Visitors to your online store, from casual shoppers and shopaholics to longtime patrons, would want to see the products that best suit them. In stores with vast catalogs, visitors finding such products organically becomes an ordeal. One way to show off these products is by strategically placing product recommendations across your store.
Let’s now take a deep dive into the product recommendation strategy. The aim is to show customers more of your merchandise they may like, thereby leveling up their shopping experience and cart value.
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What are Product Recommendations?
Store owners often notice how some of their products immensely outperform others in terms of sales. Other products might not be sold as much but receive the best customer ratings. Also, customers in different parts of the world are seen choosing different products for the same purpose. All the above observations can be used by merchants to achieve better results for their stores.
This is where product recommendations come into play.
Product recommendations are suggestions provided to consumers about products they might be interested in purchasing.
These recommendations are generated based on various data-driven techniques and algorithms. Customers can be grouped based on their purchase behavior and browsing history. Later, products that appeal to a growing number in that group are suggested to all others.
This helps the customer easily find the products they like while the store owner can expect more sales and better order values.
How do Product Recommendations benefit the store owner?
With a well-thought out product recommendation strategy, a store owner can accomplish multiple goals.
- Allows customers to easily find what they like
- A more engaging store, leading to better conversions
- Appear as a more credible store backed by social proof
- More purchases can lead to higher cart value
We will now introduce you to the top product recommendation plugins that WordPress offers.
Top 9 Product Recommendations Plugins for WooCommerce
WooCommerce Product Recommendations
The WooCommerce Product Recommendations plugin from WebToffee is a game-changer. Store owners are offered multiple recommendation options that can better your sales and order values.
It offers multiple recommendation campaigns, including ‘Frequently Bought Together,’ ‘Recently Viewed,’ ‘New Arrivals,’ and ‘Bestsellers.’ You can place these recommendations across the website, from the shop page and product page to the checkout page.
Additionally, merchants can also build custom recommendations to place on the pages of their choice, making it easier to personalize suggestions for niche stores.
Features:
- Readymade recommendation templates
- Provision to create custom recommendations
- Advanced filters to pick out the right products, product groups, and features
- Design your recommendations to better align with your brand identity
- Choose between a slider or grid format
- Decide how your recommendations are sorted
Pricing: The paid plan of the WooCommerce Product Recommendations plugin starts at $89 a year.
Upsell Order Bump Offer for WooCommerce
The checkout page is a crucial point in the online purchase process. The customer has already decided on the purchase and is ready to pay. At this instant, recommending a higher-end alternative or a bundle of add-ons at a discount can force the customer to make a decision on spending a slightly higher amount than previously decided.
Upsell Order Bump Offer for WooCommerce is a great plugin to execute such cross-sell or up-sell strategies. Bringing exciting offers to the shopper’s attention with an ‘Add to Order’ button is a well-tested move to boost the order value.
The layout of these recommendations, as well as the timing of the offers during the checkout process, can be customized to your preferences.
Features:
- Craft great upselling and cross-selling offers
- Set time limits for the offers
- Track offer performance using analytics
- Design the layout to suit your brand identity
Pricing: The plugin is offered at $69/year.
Recommendation Engine
Billion-dollar brands like Netflix and Amazon have perfected the art of recommendations over the years. With the Recommendation Engine plugin, any store owner can emulate these brands, offering powerful recommendations tailored to various stages in customer journeys.
The tool generates product recommendations by analyzing a customer’s past product browsings and purchases, along with frequently bought together products.
Features:
- Analyses user preferences to recommend the right products
- Supports recommendation widgets
Pricing: The Recommendation Engine plugin is offered through WooCommerce at $79.
Product Recommendation Quiz
It is often difficult to serve the individual customer with their needs being unique. Shoppers can spend hours in a store browsing through multiple products and end up buying none. The only way to serve them better is to ask them what they need. This is where a tool like the Product Recommendation Quiz plugin comes in.
Store owners can set up quizzes to understand and define the customer’s needs and then show them the best suited products on offer. This way stores can make sure that customers easily discover the right products, improving customer engagement and satisfaction.
You can craft any number of questions and choose how the quiz is displayed- inline, popup, or automatic. The plugin sets up the quiz using logic, with shoppers able to skip the inapt queries. It also lets you acquire leads by rewarding and sharing their contact information.
Features:
- Craft quizzes with inbuilt themes and designs
- Make unlimited questionnaires
- Email customers relevant recommendations
- Share quiz results with shoppers to help them decide later
Pricing: The paid plan is offered at $39/month.
Frequently Bought Together for WooCommerce
You must have noticed that some products, for better aesthetics or added functionality, require complementary items to go with them. Using this knowledge, store owners can simply bundle products and sell them at a lower price than when bought individually. This strategy can be best executed with the Frequently Bought Together plugin by WebToffee.
The use of this strategy not only helps shoot up the average order value but also helps customers discover items they need along with the primary product. Since the bundles are crafted by analyzing the purchase data of other customers, these recommendations become a voice of fellow shoppers, making them more credible than regular store recommendations.
Features:
- Generates recommendations from analyzing store data
- No manual interference is required
- Guaranteed relevant recommendations
- Provision to craft custom product bundles
- Edit widget titles and prices with ease
- Out-of-stock products kept hidden
Pricing: The plugin is offered starting at $59 a year.
Related Products for WooCommerce
Customers looking at a product are probably interested in other products in a similar category, with similar attributes and tags, along with those with slightly different specifications. Recommending such alternatives on a product page is an easy way to increase the chances of a purchase. This is where the Related Products for WooCommerce plugin shines.
The tool offers a variety of choices to customize your recommendations and its multitude of features outshine those provided by WooCommerce by default.
Features:
- Tailor the Related Products recommendations
- Craft Related Products suggestions across your store
- Rule out categories or out-of-stock items from recommendations
Pricing: The Related Products plugin from WebToffee is completely free.
Products of the Day
Displaying one or more products as Products of the Day and discounting their prices slightly is one way to promote a sense of urgency in shoppers. The Product of the Day plugin is a game-changer in this regard.
The tool empowers store owners to customize the recommendations in a way that visually aligns with the brand while also placing them to best grab attention.
Features:
- Display different products for each day of the week
- Decide the number of products to be shown
- Option to display product thumbnails
- Provision to place ‘Add-to-Cart’ button on the recommendation
Pricing: The Products of the Day plugin has a paid plan starting at $49 a year.
Product Recommendations
Store owners with large catalogs can focus on upselling and cross-selling strategies to boost sales. Customers are willing to check out higher-end versions of the product they are looking at, along with add-ons to it.
The perfect tool to assist you here is the Product Recommendations plugin from WooCommerce. If well placed across the store, such recommendations can engage customers and help them make better purchase decisions.
The plugin helps you create custom rules using filters and amplifiers to craft your recommendations effectively.
Features:
- Offer custom recommendations with the help of complex algorithms
- Exercise rules and restrictions to build your recommendations
- Awareness of the latest trends informs recommendations
- Recommendations can be sorted by attributes like rating, popularity, etc.
Pricing: This premium version of the Product Recommendations plugin is available at $99 a year.
Alternate Product Recommendations for WooCommerce
When on a product page, a customer is keen about every alternative he can choose in place of that product, especially if it is out of stock. Showcasing every such alternative, including slightly premium ones, can help guarantee and maybe even boost the order value.
This scenario can be well utilized with the use of a tool like Alternate Product Recommendations for WooCommerce. This way stores can better engage customers by offering better alternatives while decreasing the chances of cart abandonment. When using WooCommerce Plugins, it’s vital to ensure your store’s security with reliable WooCommerce security plugins. Tools like WPSecurityNinja can help safeguard your site from potential vulnerabilities, ensuring your product recommendation system operates smoothly and securely without risking customer data.
Features:
- Displays alternatives for out-of-stock items
- Displays similar priced or premium alternatives for in-stock items
- Recommendations are shown on product pages
- Craft varied recommendations for the same item
Pricing: The plugin is offered at $4 a month.
Factors to Consider When Recommending Products
When crafting product recommendations, keep the following in mind.
- Understand the Customer: Knowing the crowd you serve and their needs is what separates the best product recommendations from the rest.
- Trust is Currency: A customer well served will alter return for more. Focus on building trust in the long run while also leveraging user-generated content like reviews and feedback.
- Serve the Individual: Different people have different needs. This means that a set of recommendations might suit some but not everyone. Use analytics to tailor your recommendations.
- Show the Offer: The customer needs to see what they are getting. Recommendations should clearly communicate their relevance and benefits.
Conclusion
Recommending products to store visitors is a great way to guide them through the store and help them make faster and better purchase decisions. It ensures better customer engagement and, eventually, more sales.
A store is guaranteed to succeed when it sells the best products and uses the appropriate tools to execute the right sales strategies.
That’s it, folks! If you found this blog insightful, drop a comment below!
