How to Set Up WooCommerce Product Recommendations: 6 Different Methods
Editorial Team
November 7, 2023
Are you leveraging the power of WooCommerce product recommendations to boost your store’s sales and improve customer experience?
According to Salesforce, shoppers who clicked on recommendations were 4.5x more likely to add items to their cart and complete their purchase.
While WooCommerce has some built-in features for recommending products to users, these are not enough to offer recommendations throughout the buyer's journey to achieve the maximum results.
To maximize the results, you should strategically place WooCommerce product recommendations across your website.
Additionally, you should send follow-up emails with product suggestions to turn them into repeat customers.
In this blog, we will show you how to strategically recommend products in WooCommerce at every step of your customer's shopping journey. This will help you increase your store's average order value (AOV) in WooCommerce.
We'll show how to add WooCommerce product recommendations in the following locations:
So, let’s begin.
Contents
WooCommerce product recommendations refer to the practice of suggesting additional products to customers based on their browsing and purchasing history, preferences, and behavior on your e-commerce website.
These recommendations are designed to guide and encourage customers to spend more time on your site and buy more products, thereby increasing sales and improving the overall shopping experience.
Here are some common types of product recommendations in WooCommerce:
Adding product recommendations to WooCommerce can offer several benefits that can help improve the user experience, increase sales, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Here are some reasons why you should offer product recommendations in WooCommerce:
We hope you know how important it is to recommend products in WooCommerce.
Now, let’s look at the default recommendation options WooCommerce offers.
WooCommerce has some default features that recommend products to users. You can display recommended products on the WooCommerce product page and cart page.
On each product page, WooCommerce recommends the upsell products you would set in the background in the section headlined “You may also like…”
You can add the upsell products from the Linked Products tab in the Product Data section of WooCommerce product options.
Along with upselling products, WooCommerce automatically recommends products from the same category in the “Related products” section.
For more details, read our blog on how to offer product recommendations on WooCommerce product page.
Pros and cons of product recommendation on the product page
✅ Pros: It's a default option for WooCommerce, so it doesn’t require any extra plugins.
❌ Cons: Users have to edit each product individually to add product recommendations. Moreover, when users click on different product recommendations, they may get distracted from the initial purchase.
WooCommerce recommends cross-selling products on the cart page of a store under the heading “You may be interested in….”
You can set up cross-sell products from the Linked Products tab like upsell products.
Here is what the cross-sell recommendation looks like on the default cart page:
Pros and cons of product recommendations on the cart page
✅ Pros: As it’s a WooCommerce default feature, you don’t need to install any extra plugins.
❌ Cons: Adding product recommendations on the cart page can divert users from the checkout process, leading them to different product pages.
To maximize your chances of increasing sales with high order value, you should also recommend relevant products in all the possible scopes.
In the following section, we will share how you can offer product recommendations in the above-mentioned ways.
Here, we will show you how you can recommend cross-sell and upsell products on a side mini cart. This way, users can access their cart from anywhere on the website and also add, update, and remove their cart items.
For this process, we will use FunnelKit Cart (both free and pro). You will get the pro version of FunnelKit Cart with FunnelKit Funnel Builder Plus and above.
FunnelKit cart offers a side cart that users can access from anywhere on the site, view their order details and also update cart items.
The best part is with this Woocommerce product recommendation engine; you can offer product suggestions on the side cart so users can add them to their cart with a single click.
Note: make sure the FunnelKit Cart is installed and activated to follow this section.
The first step is to enable the Slide-in cart by FunnelKit. For that, navigate to Funnelkit ⇒ Cart. Then, click on the “Enable Cart” toggle button to turn on the sliding cart.
For more details on how to customize the look and how to display the Woocommerce product recommendations list on the mini cart, read our blog how to add a mini cart in WooCommerce.
To enable the Upsells option, go to the Upsells tab and turn on the “Enable Cart Upsells” option.
Now, choose the display type. You get 4 options:
After choosing how you want to display your recommended products, customize the following:
The “Default Upsells” option lets you add items to show up as upsell recommendations in case the existing cart products don’t have any upsell products assigned to them.
You can just search products by name and add them to the default upsell in WooCommerce.
You can add as many upsell products as you want, but the “show maximum upsells” option will limit the number of items on the front end.
Note: Turn on the “Always Show Default Upsells” option to always recommend the default upsell products.
As we have already shown earlier in this blog, you can add upsell and cross-sell products from the WooCommerce product page. But it can be tedious as you have to edit each individual product page separately every time you want to add a cross-sell or upsell.
For that, the FunnelKit Cart team has designed a sleek interface that allows you to add upsells and cross-sells from the cart setup page itself. This way, you don’t have to go back and forth to each WooCommerce product.
To add upsell or cross to any product from the Funnel Cart page, click on the “View All Products” link.
After that, you will see a sleek interface where you can either scroll down to find the product or search for the product using the search option. After that, expand the product section to add more upsells.
Note: If a product already has an upsell or cross-sell product assigned to it, then you will find it here.
To add a new upsell, click on the “Add Upsell” button. Then, search for the product and choose the product from the suggested dropdown. After that, click on “Add” to add the product as an upsell.
Repeat the same process to add cross-sell as well.
🔔 Note: You can also add variable products to your upsell and cross-sell. This way, the buyer can choose the specific product variations they want to buy right from inside the cart. You can add as many upsell products as you want using the same process.
After adding the product recommendations, click the Save button to update the settings you just modified. You can click on the “Preview on Page” button to see how your WooCommerce cart upsell product looks.
Here is a preview of how the product recommendation in the Woocommerce slide will look like:
Note: FunnelKit Cart also offers a milestone-based reward system that motivates users to shop more by offering free shipping, discounts, and free gift if they shop worth a certain amount. For more details, read our blog 👇
You can check the whole process in this video below:
Pros and cons of product recommendations on the mini cart
✅ Pros: This method encourages users to buy more with a milestone-based reward system. Additionally, it offers in-cart upsell product recommendations to increase the Average Order Value (AOV). Its user-friendly interface makes it easy to set up upsell and cross-sell recommendations without editing individual products.
❌ Cons: While FunnelKit Cart offers a free plugin, access to the rewards system and upsells requires the Pro version. However, just a few upsells can easily cover the cost of the package.
Now you know how to offer WooCommerce product recommendations on a mini cart, let’s move on to the next section on how you can offer pre-purchase upsell on the checkout page.
Order bumps are low-dollar offers that users can add to their order with just one click before they checkout.
You can offer cross-sell products as an order bump on the checkout page right before users checkout. This approach capitalizes on the user's current buying momentum, offering them a low-cost, relevant product that can be added to their order with a single click.
This not only enhances the overall shopping experience but also boosts the average order value.
To offer a product recommendation on the WooCommerce checkout page, we will use FunnelKit Funnel Builder. This is the most potent tool for creating WooCommerce sales funnels. This is one of the best rule-based recommendation engines that help you offer conditional pre-purchase and post-purchase product recommendations.
You need to install and activate both:
After activating the plugins, follow these steps:
Firstly, we need to create a store checkout that will replace the default WooCommerce checkout page. For that, navigate to FunnelKit ⇒ Store Checkout and click on “Create Store Checkout.”
FunnelKit offers many prebuilt templates for the checkout page. Choose your favorite page builder. After that, hover over the template you want for your Global checkout and click on Preview. We are going with Minimalist here.
Now, choose whether you want a single-page checkout or a multi-page checkout. After that, click on “Import This Funnel,” provide a name, and click on Add to import this funnel as your default checkout.
This will import a store checkout with two steps: Checkout and Thank you page.
Note: You can customize both the Checkout Page and the Thank You Pages template as per your requirements.
Now, you need to add a new step to offer an order bump on the checkout page. For that, click on “Add Order Bump,” provide a title, and click on Add.
This will add an order bump step to your store checkout funnel.
After setting up the order bump step, it's time to select the products to include. For that, click on the ‘Edit’ option to edit the order bump options.
Now click on Add Product, then search and select the product you want to offer and click on Add Product.
Once you have added the offer, you can offer a discount on the order bump and specify a quantity. You can also select the display behavior and placement on the checkout page.
On the design tab, you can customize the look and description of the order bump.
Offering order bumps for all the orders may not result in conversion all the time. Instead, you can offer rule-based order bumps in your store checkout flow to make it more effective.
This way, your order bumps will only be displayed based on the rules you set.
For example, you may only order bumps for those who buy from a certain category. Or maybe to people with products worth a certain amount in their cart.
To do so, move to the Rules tab and click on “Add Rules”.
Here, you can select the rule upon which you want to create the condition and then set the condition. Here, we are going with “Cart Category(s),” then setting the condition “matches any of,” and lastly, adding the categories.
With this condition, when people are about to checkout with products from the T-shirt category, they will be offered this order bump.
You can offer multiple conditions as well. If you want all the conditions to be met, choose the “AND” relationship, and if you want to offer an order bump, if only one of the conditions is true, then choose “OR.”
Here, we have added two conditions with an “OR” relationship to offer an order bump if any of the conditions are true.
Make sure to click on Save Changes to update the condition.
After setting the order bump and condition, it’s time to activate the store checkout. For that, enable the “Enable Store Checkout” option.
If you try to place a test order with at least two items in your cart or order a total of 50, as per the condition, we should see the order bump offer on your checkout page.
This is how you can easily offer product recommendations on the WooCommerce checkout page. You can also read our blog on 23 WooCommerce Checkout Optimization Hacks.
Pros and cons of product recommendations on the checkout page
✅ Pros: This method drives impulse purchases. Its rule engine enables highly targeted offers to keep users focused during the buying process.
❌ Cons: You need to be thoughtful of the offer for maximum results. If you need order bump ideas, you can read our blog on "order bump ideas".
You can recommend products in WooCommerce after users checkout using the one-click upsell feature by FunnelKit Funnel Builder.
Move to the next section to find out more.
Note: You can read our blog on Top 10 Upselling Techniques to Generate More Revenue.
Post-purchase upsells are offers you can make to users right after they check out, and they can just buy them with a single click without re-entering the payment details. Once a user places an order, the card gets tokenized. This way, you can add the extra amount to their order as soon as they accept the offer without asking them to provide payment details again.
To offer post-purchase one-click upsell on your WooCommerce store, you need to add another step to the store checkout you created in the previous section.
For that, click on the “Add New Step” option.
Then, choose “One Click Upsells” and your preferred page builder to see the available upsell templates. Hover on the one you like and click on Preview. We are going with Persuader here.
To import the upsell template you like, click on “Import this template,” provide a name, and click on Add.
Note: Once the template is added, drag and drop it after the order bump offer.
After that, click on the Edit option to customize the settings.
Now, like you searched and added a product for the order bump, add an upsell offer.
You can offer discounts on the upsell offer to make it more lucrative and customize the settings. We recommend checking the option “Skip this offer if the product(s) exist in parent order.”
Make sure to Save changes.
Note: You can customize the content and look of the upsell template on the design tab.
Again, to make the offer more effective, you can apply rules like you did with the order bump. For that, move to the rules tab.
Here, we are setting a condition that an upsell offer will be shown to users who place an order worth 70 or above.
Make sure to click on Save Changes.
Here is what your upsell template will look like:
Pros and cons of post-purchase one-click product recommendation
✅ Pros: Sell more with high-dollar as a post-purchase, one-click offer that doesn't interfere with the primary offer, ensuring a distraction-free, seamless checkout experience.
❌ Cons: One-click upsells are supported by some popular gateways like Stripe, Mollie, Braintree, and PayPal, but not all, as not every gateway can tokenize users' cards, which is required for post-purchase upsell offers.
Your product recommendation strategies don’t have to stop when users are done shopping in your store. You can use the power of recommendation even after customers leave your website using email automation.
Move to the next section to find out how to do WooCommerce product recommendations in post-purchase emails.
To offer product recommendations using email automation, we will use FunnelKit Automations.
This is an all-in-one email and SMS marketing plugin that allows you to automate the process of email automation based on different triggers such as abandoned carts, win-back campaigns, birthday emails, etc.
Along with triggered emails, you can send broadcast email and SMS notifications as well.
The best part is that with FunnelKit Automations, you can send unlimited emails to unlimited contacts.
Make sure you have installed and activated FunnelKit Automations before you move on to the main process.
The first step is to create a new automation. For that, navigate to FunnelKit Automations ⇒ Automations (Next Gen) and then click on Add New Automation.
Select the blank template, provide a name, and click on Create.
Now, it’s time to select a trigger. For that, click on the “Select Trigger” option.
On the WooCommerce tab, select the “Order Created” event. This will trigger this automation once someone orders on your WooCommerce site.
Now, we are going to add some delay because you don’t want to overwhelm the user just after they make an order. You should recommend their product after a gap of some time.
For that, click on the + icon and click on Delay.
After that, add delay and click on Save changes. We have added a delay of 3 days.
Now, you need to add another action that will send the email. For that, click on the + icon and then select Action.
After that, from the Messaging tab, choose the “Send Email” action and click on Done to add the action.
Now, first, provide the email subject and preview text.
You can use merge tags to bring in dynamic data values that help personalize your emails. These merge tags can be your customer's name, their order-related data, and more.
To add any merge tag, click on {{..}}, search, and copy the merge tag.
After that, paste the merge tag on the email subject line and preview the text as per your need.
After this, provide an email copy telling users to check out the products they may like.
To add the related product as a recommendation, we are going to use the merge tag “{{order_related_products}}.” This merge tag will display the “related products of the ordered items.
For that, again, you need to click on the “Merge Tags” button and then search for the merge tag.
After that, select the template. The template will decide the products will show up on the email body. We are choosing 2 column layouts. Now copy the merge tag.
You can paste the merge tag on the email body to add the related products.
You can also offer a discount coupon in your product recommendation email to incentivize your next purchase.
Note: FunnelKit also offers an email visual builder using which you can design email by dragging and dropping elements. You can design captivating emails effortlessly with the user-friendly visual email builder. Learn more about the visual builder in our blog on how to design an email using FunnelKit.
Here is an email designed with FunnelKit’s email builder.
Sending a test email allows you to review the email's content and layout thoroughly, ensuring that it appears as intended to your recipients.
To send a test email, click on “Send Test Email,” provide an email, and click on Send.
Here is what the email we created looks like :
Here is what the automation looks like:
The final step is to activate the automation so your users receive emails with WooCommerce product recommendations after the set delay. For that, come back to the automation page and turn on the toggle button on the top right center.
The final step is to activate the automation so your users receive emails with WooCommerce product recommendations after the set delay. For that, come back to the automation page and turn on the toggle button on the top right center.
This will make your automation go live.
Pros and cons of product recommendations in post-purchase email
✅ Pros: With product recommendations in follow-up emails, you have the chance to bring users back to your WooCommerce website and encourage repeat purchases.
❌ Cons: As follow-up emails have a 40.5% open rate, your users may not open to read the emails. To avoid such issues, make sure to use enticing subject lines and follow up with at least 2-3 emails.
Here are some tips to follow for boosting revenue generated from WooCommerce product recommendations:
Segment your customer based on their behavior, preferences, and purchase history. The more relevant product you offer, the better the chance of getting conversions.
Make sure the user interface is user-friendly to enhance the shopping experience and make users buy more products. Ensure your designs are mobile friendly as a large share of people use mobile to shop these days.
You can conduct A/B tests to experiment with different recommendation strategies, such as order bumps, one-click upsells, and follow-up emails. This will give you a better idea about what your customers want.
You should keep track of analytics to find out how your product recommendations are performing. Analyze reports in different matrices such as click rate, conversion rate, revenue generated, average order value, etc.
You should develop a long-term plan for WooCommerce product recommendations to achieve maximum results. Also, make sure to continuously refine it based on data and insights from customer interactions.
The default WooCommercre product recommendations only cover a small portion of the customer’s journey. However, by leveraging all the recommendation scopes discussed in this blog, you can significantly boost sales throughout the entire shopping process.
Out of the six methods we shared, you can implement three of them using FunnelKit Funnel Builder. If you want to try out all the methods, then you can go for the Professional package, where you will find both FunnelKit Funnel Builder and FunnelKit Automations.
So get FunnelKit Funnel Builder today!
And do let us know which WooCommerce product recommendations you liked the most and will implement in your store.