How to set up recommended products on your WooCommerce store

WooCommerce product recommendations plugin

Do you want to boost sales and improve customer experience on your ecommerce store? You can achieve this and lots more with WooCommerce product recommendations. Let’s examine the best plugins you can use to recommend products to your customers.

In today's highly competitive ecommerce landscape, attracting customers to your online store can be quite challenging. Getting them to add as many products as possible to their cart is even more difficult. But with well-placed WooCommerce product recommendations, you can keep your store visitors engaged and coming back for more.

WooCommerce recommended products not only help you to boost your average order value. They also help customers locate items in your store without any hassles. By showcasing related or complementary products, you get to deliver a more satisfactory customer experience.

woocommerce product recommendations smartphone example

Recommending products that meet a buyer’s needs also helps to build more trust in your brand.

As you can see, adding WooCommerce product recommendations to your store is a surefire way to boost sales and customer satisfaction. In this article, we'll explain what WooCommerce product recommendations are. We’ll then walk you through the steps on how to set up recommended products on your WooCommerce store.

We’ll use two highly recommended plugins, of which our number 1 pick is WooCommerce Product Options.

What are WooCommerce product recommendations?

WooCommerce product recommendations are products suggested to customers in an online store. They are also usually referred to as related products. These products are selectively recommended to users based on certain factors. They could be the products they're currently viewing on the website, the products already in their cart, or their purchase history.

Here are some of the common approaches you can take when displaying WooCommerce product recommendations:

  • Recently viewed products Show customers the products they have recently viewed on the website.
  • Popular products Customers get to see the most popular products on the website.
  • Related products Show customers products related to the product they are currently viewing.
  • Upsells Customers get to see products that are more expensive or upgraded versions of the product they are currently viewing.
  • Cross-sells Show customers products that complement or that they can use with the product they are currently viewing.

Default WooCommerce product recommendations

WooCommerce has built-in features that allow store owners to display recommended products. Default WooCommerce product recommendations can either be in form of upsells on the product page or cross-sells on the cart page. Upsells are products recommended as an upgrade or replacement for the buyer a user is viewing.

On the other hand, cross-sells are products recommended to a customer alongside the one they're considering.

The challenge with these two methods is that the product recommendations are easy to miss out on or ignore. For example, the upsells on the product page appear at the bottom of the page, while the cross-sells are displayed below the list of items in the cart. These locations aren't strategic enough to catch customers' attention, so they're not compelled to consider buying them.

woocommerce product recommendations default cross-selling

Fortunately, there are other ways to display WooCommerce product recommendations. Better locations include the checkout page, order page, confirmation page, and My Account page.

Whatever option you choose, the key idea is to boost sales and improve customer experience. In the next section, we'll show you two new ways to display recommended products in WooCommerce. These methods are more effective than WooCommerce's inbuilt product recommendation functionality.

Looking for a better way to display WooCommerce product recommendations than the default method? We highly recommend using a WooCommerce plugin.

In the next sections, we’ll explore how to use two carefully hand-picked plugins:

  • WooCommerce Product OptionsDisplay recommended products in a prominent position above the add to cart button. Learn more.
  • WooCommerce Fast CartCreate an on-page popup cart, which speeds up shopping for your customers while displaying recommended products at the same time. Learn more.

These tools pack all the features you need to increase the chances of customers buying recommended items. For best results, use both options together to draw maximum attention to your recommended products 🚀

Method 1: WooCommerce Product Options

woocommerce product options recommendations plugin

WooCommerce Product Options allows you to display related items above the Add to Cart button on the product page. This is more noticeable than the cross-sells option of the built-in WooCommerce product recommendation functionality. The recommended products appear above the button, so customers can't miss them!

For example, you can add accessory options to a Smartphone product just above the 'Add to cart' button. This way, a customer can easily add related accessory options like charging kits, memory cards, or earbuds to their carts before checking out. As a result, the chances of adding these items to their order is higher.

You can display the WooCommerce product recommendations in a dropdown list, clickable images, radio buttons, checkboxes, etc.

woocommerce smartphone product recommendations barn2 product options

How to add WooCommerce product recommendations above the add to cart button

To get started, you need to first get the plugin, WooCommerce Product Options. You can download the plugin from the order confirmation page, or the email that you'll receive. It's quick and easy to set up the plugin:

  1. In the WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New.
  2. Select the plugin's ZIP file which you just downloaded, and install and activate it.
  3. The plugin setup wizard will open automatically. Use this to activate your license key.

Now that the plugin is installed, and it's time to add WooCommerce product recommendations to products. As we mentioned, adding WooCommerce recommended products as product options makes it difficult for the buyer to ignore them.

Creating WooCommerce product recommendations as product options

You can easily click Create product options on the last page of the plugin setup wizard to set up new options.

woocommerce product option setup wizard last page
This will redirect you to the plugin settings page. You can go to Products → Product Options to get here in the future. Next, create a product options group and choose which product(s) it applies to. In other words, you need to select the product pages where you want to display the WooCommerce product recommendations. To do this, go to Products → Product Options. And click Add Group.
woocommerce product options add new options group woocommerce add text field to product
On the next page, set the group name and select the products or product categories you want the product options to apply to. Under Inclusions, select the product you want to add the options to by typing the name in the search box. Then click Add option.
woocommerce product options add new option in group
Type in the Options name and choose the Products option in the Type menu. This option type allows you to select which related product options appear above the add to cart button on the main product. You can also choose a style for the products, e.g. in a shop-style layout, checkboxes, and so on.

In the advanced settings section, you can enable minimum and maximum quantity limits and conditional logic.

Once you’ve modified the necessary settings, click Add Group at the bottom left of the page. You can also follow the same procedure to add more recommended product groups to the product.

Previewing your WooCommerce product recommendations

To view the product options in the front end, go to Product → All Products. Select the View option after hovering over the product you added the options to. WordPress will direct you to the front end of the site.

preview woocommerce product recommendations

The result on the front end should look like this:

sample related products offer

Now you know how to display WooCommerce product recommendations as product options which appear above the add to cart button. Next, I'll show you how to display them in a popup cart with the WooCommerce Fast Cart plugin.

Method 2: WooCommerce Fast Cart

woocommerce fast cart product recommendation plugin

This plugin allows you to display WooCommerce recommended products in a popup cart.

The products displayed change depending on the items in the cart already. The popup cart makes it very easy for customers to consider buying more products they might be interested in because it's displayed right in their view.

For example, a customer may add a customized hoodie with logo to their cart. You can set up Fast Cart to show a popup cart with similar products the buyer may be interested in, like a hoodie with a logo or a t-shirt.

WooCommerce Fast Cart popup product recommendations

How to add WooCommerce product recommendations to a popup cart

WooCommerce Fast Cart uses the built-in cross-sells feature in WooCommerce found in the Product Data section of the Edit Product page.

The advantage over the generic cross-sell feature is that WooCommerce Fast Cart allows you to display attractive popup carts to your customers as soon as they add a product to their carts. It also allows you to display related products to customers neatly. With WooCommerce Fast Cart, customers can access their cart and checkout from any page on your store.

First, add the recommended items to each product

Next, you need add WooCommerce product recommendations as upsells for each product. To do this, go to Products → All Products. Click Edit after hovering over the product you want to add the recommended products to.

Scroll to the Product data section and open the Linked products tab. Then select the products you wish to recommend to your buyers as "Upsells":

woocommerce linked products upsell cross-sell

Next, set up WooCommerce Fast Cart

Get your copy of the plugin here. Follow the same process in the previous section to install and activate the plugin.

Having installed Fast Cart, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Fast Cart. Next, make sure you check the 'Show cross-sells' box in the 'Cart contents' section to display WooCommerce recommended products in the popup.

woocommerce fast cart cross-sells recommended products

That's it! You've successfully added WooCommerce product recommendations with Fast Cart. You can also configure other settings on this page like choosing the position of the popup cart. The side cart looks like this.

WooCommerce Fast Cart upsell popup in side cart

While the centered popup looks like this:

WooCommerce Fast Cart centered upsell popup

Start recommending products the right way

Displaying WooCommerce product recommendations on your website is an effective way to grow your business. But it’s not enough to recommend products if customers are not spurred to buy them.

In this article, we've shown you two go-to plugins that can make WooCommerce product recommendations effective:

  • WooCommerce Product Options displays recommended products on product pages where customers can't miss them - above the add to cart button.
  • Fast Cart displays recommended products in a conversion-optimized popup cart, encouraging customers to add more to their order.

These plugins let you place WooCommerce recommended products in strategic locations on your site, making it difficult for customers to ignore them. Use them both together for best results.

If you have questions about these plugins or displaying WooCommerce recommendations on your ecommerce store, please leave a comment below.

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