Display WooCommerce Related Products: Upsells, Cross-sells, & More

This article explains in detail how to set up WooCommerce related products in a few steps to improve the average cart subtotal. WooCommerce related products settings, including upsells, cross-sells, and category-based product recommendations.

Related product recommendations help your customers seamlessly find and buy the products they need. You can implement this by adding WooCommerce related products. This helps improve customer satisfaction and saves the time they waste searching for supplementary products.

Related products in WooCommerce are products that are recommended to the customers in addition to the products that they are currently viewing. Usually, these products are from the same category or subcategories of the currently viewed product. This ensures that the products that are displayed as related are relevant to the customers.

You can configure upsells or cross-sells with the default options in the WooCommerce platform. However, if you want to recommend custom-related products, you can use the free WooCommerce related products plugin from WebToffee.

First, let’s look at how to display related products in WooCommerce for upsells and cross-sells.

To add related products in WooCommerce using the default options, follow these steps:

1. Go to Products > All Products on your WooCommerce dashboard.
2. Edit the product to which you want to add recommendations and navigate to ‘Linked Products.’
3. In the WooCommerce Linked Products section of the ‘Product data‘ widget, select the desired Upsells and Cross-sells before updating the product.

This is how the upsell recommendations would be displayed to the customers.

Cross-sells are usually displayed on the WooCommerce cart page. Showing related products on the cart page increases the average cart value, enhances customer loyalty, and boosts brand engagement. Here is how it would look in your store.

The Downside of using WooCommerce Related Products

Before going further, it’s important to understand why a third-party related product plugin might be necessary for more effective recommendations.

Common issues with the default display of related products in WooCommerce include:

• Displaying related products depends largely on the theme or child theme used by your WooCommerce store.
• Lack of customization options for presenting related product listings.
• No ability to custom-create related product recommendations.

The solution? As previously mentioned, choosing the right recommendation plugins can make a significant difference. Let’s explore this in more detail.

If you want to set up related products in your WooCommerce store in addition to the standard upsells and cross-sells, the Related Products for WooCommerce plugin by WebToffee is an excellent option. This free plugin allows you to integrate custom-related product recommendations into your WooCommerce store.

In addition to adding custom-related products for individual products, you can automatically relate all your products globally based on their tags and categories. For example, you can automatically relate all products under ‘Clothing’ with this plugin.

To install the plugin,

1. Go to your WordPress admin console and click on Plugins > Add New in the navigation bar.
2. Search for the plugin ‘Related products for WooCommerce’ in the search bar.
3. Once you locate the plugin, click on Install Now and then on Activate to activate the plugin.

Create WooCommerce Related Products Based on the Same Category

You can relate products by categories or subcategories. Moreover, you can set up related products globally (that is, a single product relation for all products), or you can set up local and customized product relations for each product in your store.

Case 1: Show Related Products in the Same Category on All Product Pages

To set products related by the same category to the related products widgets globally, follow these steps:

1. Go to WooCommerce > Related Products.
2. Select the working mode as ‘Custom related products.’
3. Under the option ‘Display products from,’ select ‘Category‘.
4. Sort the related products by criteria like Popularity or Price.
5. You can select whether to display the products in ascending or descending order.
6. Check the ‘Slider‘ option if you want to display the WooCommerce products related by categories in a slider.
7. Set the number of products to be displayed on the page.
8. Make all the other necessary changes and click on Save Changes.

This will add a new section named ‘Related Products’ to all product pages in your store. Each section will recommend products belonging to the same category as the main product.

Case 2: Show Related Products in the Same Category on Individual Product Pages

If you want to add the product relations on the individual products page instead of setting up a global configuration:

1. Go to Products > All Products and select the product to which the Related Products field has to be added.
2. Tap on the WooCommerce ‘Linked Products‘ in the ‘Product data‘ widget.
3. Add the categories that you want to relate to the product within the ‘Categories‘ section. Only the products belonging to the specified category will be allowed to be displayed as the related product recommendations.

Here, only the products belonging to the ‘clothing’ category will be displayed as the related products of this product.

Create WooCommerce Related Products Based on the Same Subcategory

The ‘Related Products for WooCommerce’ plugin allows you to relate a product with other products within the same or different subcategories. You can add product relations individually for specific subcategories or use WooCommerce related products shortcodes to relate products with selected subcategories globally.

Case 1: Add Related Products on Same Subcategories to All Product Pages (With a Custom Code Snippet)

You can use a custom code snippet to relate WooCommerce products by their respective subcategories.

To do this, you will have to insert the code snippet given below into the functions.php of the active theme file.

Case 2: Add Related Products on Same Subcategories to Individual Product Pages

To locally add product relations with specific subcategories,

1. Go to Products > All Products and click on the product that you want to relate with WooCommerce product subcategories.
2. Click on ‘Linked Products‘ and add the product subcategories that you want to relate to this product within the ‘Categories‘ field.

Only the products belonging to the specified subcategory will be added to the related products widget.

This is how a related products widget with products belonging to a specific category or subcategory will look like.

Similarly, this plugin helps you to recommend related products based on the same attributes.

Showcasing the most prominent items as WooCommerce related products on your store is a proven strategy that can help improve conversion rates. Related products encourage customers to purchase more products. It can even persuade customers to go for the products that they haven’t initially intended to purchase.

Relating products based on the category or subcategory enables you to offer the most relevant recommendations to your customers, thereby enhancing customer experience. For instance, a user browsing for a specific type of shirt would prefer shirt recommendations from the same category or subcategory (Eg: red color, collared shirt) rather than recommendations for a bag.

What Is Upselling and Cross-selling?

Upselling means recommending a superior product to the customers while browsing a product in your store. The recommended product is usually better in quality and price to improve the net profit, cart value, and customer satisfaction rates. For example, recommending the iPad Pro (with higher specs) while browsing for iPad – the standard variant.

Cross-selling is the process of recommending products that can be purchased along with a primary product. It is a tool to remind users of the products they require but might have forgotten. A good example of cross-selling is recommending the iPad charger while purchasing an iPad from your store.

What Is Down-selling?

Down-selling is the exact opposite of up-selling. This entails recommending lower-cost products to customers who cannot afford a product—for example, recommending a lower-spec or older-generation tablet to a customer about to abandon the cart with a brand-new iPad. This encourages them to purchase a product that matches their budget.

What Is the Maximum Number of Products Suggested as Related Products?

There is no limit to setting up WooCommerce related products. You can add product relations to any number of products you want. Also, there is no limit to the number of products that can be related to an individual item.

What Are Some of the Best Practices for Displaying Related Products?

Some of the best related products practices in WooCommerce are:
1. Ensure relevance and personalization
2. Highlight offers and discounted Items
3. Responsive design and clear CTAs
4. High-quality images and descriptions
4. Regularly update related product recommendations

Can I Change the Related Products After Setting It Up?

Yes, product relationships can be edited by the store admin anytime after it is set up. The changes would in product relations also be reflected in real time.

How to Remove Related Products in WooCommerce?

You can disable related products in WooCommerce by selecting the ‘Disable recommendations’ option in the general settings of the related products for WooCommerce plugin.

Utilize WooCommerce product recommendations to grow your business. They can improve sales, promote products, and offer upsells and cross-sells. Moreover, you can set this up in no time with the simple and free related products plugin. It is a highly rewarding tool that will help you boost your revenue seamlessly. If you want to learn how to highlight best-selling products in WooCommerce, check out this article.

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