Have you ever visited an online store to buy an item, but eventually ended up with a bundle of other items in your cart, just because you found something interesting in the “You might also like” or “Similar products” sections?
It is how product recommendation works, and it is how 49% of consumers have purchased a product that they did not initially intend to buy. Thus, to entice a half of visitors to convert, product recommendation is a must-have section on your Shopify store.
How to add product recommendations on Shopify to maximize conversion and revenue? In this article, you will learn expert-proven tips and tricks to use Shopify product recommendations, achieving more sales for your store.
Benefits of product recommendation for Shopify stores
Product recommendations are suggestions of relevant products presented to shoppers, based on algorithmic decisions or user-specific data.
Likely, you might have seen it when you’re wandering around Amazon or AliExpress. They often appear with sections like “You may also like …”, “People who bought this also bought …”, “Related products”, etc.
So why is product recommendation popular among many Shopify stores? It’s due to the great benefits that it can bring for stores.
Enhance customer satisfaction
If your store sells a vast inventory with many categories, navigating through numerous product options can be overwhelming. By providing product recommendations, you can streamline product discovery for customers, thereby increasing customer satisfaction by making it much faster and easier for them.
Product recommendations present a curated selection of items that match customers' preferences. As a result, customers can quickly find products that align with their interests without having to perform extensive searches or comparisons. This time-saving convenience fosters a positive perception of your store, as customers feel that their time is respected and valued.
Tailoring recommendations to individual customers is a key factor in enhancing customer satisfaction. By utilizing customer data, analyzing behavior, and leveraging machine learning algorithms, businesses can deliver accurate and relevant recommendations that resonate with customers' preferences.
A real-world proof for this benefit of product recommendations is Netflix with its powerful recommendation system. By suggesting TV shows and movies based on a user's viewing history and ratings, Netflix makes users glued to their screen and keeps users engaged and satisfied, thereby lowering churn rate at 2.3%.
Besides, to customers who appreciate discovering new and exciting products. Product recommendations go beyond simply suggesting items similar to what they have previously purchased; they can also introduce complementary or trending products that align with their tastes. By introducing these discoveries, customers may find themselves pleasantly surprised by options they didn't know existed, fostering a sense of novelty and satisfaction.
Provide a personalized and relevant experience
Product recommendation, by far, has been one of the top key strategies to leverage personalization for Shopify stores. And product recommendations is one of the most important personalized experiences that customers want as 52% of them are willing to share personal data in exchange for product recommendations.
Product recommendations, by delving into customer data like purchase history, browsing behavior, search queries, and demographic information, can display products that align with each customer's interests and needs in real-time.
Thus, with product recommendations, you not only demonstrate that you understand their needs but also foster a deeper connection with your brand. This personal touch helps to build trust and loyalty, encouraging repeat visits and future purchases.
Increase conversion rate and average order value
One of the most significant advantages of implementing product recommendations is the increase in conversion rate and average order value. By displaying relevant and enticing products, you effectively entice customers to make additional purchases beyond their initial intent. Cross-selling and upselling opportunities also become more apparent as customers are exposed to complementary items they might have missed otherwise.
Thus, when used correctly, product recommendations can improve conversions by 10 times improvement and AOV by 9 times while increasing revenue per visitor by 800%.
Encourage brand loyalty and retention
A personalized and satisfying shopping experience leaves a lasting impression on customers. When they feel understood and valued, they are more likely to return to your store for future purchases.
Product recommendations, tailored to individual preferences, demonstrate that your store cares about its customers' needs. This sense of attention and consideration fosters brand loyalty, ensuring customers turn to your Shopify store as their go-to destination for related products. By promoting repeat business and retaining customers, you can build a strong and loyal customer base.
It’s also proven that shoppers that clicked a recommendation were nearly twice as likely to come back to the site and 37% of shoppers that clicked a recommendation during their first visit returned.
How to add product recommendations on Shopify stores to increase sales
With all above significant advantages, it’s undoubtedly that product recommendations should be included in your Shopify store. However, how can you make the best use of product recommendations to increase sales for your Shopify stores? Let’s deep dive into 5 best practices of product recommendation!
Personalize Product recommendation
In this customer-centric era, personalization is the priority of many businesses. 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.
Besides, personalized product recommendations also significantly affect the shopping decision of customers. 91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.
Personalizing product recommendations can be a smart and significant method to boost sales for your Shopify store.
What are personalized product recommendations? They are unique recommendations to each customer created based on their customer data. There are 2 types of personalized recommendation:
- Recommendations based on the user’s browsing or purchase: By analyzing browsing or purchase history of customers, you can understand their needs and preferences to recommend suitable products for them. A prominent example is Amazon’s product recommendations. By providing personalized recommendation inspired by shopping history, Amazon gained 35% of total sales through product recommendations.
- Recommendations based on customer location or profile: Based on demographic data of each customer, you can create unique recommendations for them. For example, using data on the customer’s location, you can make product recommendations based on the current weather conditions. Or based on the gender and age of customers, you can recommend some products that are popular among their age.
Where to add Personalized product recommendation
To take advantage of this type of product recommendation to increase sales, it must be displayed where customers are most likely to engage with them, which are the homepage, product page, and shopping cart.
Customers with purchase or browsing history are mainly leads and repeated customers who have visited your store before, so you can inspire them with products related to their previously viewed items right on the homepage - the first touchpoint when they come back to your store. They will be more likely to click on these products than others.
Besides, when visitors land on a product page and shopping cart, it means that they’re ready to buy and their purchase intent gets higher than new visitors. Offering alternative products that are similar or related to the viewing ones can encourage more purchases, thereby driving more extended revenue.
How to add Personalized product recommendation
At first glance, personalized product recommendation can be a daunting mission, with collecting and analyzing customer data.
However, this is not a challenging process if you use personalized recommendations Shopify apps. Especially with the development of AI technology, the process of analyzing and personalization has been more familiar than ever.
Some top personalized recommendations Shopify apps that you can consider.
- Wiser ‑ Product Recommendations: This AI-based recommendation app tracks shopper's on-site behavior, purchase history, and items search then analyzes this data to display dynamically contextual product recommendations based on their preferences.
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LimeSpot Personalizer: Their AI technology uses the latest catalog and buyer history to show them the right products at each stage of their journey based on who they are.
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Shop Quiz: Product Recommender: A new way to give personalized recommendations is using a product recommendation quiz. This product recommendation quiz app is useful for creating product recommendations for new visitors who leave no footprint to track on your store. This app asks customers questions, analyzes their responses, and recommends the right products for each customer.
However you choose to personalize your recommendation, remember that, be personalized, not creepy. If you cross the line of personalizing and stalking, you may scare your customer like Target did and creeped many customers out.
To learn more about personalization and how to make it the right way, you can refer to this blog.
Highlight Best-sellers and Trending products
When you’re approaching new customers with no purchase or browsing history, which products can you recommend to them?
You certainly want to display the best parts of your stores, or in other words, best-selling products. These products have already proved their performance - being loved by many customers means that they’re more likely to be loved by new customers than other products.
Another type of product that should be recommended for new customers is trending products. Since human beings can easily be influenced by crowds, and it’s human nature to want to be on the latest trends, showing products that are loved and purchased by many other people can provoke curiosity and interest of customers.
Where to add Best-sellers and Trending products
As these types of product recommendations aim at new visitors, they should be highlighted on the first and most common page - the homepage.
How to add Best-sellers and Trending products
It’s quite effortless to add product recommendations for these types of products on your homepage. Normally, you won’t need a product recommendation app for this, because Shopify themes have some sections to manually choose and showcase best selling and products. For example, Minimog theme has Featured Collection or Product Tabs that allows you to display a collection of trending products or best-sellers.
Save potentially lost sales with Recently viewed products
Have you ever loved a product in an online store, but after browsing around a while, you can’t find it anymore? This is why a store needs a Recently viewed products section.
Displaying a section that shows recently viewed products helps customers quickly find the items they’ve already looked at. It allows them to do further research on these products or make a purchase decision easily, thereby increasing the chance of conversion.
Besides, with Recently viewed products, you have a chance to re-engage consumers who are returning to your store, or those who are about to leave your store by recommending products they had an interest in before.
Where to add Recently viewed products
These product recommendations are also mainly for leads and returning customers so it should be put on the product page and homepage as personalized product recommendations.
How to add Recently viewed products
Beneficial as it is, surprisingly, Shopify neglects a native solution for this.
In this case, first, you should check whether you can take advantage of your theme or not. Some Shopify themes include this function right in their theme sections. For example, Minimog theme has a Recently viewed products block which can be added directly to the homepage, product page, and collection page of your store.
If your theme has no feature for these product recommendations, you can create one with custom code or you can find out how to add product recommendations on Shopify with an app from Shopify app store.
Normally, most product recommendation apps can create this section so you can go to Shopify app store, search the keyword “Recently Viewed” and choose the product recommendation app with the best rating and reviews from customers.
Recommend products that are usually bought together
This type of product recommendation is a great method of cross-selling. By displaying related or complementary products (products that are often bought in addition to a selected product), you can remind customers of items that may pair well with, or support the usage of this item.
This not only can improve customer experience due to a more holistic product exploration but also can increase average order value.
To leverage the effectiveness of these recommendations, you can suggest them in bundles with a small discount. For instance, you can offer a 5% discount when customers purchase a product in a bundle with its complementary products. This discount will give customers one more reason to purchase complementary products.
Where to add Frequently bought together products
As suggested by Shopify, the best place to put this product recommendation section is the product page, typically in the product information section, near the original product image. As this position is hard to skip when customers are exploring a product, this product recommendation can work best in reminding them to buy complementary items together.
Another place for “Frequently bought together” is the shopping cart and checkout page. This is where customers have the highest possibility of purchasing, so offering a product bundle with a discount here can encourage customers to buy more.
How to add Frequently bought together products
To add this type of product recommendation to your theme, you can follow the guideline of Shopify.
However, the native solution for complementary products of Shopify has some limitations, such as custom code requirements, quantity of complementary products, etc. Moreover, it can show the complementary products only, not the product bundles.
Therefore, to create the most efficient product recommendation in the easiest way, you should use apps available on Shopify store. If you can’t choose the best product recommendation app for your store, this review may help you.
If you’ve already used the Minimog theme, it’s hassle-free to add this type of product recommendation on your Shopify store as Minimog not only enables you to display complementary products anywhere but also allows you to create and customize product bundles by yourself.
Suggest similar and related products
By suggesting similar products based on a customer's current selection, the recommendations streamline the exploration process as sometimes customers may need some products that are similar but have some different features like functionality, shape, or price to fit their interest and need. With these product recommendations, customers are delighted to discover alternative options that match their interests more, increasing customer satisfaction.
The best use of this type of recommendation is for out-of-stock products. If the products customers want to buy are out of stock, by recommending related products and similar products, you can’t avoid disappointing them and losing a potential sale.
Furthermore, related product recommendations enable strategic cross-selling opportunities, enticing customers to explore more items that enhance their initial purchase. This drives higher average order values, contributing to increased revenue for the store.
Where to add Similar and related products
On the product page, displaying similar and related product recommendations below the main product details and images is highly effective. This placement offers customers a natural transition to explore additional options that align with their interests.
Additionally, incorporating similar and related product recommendations on the search results page enhances the overall shopping experience. If the products that your customers are looking for are currently unavailable, presenting relevant product recommendations alongside the search results can help customers quickly find alternatives or related items that better suit their needs.
How to add Similar and related products
This type of product recommendation can also be automatically generated or manually customized by the Shopify Search & Discovery app according to this guideline of Shopify.
However, similar to Frequently bought together, this native solution of Shopify also has many requirements and limitations such as the need of Shopify liquid & API knowledge, the lack of manual customization for specific products, and the quantity of products in the store. Thus, you’d better use a related products Shopify app. To choose a suitable Shopify related products app for your store, you can refer to this review of top-rated apps on Shopify app store.
Also, if you’re using Minimog theme, you won’t need to worry about looking for these Shopify apps as you can use the ultimate Shopify Related products feature to promote other products without distracting customers.
In conclusion
Product recommendation is not only an effective cross-sell and sales-boosting method, but it can also enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. With all its great benefits, it’s necessary that product recommendations be included in your Shopify store.
Hope that this article with 5 strategies can guide you to create product recommendations and use them to increase sales on your Shopify store.
If you want to streamline the process of creating product recommendations and leverage its efficiency but don’t want to spend too much on product recommendation apps, Minimog theme with many blocks and features for product recommendation is the solution for you. With only one theme, you can add almost all types of product recommendations on your store to increase sales and average order revenue, turning store browsers into avid buyers and one-time shoppers into loyal customers.
Try Minimog and save thousands of dollars spending on Product recommendation apps now!
