How to Show WooCommerce Related Products? (6 Easy Ways)

If you are in search of strategies to increase customers’ order value, then you have to utilize WooCommerce related products.

Related products feature is designed to suggest the best and most relevant items that add value to customers’ main purchases.

Imagine a customer buys a T-shirt in your store. Later, you suggest a pair of jeans, a belt, or a cap that complements his T-shirt. No doubt that he will pick one of your product suggestions to enhance his main product.

It is how related products urge customers to buy more and increase the average order value.

WooCommerce has a built-in related product feature without customizations, which we can enhance by using a plugin.

In this blog, we will use Upsell WP, the best WooCommerce related product plugin, and personalize the related product suggestions to increase our sales and revenue.

We can also explore how popular brands are using this related product feature in their store to capture their sales. Let’s start.

What Are WooCommerce Related Products?

WooCommerce related products are product suggestions related to the main product that customers are browsing or viewing.

Product suggestions are displayed on product or cart pages that motivate customers to add extra products to their carts. This will increase the average order value, sales, and revenue.

Why Do You Want To Show Related Products In WooCommerce?

Showing related products in WooCommerce stores can bring you more benefits in addition to sales and revenue.

• Increase Cart Value: By suggesting relevant items that enhance customers’ main items, they are more willing to buy those products, which increases their cart value.
• Enhance Customer Experience and Loyalty: Showing suitable product recommendations shows that you care about customers’ preferences. It will enhance their shopping experience and retain them for future purchases.
• Find New Products: Product suggestions help customers find new products in your store that they haven’t seen before. It will increase the sales of your slow-selling or new products.

How To Show WooCommerce Related Products? (Using Default Settings)

WooCommerce has three built-in options to display related products. Here are those ways:

1. The Default WooCommerce Related Products

In WooCommerce stores, related products are displayed by default on “Product” pages. These suggestions are based on the same categories, tags, or attributes of the main product that the customer is viewing.

For example, if a customer is viewing a specific outfit, related products will show other products from the same “outfit” category.

Unfortunately, WooCommerce does not allow you to edit or delete these related products. You can customize them only with manual coding.

2. WooCommerce Upsells

WooCommerce Upselling is a sales strategy where customers are suggested expensive or upgraded products based on the main product.

For example, if a customer is viewing a $20 worth outfit, you can either

• Recommend the same style outfit in different brand with high cost (or)
• Recommend other similar outfits in the same brand with high-cost.

When the customer prefers an additional product with the main product, the order value will be increased.

It is essential that the upsell suggestions meet customer needs; otherwise, these suggestions will lead to low sales or abandoned carts.

To create an upsell in WooCommerce with default settings:

• Open your WordPress dashboard.
• Go to “WooCommerce” -> “Products.”
• Edit the particular product that you want to add upsell suggestions.
• Scroll down to the “Product Data” section and click “Linked Products.”
• In “Upsells,” you can manually add the upsell products.
• Optionally, you can preview your changes and update the product.

The upsells are usually displayed on “Product Pages” above the “Related Products” section.

3. WooCommerce Cross-sells

WooCommerce Cross-selling is a sales strategy where store owners suggest related products that complement customers’ main products.

For example, if a customer is viewing a specific outfit, you can recommend accessories that complement it.

Since cross-sell suggestions are less expensive than the customers’ main item and add additional value, customers may add it to their cart which results in increased cart value.

To create cross-sells in WooCommerce using the default settings:

• Click “Products” and edit the main product.
• Scroll down to “Product Data” and click “Linked Products.”
• In “Cross-sells,” manually add the cross-sell products.
• Finally, preview changes and update the product.

The cross-sells are usually displayed on “Cart Pages”.

Issues in Default WooCommerce Settings

As a beginner in running a WooCommerce online store, you can utilize these basic WooCommerce related products, upsells, and cross-sell features to encourage customers to buy more and increase sales.

However, there are three main issues:

• You cannot edit each main product and manually add upsell and cross-sell suggestions.
• The default WooCommerce “Related Products” section is not personalized to meet customers’ needs.
• Related products and Upsells are only shown on product pages, while cross-sells are only shown on cart pages.

To overcome these difficulties, we can use the related products plugin for the WooCommerce store.

How To Show Related Products In WooCommerce? (Using The Plugin)

You can show WooCommerce related products in six different ways using the plugin.

For this guide, I am using “UpsellWP” to create personalized product suggestions.

With UpsellWP, you can:

• Create upsells, cross-sells, or both on product, cart, and thank-you pages.
• Show exclusive upsell and cross-sell suggestions in popups using this plugin.
• Use built-in templates to display upsell and cross-sell offers. You can also edit and customize the section title and template styles.
• Provide discounts to upsell and cross-sell products, which is not possible with default settings.
• Schedule the related products WooCommerce campaign in advance and set user limits to use the offer.

6 Related Product Suggestion Methods Using The Plugin

The UpsellWP plugin allows you to integrate the three default suggestion methods inside the campaign and provide three additional methods to enhance your suggestions.

Here are six different ways to show upsell and cross-sell products using the plugin:

1. Use Related Products
This option lets you show the default “Related Products” in WooCommerce as in default settings. Product suggestions are based on the categories, tags, and SKUs of the main product.

2. Use Cross-sell Products
You can select this option to show “cross-sell” products linked under each main product, as in the default settings.

3. Use Upsell Products
With this option, you can show “upsell” products that are linked under the main product of the default settings.

Even though these three options are already available in default, you can integrate these options using the plugin to:

• Show upsells and related products on all WooCommerce pages (based on campaigns) instead of only on product pages.
• Show cross-sells on all pages (based on campaigns) instead of only on cart pages.

Let’s check the other three methods that are not available by default.

4. Custom Products

It is the best option if you want to choose specific main products to display specific upsell or cross-sell products.

Similar to the “Linked Upsell and Cross-sell Products,” you can link custom products to main products.

To do that, go to “Product” and edit the main product to add a custom product. Scroll down to the “Product Data” section and click the “Upsell Products (UpsellWP)” option.

You can find three different options, which can be varied depending on the campaign you create.

• Frequently Bought Together
• Product Add-ons
• Cart Add-ons

The products you choose here can be taken as custom products and displayed as product recommendations.

5. Specific Products

If you want to display specific related products on specific WooCommerce campaigns, you can use this option.

The products in the other five options can be chosen elsewhere, but with this option, you can choose the products that will work only for the particular campaign at the moment.

6. Recommendation Engine

The recommendation engine is an advanced upsell feature in this plugin that uses an advanced algorithm to show the most relevant suggestions based on customer preferences.

With a recommendation engine, you can create an engine and set a list of some products to act as upsell or cross-sell suggestions. You can choose these engines as product suggestion methods based on your campaign goal.

Check the full steps to create a recommendation engine.

The UpsellWP plugin has 10 different upsell campaign features for various purposes. But we can check only five upsell features that are based on related products.

With this installation guide, install and activate this plugin on your WordPress dashboard.

Let’s check different campaigns to show WooCommerce related products using this plugin.

Campaign 1: Frequently Bought Together (FBT)

With the “Frequently Bought Together” campaign, you can show upsell and cross-sell suggestions on Product pages.

Using this campaign, you can display both upsell and cross-sell products based on the main product. You can also create these suggestions as a product bundle with discounts.

Usually, bundles seem like a great way to save money and buy more in one transaction; this FBT campaign helps you increase transaction value.

Example: Let’s create a product bundle for a specific product with discounts.

To create a “Frequently Bought Together” campaign:

• Open your “WooCommerce” dashboard.
• Click “UpsellWP” and go to “Campaigns.”
• Create a new campaign as “Frequently Bought Together.”
• Enter the campaign name.
• In the “Filters/ Apply to” section, filter the main products where you want to show this product bundle.
  • Here, I filter a specific product as “Cardigan.”
• In the “Products” section, choose the method for displaying your upsell and cross-sell suggestions.
  • Here, I select the suggestion method as “Custom Products.”

• As discussed above, “Custom Products” lets you choose specific main and related product suggestions.
  • For that, save your current campaign, go to “Products,” and edit the main product.
  • Scroll down to the “Product Data” section and click “Upsell Products (UpsellWP)”.
  • Choose products to display as product bundles in the “Frequently Bought Together Products” box.
  • Update the Product and navigate to the plugin’s campaign page.

• After choosing the suggestion method, you can optionally “enable bundle products” option. It is available only for this campaign.
  • Enabling this option will consider the main and related products as bundles. When customers remove the main product from their cart, related products are also removed.
  • Disabling this option will keep related products in the cart when customers remove the main product.
• Next, go to the “Discount” section:
  • In the “Discount apply to” option, choose whether you want to apply discounts to both main and related products (or) discounts only to upsell suggestions.
  • Also, choose the type of discount as a percentage or fixed and set the discount value.
  • Here, I set a 5% discount only to upsell products.
• On the “Template” section, you can:
  • Choose the design of the template
  • Edit the style and content of the campaign template.
  • Choose the “display location” of the related product suggestions.

• In the “Optional Settings,” you can schedule this campaign with the start and expiry (end) date.
• In the “Advanced Options,” you can decide where customers can be directed when they add the upsell suggestions to their cart.
  • Default: This option keeps the customer on the same page when they click “Add to Cart” of upsell products.
  • Cart/ Checkout Pages: These options redirect customers to cart or checkout pages when the “Add to Cart” button is clicked.
  • Custom URL: With this URL option, you can also redirect them to any other page on your website when they click “Add to Cart.”
• Finally, click “Save” to save all the campaign changes.

Now, the related upsell or cross-sell suggestions are shown as product bundles with discounts on the specific product page.

Here is the result of showing related products as bundles on a specific WooCommerce product page:

Campaign 2: Product Add-ons

With the Product Add-Ons campaign, you can show related products in WooCommerce as add-ons to the main product on the Product pages. You can show both upsell and cross-sell products as add-ons.

Example: Let’s show two cross-sell products as add-ons on the main product.

To create a product add-on campaign:

• Open UpsellWP and create a new campaign as “Product Add-ons.”
• Filter the main product to show the add-on.

• In the “Products” section, choose the product suggestion method as “Use Cross-sells”.
  • This will use the linked cross-sell products on the main product.
  • If you haven’t linked the cross-sells yet, edit the main product and click “Linked Products” on the “Product Data” section.
  • In the “Cross-sells,” select the cross-sell products.
  • Update the product.

• Open the campaign page.
• Below the suggestion method, you can optionally enable “Allow customers to remove add-ons from the cart” to allow customers to remove only add-ons from the cart.
  • If this option is disabled, customers cannot remove add-ons until they remove the main product from the cart.
• Select the cart-item quantity as:
  • You can synchronize add-on product quantity and main product quantity. It is the default choice.
  • Allow customers to increase or decrease add-on product quantity
  • Set fixed quantity to add-on product.

• You can optionally set discounts and customize template content and designs.
• Save changes.

Now, the two linked cross-sell products are shown on the product page as related product suggestions in the form of add-ons.

These two campaigns are helpful for showing related products on product pages. Now, we can move to the related product campaign on the cart page.

Campaign 3: Cart Add-ons

With a Cart add-on campaign, you can show WooCommerce related products as add-ons based on the main product on the cart.

Example: Let’s show discounted add-on products on cart items only for customers who have spent atleast $100 on their cart.

To create cart add-ons:

• Create a new campaign as “Cart Add-ons.”
• Filter the main products that can only show add-ons on the cart page.
• Choose the product suggestion method. Here, I chose “Related Products” to show suggestions based on the main product categories.
• Similar to the product add-on campaign, choose the cart item quantity below the suggestion method.
• In the “Discount” section, choose discount type and value.
• Optionally, customize template design and content. And choose the display location of these add-ons.
• In the “Conditions” section, add a new condition as “Subtotal” and set the cart total limit.
• Save changes.

The discounted “Related Products” are shown as add-ons to cart items only when the cart total reaches $100.

Campaign 4: Upsell Popups

Popups are one of the best ways to provide exclusive deals, grab customers’ attention, and make them buy more.

With the “Upsell Popups” campaign, you can show WooCommerce related products with discounts and encourage customers to add extra products to their cart.

To create a popup offer:

• Create a new campaign as “Upsell Popups.”
• Set “Triggers” so that the popup will display after a certain action.
  • “After product added to cart”: This option will display a popup offer when customers click the “Add to cart” button and add a product to their cart.
  • “Click ‘Proceed to Checkout’ button”: This option will display a popup when customers click the “Proceed to Checkout” button on the cart page.

• Select the product suggestion method. Here, I chose the “Specific products” option and selected some products to show as suggestions.
• You can set discounts, customize the template, and apply purchase conditions for this campaign.
• Finally, save changes.

Once the trigger is activated, the popup offer will display related product suggestions.

Campaign 5: Thank you Page Upsells

Thank you pages (or order Confirmation pages) are the final sales opportunity to display related products and increase order value.

With the “Thank You Page Upsells” campaign, you can show related products in WooCommerce with discounts.

This plugin allows customers to add related products to their orders with one click without needing to enter their payment and checkout details again.

Example: Let’s show related products on thank-you pages with discounts.

To create a thank you page upsells,

• Create a new campaign as “Thank you Page Upsells”.
• Select the product suggestion method. Here I choose “Use Upsell Products”, which can use upsell products linked on the main product page.
• Choose the discount type and set the value. It is optional.
• You can also customize the template and set purchase conditions.
• Save changes.

Upsells will be displayed as related product suggestions on the thank-you page, and customers can add them with one click.

Note:

These are some sample campaign examples using this plugin. 

• You can also use the recommendation engine method to show related products.
• You can set different purchase conditions, such as specific users, number of orders, cart items, and more.
• You can also mix and match product suggestion methods and discounts to create unique related product campaigns.

Real-Life Related Product Examples

1. Amazon

Amazon, the eCommerce giant company, utilizes related product suggestions to make customers buy more.

On a single product page, they used different ways to show suggestions:

• Displays product bundles as “Frequently Bought Together.”
• Displays upsell product as “Similar Item.”
• Display cross-sells as “Add an accessory.”
• And also displays similar products below the product bundle.

Showing related product suggestions is difficult if you are running a small WooCommerce store. Also, since this tactic worked for Amazon, it is not sure that it will work for your store.

Don’t provide too many choices to customers and confuse them with purchase decisions.

Instead, start by showing one or two related products and gradually create product bundles or add-ons, as shown in the above campaigns, to provide your customers with the most suitable product recommendations and minimal choices to help them choose the right product.

2. Chanel

Chanel, one of the luxury and expensive fashion brands, uses related product suggestions to help customers explore more products in the store.

Chanel simplifies customers’ purchase decisions by showing only three products similar to the main product. This helps customers easily choose the product they need.

3. Ikea

Ikea is the most famous conglomerate that sells ready-to-assemble furniture and home accessories. It also uses related product suggestions to help customers find similar products to their main item with different prices.

It helps their customers to find more products before choosing the perfect one.

Most popular brands use related products to encourage customers to explore more products, make purchase decisions, and choose the right products. This easily enhances their customers’ shopping experience and increases order value and revenue.

Best Practices to Show Related Products in WooCommerce

Following some best practices will help you create a successful related product campaign and increase sales:

• Don’t push your customers to choose additional products. Instead, suggest relevant products and help them choose the best option.
• You can provide discounts to attract customers with related product suggestions. It seems like a great deal, and customers buy more.
• Customizing the content and style of a product offer is essential to grabbing customers’ attention. The offer style should match your brand.
• Instead of recommending more random products, show minimal options with relevant products to help them choose their product quickly.

Conclusion

Related products are true and tried profitable strategies to increase order value and sales.

Showing customers extra product options will help them explore more products and choose the best one. It will also give them a personalized shopping experience and make them come back for repeat purchases.

As discussed in this blog, create customized related product campaigns and use different suggestion methods to show related products that help you increase your revenue.

Without restricting your sales with default WooCommerce settings, use “UpsellWP” and enhance your related product suggestions.

Additional Guides to Learn About Upselling:

• The Complete Checklist to Create Upselling and Cross-selling Offers
• Upselling vs Cross-selling – What are the Differences
• 15 Ways to Increase Average Order Value on your WooCommerce Store