during the checkout or cart page depending on your configuration settings.

Step #4: Create upsells and cross-sells

Let’s say you want to showcase cross-sells or upsells on the cart and checkout page using a modal popup. It’s very easy to do with the WooCommerce Order Bump plugin. Navigate to your product’s edit page and click on the Linked Products tab under the Product data meta box.

Linked products

Here, you can select the upsells or cross-sells for your product and click on the Update button to continue. While this will only display upsells and cross-sells on the single product page only, we’ll use the WooCommerce Order Bump plugin to extend the display to the cart and checkout page. Create a new modal pop-up by navigating to WooCommerce → Order Bumps and clicking on the Add New button.

Upsell offer settings

After selecting your product using the Bump Applies To section, select the Use Upsell Products or the Use Cross Sell Products checkbox. Click on the Publish button to continue.

Cart upsell

Now, shoppers will see upsells and cross-sells for a product on the checkout or cart page.

To display cross-sells on single product pages instead of the cart page, all you need to do is set the Bump Location dropdown menu to Product Page using the plugin’s settings.

Product page upsell settings

This will let you display cross-sell products on single product pages of your WooCommerce site, something that’s not possible with the default WooCommerce plugin. It might look something like this:

Product page modal

The WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin offers an all-in-one solution for displaying your WooCommerce products in an easy-to-order form.

WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate featured image

WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate

List products in quick and easy order forms

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Key features

The plugin lets you showcase products in a sortable and filterable table-style layout. The product table makes it easier for your customers to add multiple products to their shopping cart without having to navigate to single product pages. As a result, it helps increase customer satisfaction and boosts sales for your business.

The great thing about WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate is that it gives you full control over which products appear on the product table. This way, you can create tables of your best-selling products, new products, or products that are on sale and showcase them anywhere on your WooCommerce site. In addition to this, the WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate plugin also lets you choose which columns appear in the product table and lets you add filtering options to make it easier for shoppers to quickly find products that they’re interested in.

While the plugin lets you override your default WooCommerce pages (such as the main shop page or category pages) with product tables, today we’re going to show you how you can use the plugin to create a simple product table with your best-selling products. We will then display the product table on the homepage so it’s easier to grab the attention of site visitors and encourage them to purchase the “best-selling” products.

How to display best-selling products

Once you install the plugin on your WooCommerce site and activate its license key, it’s time to start setting up your product table with top-selling products. To do this, navigate to your WooCommerce site’s homepage and click on the Edit page button from the top.

Homepage

This will take you to the WooCommerce page editor. Click on the “+” button and select the Product Table Ultimate block.

WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate block

This will automatically add a product table to your site’s homepage. Now using the Block settings tab, you can start configuring your product table to only showcase products from the “top-selling-products” category. To do this, select Categories using the Product Source dropdown and specify the category ID in the text field below.

Configure WooCommerce recommended products settings

You can also set up sorting and filtering options using the Layout section under the Block settings tab.

Configure sort and filter options

This helps your customers quickly find the products they’re interested in, especially if you list a lot of products in the table. Once you’re ready, click on the Update button to continue.

Show WooCommerce recommended products

Customers can now purchase top-selling products directly from the homepage of your WooCommerce site and check out quickly. This helps enhance the shopping experience on your online store and improves customer satisfaction.

Improve the way you recommend products in WooCommerce

While you can use the default functionality in WooCommerce to recommend products on your online store, it isn’t ideal for a couple of reasons. You don’t get any control over where to display upsells, cross-sells, and related products; you have no way of defining related products; and you can’t control basic things like headers and the messaging around your recommended products. Whether you can display featured products on your homepage or dedicated landing pages depends entirely on your WooCommerce theme.

The good news is that dedicated WooCommerce plugins will help solve all of these issues. With dedicated plugins like WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate and WooCommerce Order Bump, you can showcase featured products, related products, upsells, and cross-sells much more dynamically on your online store.

WooCommerce Order Bump featured image

WooCommerce Order Bump

Increase sales and maximise your store revenue

Find Out More

Ready to start adding recommended products to your online store? Get WooCommerce Order Bump and WooCommerce Product Table Ultimate today!

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