Product Recommendation Best Practices Guide
Product recommendation is an important tool for eCommerce companies to improve sales, customer experience, and loyalty, and to ultimately drive growth and success in the competitive eCommerce landscape.
This article will provide you with the most basic concepts of Product Recommendation and how to make the best recommendation strategies using Boost AI Search & Discovery.
On this page
- The definition of product recommendation
- Types of product recommendations
- Product recommendation widget layouts
- How to set up multiple recommendation widgets on your store
- Case Study - IKEA
What is Product Recommendation?
Product Recommendation intelligently recommends products based on the aggregation of store shopping data and the ability to pick certain items for promotions manually. Suggestions for appropriate items at every touchpoint of your customer journey help increase product findability for better navigation and awareness. As a result, this feature may boost your customers' engagement while escalating store cross-sale.
As a best practice, we recommend the following guidelines when using recommendations:
- Diversify your recommendation types. Customers start ignoring recommendations if they suggest the same products over and over again.
- Keep your site tidy. Do not deploy more than three recommendation units on the same page.
- Note: This feature is only available for App Lib V3 with OS 2.0 Themes, please contact us for further instructions.
Types of Product Recommendation
Our app now provides store merchants with different mixed types of product recommendations. Each type follows separate logic to generate recommendations for your site. Common types of recommendations include:
| Recommendation Types | What Is It? | Suggest Label |
| Frequently bought together | This refers to recommended products that others bought, based on items added to the customer’s cart. The ‘Frequently Bought Together’ strategy is best used when the store’s inventory includes many diverse products, with synergies, and is best utilized on either the Product page or the Cart page. |
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| Related items | Related items are suggestions that have common attributes as the source product. Currently, this recommendation system includes 3 types of product suggestions:
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| Newest arrivals | This recommendation can be configured to promote the latest products in your store. You can utilize this feature to promote new/unexplored products that are in stock and increase visibility to customers. |
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| Trending products | By default, the trending widget highlights the most popular items that your customers have recently viewed or purchased within 7 days. For newly built stores, it is advisable to use view events to create the trending suggestion block. |
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| Bestsellers | After 30 days of gathering data on the store's most purchased items, our app will propose top-selling products to display and upsell the store's iconic products. |
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| Most viewed | Our app will collect the products with the most views in the store within 30 days to recommend suitable products. |
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| Recently viewed | Based on customers' personal viewed product history during their session on the site, recently viewed products will be collected and recommended by our app. This widget can also enhance the client's coherent shopping experience by helping customers pick up from where they left off. |
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| Handpicked products | In case you want to suggest products manually, the hand-picked widget allows you to promote specific items by generating fully curated recommendations. For example, If you sell cosmetics, you can also use the hand-picked products widget to include complementary products for each stage of a skincare routine, assisting consumers in completing the regimen. |
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Product Recommendation Widget Layouts
Almost anywhere on your website can benefit from the use of product recommendations to engage visitors and entice them to make a purchase. Here are some ways Shopify merchants can make use of Boost AI Search & Discovery to implement product recommendations.
| Location | Recommendation Types | Widget Layout |
| Homepage |
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| Collection Page |
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| Product Page |
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| Cart Page |
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Grid layout is currently in development.
Carousel (Slider)
Carousel is the most popular widget layout for product recommendations on eCommerce sites. The carousel layout lets you display your products in one interactive, sliding block, from the left to the right and vice versa. It saves a vast space on a page and allows you to group specific items together. Thus, this makes carousels a perfect fit for highlighting recommended items in online stores.
Grid
A grid is made up of columns, gutters, and margins. Most websites use page layout that relies on grids as it produces an appealing visual experience. Regarding product recommendations, choosing the grid style will make suggested items visible and able to be seen all at once. Hence, store owners like you can create a unique shopping experience while effectively boosting conversions.
Grid layout is currently in development.
Bundle
Product bundling is an important marketing and sales tactic for online businesses. A product bundle is a collection of things that are commonly purchased together by the same groups of shoppers. It saves online shoppers from having to navigate endlessly through product pages so they would not get lost.
The bundle layout can only be available on product pages only with 2 recommendation types: Frequently bought together and Related items.
With additional products customers add to their cart, bundles naturally increase your revenue and AOV. When a shopper leaves your store happy, they are more likely to return for a second transaction, resulting in a greater conversion rate and customer retention.
3 Tips On Setting Up Recommendation Widgets On Your Store
#1. Set Up 1-2 Recommendation Widgets On A Collection Page
- Add 1 - 2 recommendation widgets at the end of the collection page. This setting should go with pagination or pages with a ‘View more' button. However, if you have an infinity-scrolling page, don't leave the Recommendation widget at the end.
- This approach is suitable with the paginated list of products and both Vertical and Horizontal filter layouts.
#2. Set Up 2 - 3 Recommendation Widgets On A Product Page
- The most used recommendation widgets on product pages are Related items and Frequently bought together, below the main product description.
- You can also set up the Recently Viewed widget on the product page, right above the footer.
- Total recommendation widgets should be 2 - 3, or to a maximum of 4.
#3. Set Up 1-2 Recommendation Widgets On A Cart Page
- The recommended placement for the Bestsellers or Recently viewed widget is below the cart information but above the footer.
- Suitable to place 1- 2 widgets on the cart page.
By following these afore-mention guidelines, you'll have recommendations that are always evolving and learning from your customers' experiences. Each customer will get a personalized collection of recommended items according to their specific behavior. And thanks to developments in eCommerce technology, almost any store, including yours, can now access them.
If you’re ready to build a product recommendation strategy that sells check out User Guide: Product Recommendations for simple, step-by-step guidance.
Case Study - IKEA
By flexibly applying these recommendation types, you can provide your customers with a wide range of potential options to choose from. Let’s take a look at IKEA as a prime example.
Caption: IKEA suggests both 3 types of related products recommendation on their product page
When shoppers land on the STRELITZIA Potted plant product page, they will receive a comprehensive set of related product suggestions.
Right below the source product, they display a Related products block that contains other similar plant choices with comparable alternatives varying in price, tree breed, or size. You can configure our recommendation blocks like IKEA, by using the Alternative products recommendation (which is also 1 kind of Related items recommendation).
Also, above the footer, they have another recommendation widget for Complementary items called You might like to introduce other pots that will be advantageous to accompany the plant. If you want to set up the widget like this, you can use our Complementary products recommendation.
Last but not least, some shoppers would search for both alternative and complementary ones. Understanding that, the brand sets up a widget called Goes well with to list other potted plants and accessories. Our advanced Product Recommendation also allows store owners to set up a Mix recommendation that contains both alternative products and complimentary products like IKEA.
Thanks to these recommendation blocks, visitors can explore their needs as well as quickly find a perfect fit without moving back and forth before making a purchase.