WooCommerce Related Products: How to add and manage them

WooCommerce related products present you with a simple but effective way to increase your average order value. Through these product recommendations, you can encourage customers to purchase more products from your WooCommerce store, which increases your revenue. 

In this post, we’ll explore what WooCommerce related products are, and how to add and improve them on your WooCommerce store.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is a WooCommerce related product?
• The different types of related products and where they live.
• How to improve related products with a WooCommerce plugin.

To kick things off, let’s start by looking at what a WooCommerce related product is.

What is a WooCommerce related product?

WooCommerce related products are additional/alternative items that are related to the product your customer is interested in or wants to buy. 

When a customer shows interest in buying a specific product, WooCommerce related products allow you to draw their attention to other products they may be interested in. Doing so can encourage your customers to purchase these items, significantly boosting your store’s sales and revenue.

📈 Related products can contribute to your store’s revenue. 35% of Amazon’s revenue comes from these product recommendations.

So, if you utilize them properly, you can tap into an additional revenue source. 

WooCommerce related products are often recommended to customers on various pages of an ecommerce site.

They can be used to:

• Introduce your customers to other items you have in your store.  For some customers, it may highlight items they need but didn’t know were available in your store.
• Encourage your customers to add more products or alternative items to their cart.
• Encourage your customers to spend more during their ecommerce journey in your store.

By showing related products in your shop, you can provide customers with options they may not have considered before. This can improve customer satisfaction.

Now, let us narrow down and discuss the types of related products available in WooCommerce by default.

Types of related products in WooCommerce

By default, WooCommerce offers three types of related products. These include upsells, cross-sells, and related products.

These three types of WooCommerce related products are displayed by default in different areas of an ecommerce store and have specific purposes and benefits to store owners.

Upsells

Upsells are more expensive or upgraded versions of a product. You can use upsells to invite your customers to buy these products instead of those they’re viewing or have selected.

Often these products are similar to the items the customer has picked. Except it has a set of advanced features that may appeal to certain specific requirements by customers.

By default, WooCommerce displays upsell products on product pages. As a store owner, you can leverage this to suggest premium products/services, upgrades, or better quality products that deliver more value to the customer.

For instance, let’s say a customer is browsing for a pair of sneakers from last year’s collection. You can expose them to a more recent and expensive model with better materials or from a higher-end brand.

Upsell products are often used in ecommerce businesses to encourage customers to spend more during a purchase.

By doing this, you can significantly:

• Increase your store’s average order value – Existing customers are more likely to spend 31% more on a purchase than new customers. This means it is much easier to get existing customers to spend more during a purchase than you would with a customer who’s new to your store.
• Maximize your profit margin – As your AOV improves, so do your profits.
• Improve customers’ shopping experience in your store – because you will suggest upgrades and premium products that offer more value to your clients.

A good upsell will leave your customers feeling like they won, and this can help you build relationships that inspire them to be loyal to your brand.

Cross-sells

Cross-sells, on the other hand, are a more targeted type of WooCommerce related products. Your customers will see items complementary to what they want or are interested in buying.

This choice will entirely depend on you suggesting additional items that will add value to the main product customers have added to their carts. 

For example, if a customer buys a smartphone, you can recommend phone cases, wireless chargers or earbuds, etc., to prompt them to buy these additional product items.

This type of WooCommerce related product is one of the most used ways to increase the AOV of most ecommerce stores. Typically, WooCommerce displays cross-sell products on shopping cart pages by default.

If you implement cross-sells correctly, it will feel natural for your customers and improve their shopping experience in your store. They will feel like you know what they want, and this is beneficial.

• Invesp revealed that offering personalized cross-sells will account for 26% of revenue, although they make up 7% of site visits.
• Cross-sells also help you increase the value of a  purchase when they buy additional items. According to McKinsey, this can help you increase your store’s sales by 20% and profits by 30%.

Tip: Always ensure that whenever you are trying to upsell or cross-sell items, the price is within a reasonable price range. This is because customers will rarely pay more than 25% of what they planned to spend.

Related products 

Related products are products similar to the item the customer is interested in. WooCommerce automatically displays these products on your product pages. It puts together a list of products with the same category and tag and recommends them to your customers on single product pages.

You can’t classify related products in your WooCommerce shop as a store owner. But you can group similar products in the same category and display them as related products. 

How to link related products

All the products mentioned above can be linked to each other from the linked products tab in the product data section of an individual product. You can define upsells, cross-sells, or bundle products together via product grouping by clicking on this tab.

These will then be displayed as recommended products on the product or cart page. You can also remove related products by clicking on the x icon next to the added related products.

How to improve WooCommerce related products

Related products exist in WooCommerce by default, but they may not be as effective as they could be in generating more revenue for you. Fortunately, you can customize them and make them work harder for your store. To do this, you will need a plugin.

Introducing the Salesman plugin

Salesman is a WooCommerce plugin that combines multiple features/add-ons to make selling easier for your online store. Without putting too much effort, you can boost sales via things like personalized coupons. 

Apart from attracting sales, Salesman comes with useful features that help you to encourage customers to be loyal to your brand. This includes redeemable bonus points and a progress bar that shows a customer how much they’ll need to spend to be eligible for free shipping. 

It also gives you an insight into your marketing efforts via a ‘How did you hear about us’ module at checkout. To top it all off, Salesman can help you to grow your customer base by allowing your customers to join a referral program in exchange for a coupon for each referral. 

Of course, Salesman also helps you improve your related products.

How Salesman improves your cross sales products for WooCommerce

Salesman also works as a cross sales plugin. It enables you to improve how you display WooCommerce related products using its Cross Sales feature.

You can do this by adding headings and adjusting the number of columns for cross-sells, upsells, and other related products. These customizations can help customers easily discover related products within your WooCommerce shop and make purchases.

Salesman adds another related product section on the cart page called Recently Viewed Products. You can use this new feature to remind your customers about products they were interested in earlier but did not buy. This may encourage them to go back and complete their purchase.

You will be able to do the following with the Salesman Cross Sales module:

Decide which WooCommerce cross sales sections you want to display in your store

The “Enable” switch in Salesman lets you choose whether to display all four cross sales sections in your shop or exclude some sections.

For example, this may come in handy when you only want to optimize your upsell and cross-sell techniques. In this case, Salesman allows you to show upsell and cross-sell sections and disable other related product sections.

Easily grab your customers’ attention with unique and simple headlines

Salesman also allows you to add compelling headlines at the top of each type of related products. Headlines make the related products section more visible to your customers and easily draw their attention toward these sections.

Customers will be able to:

• Find alternative products you’re offering quickly.
• Easily pick the best alternative/additional product items that meet their needs.

Define the number of products you recommend to your customers

Salesman allows you to add as many cross sale products as you wish in each section. However, this depends on the theme you’re using for your store.

If the theme you use only allows a certain number of related products to be displayed at a time, you won’t go above that limit unless you increase the number of relevant products displayed in your theme.

Tip: It is important to suggest only a few relevant items to your customers. This is because too many choices can be paralyzing for your customers.

📈 A study by Bain & Company has shown that simplifying options and narrowing down choices can increase profits by 5-40% and decrease expenses by 10-35%.

Customize the layout of your WooCommerce related product section

Salesman lets you easily adjust the number of columns in the custom related products section. All you have to do is enter the number of columns you want.

Doing this will affect the overall appearance and layout of your product and cart pages and also help you:

• Ensure that the related product sections are optimized for the device customers use, which can help improve their experience also. 
• Make your products easier to read and browse in all screen sizes.

Let’s now use the Salesman plugin to optimize and manage your WooCommerce related products.

How to use the Salesman plugin to enhance WooCommerce related products

In this section, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step tutorial on how to use Salesman to enhance WooCommerce related products.

Step 1: Install the Salesman on your WooCommerce store

To get started, you’ll need to purchase Salesman from the Market Press site: marketpress/shop/salesman

Download the .zip from your User-Dashboard.

Then, follow these steps to install the Salesman plugin:

1. From your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New and upload the .zip file you’ve just downloaded from your computer.
2. Next, click Install Now and Activate the plugin using the license key from your User-Dashboard

When you’re done, we’ll improve your WooCommerce related products in WooCommerce > Salesman.

Step 2: Add the Cross Sales module

We’ll use the Salesman Cross Sales module/widget to improve WooCommerce related products, but first, let’s add it to your store.

To activate the Cross Sales module:

1. Navigate to WooCommerce > Salesman from your WordPress dashboard to access the Salesman module page.
2. Scroll down until you find the Cross Sales module and switch it on to activate the module.
3. This will add the Cross Sales module tab on the left module menu section. Click on it to open this module.

It’s now time to show you how you can improve WooCommerce related products using the Salesman plugin.

Step 3: Customize the appearance of your WooCommerce related products

Salesman allows you to configure all related products in WooCommerce in three ways. To do this:

1. Go to WooCommerce > Salesman and select the Cross sales module you activated in the previous step.
2. We’ll customize all related products in WooCommerce on this page. You will be able to do the following:
   • Enable all related product sections – If, for example, you turn the upsell Enable switch off, the upsell section will no longer show related products in your store. 

You can do the same for “Cross-Sells”, “Up-Sells”, and “Recently Viewed Products” sections.

3. Add your own headline – In this field, you can add a unique headline for the related product sections in your WooCommerce store. 

Make sure the heading is simple. For example, “You May Also Like,” “Products that are related to this item,” or “More great songs for the artist you love!”

It is important to note that if you don’t add your headline, Salesman will use its default headings.

4. Set the maximum number of products to show – this section allows you to set the number of products you want to display in the related products section. For example, 3, 4, 5, as long as it’s a digit number.
5. Adjust the number of columns – Here, you can set the number of columns for each product section.

Tip: Do not add too many columns. This may make the products look too small and difficult to read, especially on smaller screens.

5. When you’re happy will all the changes you’ve made, click the Save Changes button, and that’s it. You’re all se there.
6. At the product you can now define your own products.

When activating the Cross Sales module, the Salesman plugin automatically adds a new related product type called “Recently Viewed Products” to your WooCommerce store. 

This feature enables you to suggest additional items to your customer’s shopping cart based on the customer’s browsing history. These additional items are normally items your customers have already shown an interest in.

As a store owner, this can benefit you in many ways:

• It can help you increase sales when you remind your visitors to buy products they were earlier interested in but may have forgotten about.
• You can improve customers’ shopping experience by suggesting products relevant to their interests. According to a survey by Invesp, customers are also 75% more likely to make a purchase when you provide them with personalized product recommendations.
• You can identify the most popular product within your store. You can use Salesman’s popular product module to make these items visible to your customers. This will motivate potential customers to buy, leading to increased sales.

Use and improve WooCommerce related products today

Effectively managing your WooCommerce related products helps to encourage customers to spend more on your online store. This increases your store’s average order value, sales, and revenue. Although related products exist in WooCommerce by default, the default offering is limited.

With the Salesman plugin, you can massively improve how your WooCommerce related products are displayed. It displays related products in an appealing way that easily attracts customers to your recommendations. On top of that, it has multiple features to simplify selling for you, increase your customer base, and encourage customer loyalty.