Are you struggling to keep your store visitors engaged? Displaying WooCommerce related products can help.
Without showcasing related products, your customers might leave after buying a single item—or worse, abandon their carts altogether.
It’s like leaving money on the table and watching your competitors take the win.
Don’t worry!
In this blog, we’ll share how to display WooCommerce related products in your store.
By default, WooCommerce offers the option to show related products in limited places, which is not necessarily optimized to convert or boost AOV.
In this blog, we will share how you can show related products throughout the purchase journey, such as on the product page, cart page, checkout, and as a post-checkout upsell.
Let’s dive in!
Table of Contents
WooCommerce related products are product recommendations shown to shoppers at various stages of the buying process to boost order value.
These suggestions help boost customer engagement and encourage them to explore and purchase additional products that complement their interests, resulting in increased order value.
You can strategically display related products in the following key areas of your WooCommerce store:
For example, if someone comes to your WooCommerce store to buy a laptop, you can offer related products like a laptop backpack or sleeve, wireless mouse, laptop cooling pad, external hard drive, or SSD on the product page and in the sliding mini cart.
On the checkout page, you can offer add-ons such as noise-canceling headphones or a portable laptop stand as an order bump.
Once users complete their checkout, you can offer an extended warranty plan, an extra monitor, or a docking station as a one-click upsell.
By showing related products on these places, you can turn casual browsers into loyal customers while increasing your store’s average order value!
Displaying related products can effectively increase the store's average order value, but the benefits go beyond just boosting revenue.
Here’s how showcasing related products can positively impact your WooCommerce store:
Customers who see related products are more likely to add items to their cart. According to Salesforce, shoppers who click on product recommendations are 4.5 times more likely to complete a purchase.
Promoting complementary products like accessories or add-ons encourages shoppers to spend more per transaction. This could potentially increase your average order value without additional customer acquisition costs.
A personalized shopping experience makes customers feel like your store understands their needs. 65% of shoppers prefer stores that recommend products based on their interests or previous purchases.
By suggesting relevant related products, you can make the shopping process more intuitive and enjoyable. This personalization reduces decision fatigue, helping customers find what they need quickly and making them more likely to return for future purchases.
Customers are often distracted or unsure about completing a purchase. By showing related products, you can provide them with options they hadn’t considered, increasing the chance of a sale.
Thus, showing related products can help reduce cart abandonment in your WooCommerce store.
Customers who come to your store for a specific product might not explore your entire catalog. By featuring related products, you increase the chances of customers discovering additional items.
You can strategically showcase related or popular products and give shoppers more opportunities to find something new that interests them.
According to Invesp, 56 percent of shoppers are more inclined to return to a site that offers product recommendations, and 44% say they’ll become repeat buyers.
Promoting items that complement past purchases fosters brand loyalty and increases the chances of customers making repeat visits, ultimately driving long-term revenue.
Now that you know about the power of WooCommerce-related products, let’s examine how you can show related products at various stages of a shopping journey to boost your store's AOV successfully.
By default, WooCommerce automatically displays related products on the product page based on shared categories and tags.
Plus, you can manually set Upsell products for each product that will show up on the as related products of a single product page under the heading “You may also like.”
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to show related products on the WooCommerce product page:
From the WordPress Dashboard, navigate to Products ⇒ All Products. Click Edit under the product you want to modify.
In the Product Categories panel (on the right, select a category that matches other related products.
On the same product editing page, find the Tags section. Add relevant tags that describe the product (e.g., "t-shirt," "men's clothing," etc.).
Ensure the tags are consistent with other products you want to link as related.
Scroll down to the “Linked Products” section, and under Upsells, search and add the products you want to show up as related products under the “You may also like” section on the product page for that specific product.
After configuring the settings. Click Update to save your changes. Open the product page on your site (front end).
Scroll down to the "Related Products" section below the main product details.
Products here will share at least one category or tag with the current product.
On the Cart page, WooCommerce shows the cross-sell items of the products that users have added to their cart.
Here are the steps you need to follow to show related products on the cart page in WooCommerce.
As mentioned earlier, in WooCommerce, related products on the cart page are called Cross-Sells. So, first, you need to set the cross-sell products.
To edit any product, scroll to the Product Data section and make sure you are on the Linked Products tab.
Now, search and add the cross-sell items.
After adding Cross-Sells, ensure That the product changes are updated. Cross-sell products will now be linked to the main product and appear on the cart page.
Add the product to the cart and go to the Cart Page.
The cross-sell product should show up below the cart table as related products under the heading “You may be interested in…”.
Note: Experts recommend skipping the cart page as it adds an extra step to the buying process, making it more lengthy and complex, which can lead to cart abandonment.
You can fix this issue by replacing the cart page with a slide-in cart that allows users to view and update order details from anywhere with a single click and provides them with the option to go directly to the checkout page, streamlining the checkout process.
Here, we will show you how to show related products inside a mini cart.
This will shorten the buying process by eliminating the cart page and allowing customers to preview and update their cart items from anywhere on the site before checkout.
We will use FunnelKit Cart (both free and pro) for this process. You will get the pro version of FunnelKit Cart with FunnelKit Funnel Builder Plus and above.
Once you have both the plugins installed and activated, follow these steps:
First, go to FunnelKit ⇒ Cart and hit the “Enable Cart” toggle button to turn on the FunnelKit Cart.
For more details on how to customize the FunnelKit Cart, read our blog on adding a mini cart in WooCommerce.
Go to the Upsells tab and select the “Enable Cart Upsells” option.
You get four different display styles to show related products on the cart page. Chose the one you like and configure the following:
The “Default Upsells” option lets you add items to show up as recommendations in case the existing cart products don’t have any upsell products assigned to them.
Search products by name and add them to the default upsell in WooCommerce. Add as many related products as you want, but the “show maximum upsells” option will limit the number of items on the front end.
Turn on the “Always Show Default Upsells” option to recommend the default upsell products.
FunnelKit Cart has a sleek interface that allows you to add upsells and cross-sells from the cart setup page.
🔔 Note: This way, you don’t have to go back and forth to each WooCommerce product and edit to add upsell or cross, as we showed in methods 1 and 2.
To add upsell or cross to any product from the Funnel Cart page, click on the “View All Products” link under the “Upsells and Cross-sells” section.
Now search for the product for which you want to add related products, expand, and add the upsell and cross-sell.
After adding the related product recommendations, click the Save button to update the settings you just modified.
Here is a preview of how the related products in the Woocommerce sliding mini will look:
🔔 Note: With FunnelKit Cart, you can show mile-stone-based rewards to encourage users to add more items, as shown in the image below.
Order bumps are related items you can show up on the checkout page right before they hit the place order button that customers can accept with a single click.
This related product recommendation 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.
We will use FunnelKit Funnel Builder to offer related products as the order bumps on the checkout page.
You need to install and activate both:
After activating the plugins, follow these steps:
Firstly, we must create a store checkout that will replace the default WooCommerce page. To do so, navigate to FunnelKit ⇒ Store Checkout and click “Create Store Checkout.”
Now, choose your favorite page builder and the template you like from the list of prebuilt ones. FunnelKit is compatible with all the popular page builders, including Elementor, Divi, Bricks, Oxygen, Gutenberg, etc.
Here, we are going with Elementor and Minimalist.
Now, choose whether you want a single-page checkout or a multi-page checkout. After that, click “Import This Funnel,” provide a name, and click "Done" to import this funnel as your default checkout.
This will import a store checkout with three steps: checkout, one-click upsell, and a Thank you page.
🔔 Note: You can read our customization guide for the checkout and thank you pages. Also, you can read our blog on 23 WooCommerce Checkout Optimization Hacks.
Now, it’s time to configure the order bump offer. To do that, click “Add Order Bump,” provide a title, and click " Add.”
After that, choose an order for bump skin.
Now, search for the product and click on Add.
This will add an order bump step to your store checkout funnel.
Set the call-to-action text and description that will show up on the checkout page.
Move to the Style tab. Here, you can choose the position where the order bump will appear on the checkout page.
Make sure to click on Save to update the changes.
Next, move to the products tab to set the quantity and discount.
You can set different conditions using the Rules Engine to make the related product offer more relevant.
For example, trigger order bumps for those who buy from a specific category or previously purchased a certain item.
To do so, move to the Rules tab and click “Add Rules.” Next, select the parameter, condition, and value. Add multiple rules based on your strategy.
Make sure to click on Save.
Lastly, enable the “Enable Store Checkout” option.
Now try placing a test order and ensure you meet all the rules you set to see the order bump offer on the checkout page.
That’s how simply you can offer related products as order bumps on the checkout page.
Move to the next section to learn how to offer related products as a one-click upsell.
Post-purchase upsells are offers you can make to users right after they check out. The system tokenizes the payment details so customers can add the offer to their existing order with a single click without re-entering the details.
🔔 For this, you need both FunnelKit Funnel Builder free and pro and an active store checkout, as we showed in method 4.
After replacing the WooCommerce default checkout with a custom one using FunnelKit Funnel Builder, follow these steps:
To offer a one-click upsell, hit on the Offer step.
On the design tab, you can customize the content and look of the upsell template.
Now, move to the Products tab. Click on "Add Product," search for the product, and select it from the dropdown. After that, click the "Add" button to add the product as an upsell offer.
Add a discount if you want. We recommend checking the option “Skip this offer if the product(s) exist in parent order.” You can also allow users to choose the quantity.
🔔 Note: You can set flat shipping also if needed.
Make sure to click on Save to update.
To make the offer more effective, you can apply rules like you did with the order bump. To do so, click on the Upsell step.
Next, move to the rules tab and click on Add Rules. Then, set the conditions. To make the offer relevant, you can add a condition like a customer previously purchasing from the same category. Also, you can only offer to your VIP customers or customers who have items worth over $100, as they are more likely to accept a high-value offer after checkout.
Make sure to click on the 'Save' button when done.
Right after checkout, if the customer qualifies for the upsell, they will be offered this related product. To test this, place a test order and see if you can adjust the quantity of the upsell (depending on your settings) and successfully place the order.
After successfully accepting the upsell, you will be redirected to the custom thank you page.
There should be another method of showing related products in the email..
Ensure related products are highly relevant to the customer’s interests using product categories, tags, etc.
FunnelKit Funnel Builder’s Rule Engine allows you to display precise recommendations tailored to customer preferences, such as order bumps and one-click upsell.
Sometimes, showing related products might not be enough to get customers to add them to their cart.
You can offer milestone-based rewards to encourage users to shop more in such cases. With FunnelKit Cart, you can easily offer mile-stone-based rewards.
Display a limited number of related products (ideally 3-6). Too many options can overwhelm customers, causing indecision or even cart abandonment.
By limiting choices, you simplify the process, making it easier for customers to make a purchase.
Use personalized recommendations based on the customer’s browsing history, past purchases, or specific preferences.
With FunnelKti Funnel Builder, you can create conditions based on the customer’s previous history to offer conditional order bumps and upsells.
Ensure that related products feature high-quality images and engaging descriptions. The description highlights the product's benefits to their current purchase.
Clear visuals and descriptions drive customer confidence, increasing the chances of conversion. Also, ensure your CTAs are attractive and drive users to buy the related products.
Here are some of the commonly asked questions about related products in WooCommerce:
Here is a breakdown of the difference between related products, up-sells and cross-sells in WooCommerce
To disable the default WooCommerce related product recommendations, you can add the following code snippet to your theme’s functions.php file:
remove_action('woocommerce_after_single_product_summary', 'woocommerce_output_related_products', 20);You can also remove upsell and cross-sell products from each product. As per FunnelKit Cart, you can turn on The Upsell options. Also, for order bumps and one-click upsell, you can put them on draft or delete them.
With FunnelKit Funnel Builder, you can easily track the number of related products users have added to their cart through order bumps and one-click upsells.
WooCommerce related products allow you to boost sales by recommending the right products at the right time.
Without them, customers might purchase only a few items before leaving your store, forcing you to invest more resources into securing repeat purchases.
Why not make more money with the exact customer acquisition cost by showing related products?
With FunnelKit’s in-cart recommendations and milestone-based rewards, encouraging users to add more related items to their cart has become effortless.
Don’t limit yourself to cart recommendations. Use order bumps and upsells as well to offer related items until users leave your site to get the maximum order value.
Start leveraging the power of FunnelKit today and watch your average order value soar. Showcasing related products in WooCommerce has never been more effective!
