Product recommendations are an important part of any ecommerce store’s strategy.
If you present the right products at the right time, they can help to improve both your customer satisfaction and average order value.
There are many different ways to display customized recommendations. And in this article, we’ll show you the best approaches.
Let’s take a look!
Would you like to see more examples? Download our free swipe file and get inspired by 18 more product recommendation examples.
Table of contents
- Feature products on your homepage
- Promote daily offers
- Personalize recommendations based on customer history
- Show new arrivals
- Promote discounts and deals
- Highlight bestsellers
- Recommend products based on reviews
- Dynamic product recommendations
- Display product recommendations based on engagement
- Use direct wording
- Similar products on the product page
- Promote what others bought
- Related products
- Products frequently bought together
- Package deals
- Recommendation after adding an item to the cart
- Mini cart
- Low-value accessories and related products
1. Feature products on your homepage
Your homepage is the most important place for product recommendations. The items you display will set your visitors’ expectations about what your store sells.
Since your homepage gets the most sets of eyes on it, it just makes sense to promote your best sellers or most profitable products. Ensuring clarity in product photos is crucial, which highlights the significance of acquiring an exceptional camera for product photography.
Bailly uses a ‘Featured Collections’ panel to show their suggested items on their homepage.
Recommended reading: Ecommerce Homepage Design Best Practices with 21 Examples
2. Promote daily offers
If you update your featured products on your homepage every day, it shows that you’re an active online store and that you always have fresh deals. This gives customers a reason to frequently visit your site since they want to see what’s on sale each day.
When your offer is only valid for one day, don’t hesitate to let your visitors know. It adds a sense of urgency that pushes shoppers to buy now.
Best Buy has been doing this with their “Deal of the Day” for years.
3. Personalize recommendations based on customer history
Personalized product recommendations are incredibly effective. They hone into your customers’ search, browsing, and purchase history to recommend relevant products just for their needs and taste.
You can even set up recommendation engines to make use of customer data on your homepage. For example, the Upsell Recommendations app is a great free tool that uses a similar recommendation engine to Amazon.
Take a look at how Sephora is upfront about tailoring recommendations for their individual customers.
4. Show new arrivals
You can also highlight new arrivals on your online store. This strategy will make your store look active and help to generate sales from returning customers.
In the image below, Allbirds promotes their new sneakers.
5. Promote discounts and deals
The fact is, 64% of online shoppers wait to buy things until they go on sale, and more than 59% search for promo codes before buying anything online.
Displaying these offers on your homepage helps increase sales by saving your visitors the effort of tracking down your deals themselves.
Here’s how Lululemon promotes their discounts.
6. Highlight bestsellers
You can display your hottest items as “Popular Products,” “Customer Favorites,” or “Best Sellers.” This makes them more enticing to consumers who always want to get their hands on the best and most trending products.
Here’s how Urban Outfitters shows off their most popular products.
You can also use sidemessages to promote “Customer Favorites.”
7. Recommend products based on reviews
You can persuade new visitors to buy by presenting them with products that other customers have evaluated. That’s because shoppers trust reviews from other buyers more than product descriptions since they’re less biased.
So you can show your “Best Reviewed Products” or simply display how many stars each item has received from reviewers.
AVON has done just that and we can take a note out of their book.
8. Dynamic product recommendations
You can display lots of products at once by using dynamic recommendations. Customers will see a “revolving or scrollable product display cycle” of the bestselling or most popular products. This gives online shoppers tons of options while also drawing their eye with motion.
Here’s a good example of dynamic recommendations from Net-a-Porter.
9. Display product recommendations based on engagement
Featuring products based on your visitors’ engagement is a surefire way of displaying recommendations at the right time. For instance, when a visitor shows exit intent, you can make recommendations on a popup to regain their interest in your products.
The following product recommendation appears on an exit-intent popup.
10. Use direct wording
Use direct wording to draw attention to your recommended products. Some commonly used examples include “You may also like” or “You may also be interested in.”
Here’s another example on a sidemessage:
11. Similar products on the product page
When a customer is looking at leather gloves, you know that they’re interested in that particular product category. It’s a great time to recommend similar items, just in case they’re not completely satisfied with the one they’re checking out.
Sephora uses this principle for their product page recommendations.
12. Promote what others bought
Instead of basing recommendations on a visitor’s own browsing history, show items that other customers frequently buy. This adds some social proof to the equation and increases the persuasiveness of your featured products.
You could even use an “Others have also bought” panel for cross-selling complementary products.
Here’s how ColourPop displays its products:
13. Related products
The easiest way to cross-sell is by showing related products on your product page. If a customer is looking at a toothbrush, you can also offer them toothpaste. These offers are a tried and true way to increase your average order value.
These products don’t need to be a direct accessory, but they should fit with the one customers are currently viewing.
ASOS encourages shoppers to ‘Buy the look’ when they recommend related products.
14. Products frequently bought together
Another cross-selling tactic is to recommend products that are frequently bought together.
Spend some time analyzing what your customers tend to buy together. With that information, you can make better product recommendations to other customers.
Here’s what it looks like on Best Buy’s website:
15. Package deals
Package deals are groups of related products and accessories that are offered as an entire bundled set for a discounted price. Even though there’s a discount, this still increases the overall cart value.
If your products make sense together in a bundled package deal, you should encourage your buyers to choose the higher-value goods rather than the lower-priced items.
At Surlatable.com, you can put the same knife into several different sets:
16. Recommendation after adding an item to the cart
When someone adds a product to the cart, you can show a popup with product recommendations. This is a great way for upselling and cross-selling.
Forever 21, for example, shows this popup right after their visitors add something to their cart.
17. Mini cart
A mini cart offers your customers a quick and easy way to view their cart without redirecting them to the cart page.
You can also place product recommendations right into your mini cart to nudge visitors to buy more items.
Here’s an example of a mini cart that shows featured products.
18. Low-value accessories and related products
It’s counterproductive to promote similar products on the cart page because customers have already made a decision on what they want to buy.
However, it’s worth presenting some related, low-cost products and accessories.
In the case of a high-value purchase, it’s more likely that your customers will add a lower-priced accessory that’s related instead of buying an additional expensive product.
Kylie Cosmetics adds their recommendations to the top of the cart with a “Don’t forget” message.
Frequently asked questions
How do you write a product recommendation?
Short and sweet is always best when it comes to writing a good copy for product recommendations.
The most important thing is to establish exactly how the products you’re recommending are relevant to your customer. On the homepage, that might mean you’re showing your “Best Selling Items”. On product pages, you can show products ‘Frequently bought together’ to encourage higher average cart values.
You can then use catchy product descriptions to highlight each product’s value.
In certain cases where appropriate, and where longer phrases are needed for descriptions, you can even make use of an AI writing software.
How can I improve my product recommendations?
There are several ways to improve the outcomes of your product recommendations.
The first way is to perfectly tailor your recommendations to each individual customer. You can use a recommendation engine like LimeSpot Personalizer to improve your data gathering and processing.
You should also A/B test your product recommendations to find out which ones work best. Doing this continuously leads to optimized product recommendations.
How do you recommend someone to buy something?
You should always recommend your products in a way that customers can have an easier and more enjoyable shopping experience. Make sure that you’re truly trying to help them and not just sell.
Recommended reading: 11 Best Upsell Apps For Shopify in 2022
Summing up
Providing your customers with great product recommendations is an essential part of running an online store.
These recommendations help your customers find products they love, and they also help to increase your conversion rate and average order value.
So now that you’ve seen our 18 examples for great product recommendations, it’s time to start applying them to your site. Give them a try and let us know how it goes in the comments!
(Note: Have you heard of OptiMonk? It’s a powerful popup tool that helps you display personalized product recommendations and convert up to 15% of abandoning visitors to sales and leads. Create a free account now and give it a try.)
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