The benefits of showing related items to buyers in your ShopFactory online store

- Improve the shopping experience for buyers since they don't have to search for relevant items.- Introduce products to prospective customers they don't know about but can use.
- Boost your sales, just like upsells at a brick-and-mortar retail store.
- Increase your average order value. You'd rather have buyers make a more significant purchase than multiple small orders due to additional costs such as: credit card fees, shipping and handling, and other handling cost factors.
- Increase page views and length of time on your online store, meaning your search rankings could improve.
- Lastly, "Cross Promoted" or "Related Products" also have a huge advantage for SEO. It helps you create what are called "Internal links". Internal links can improve your SEO performance with some search engines. Cross-promoted products tend to increase in SEO value if promoted with related and similar products.

Choosing the right product recommendation strategy and the idea behind upselling, cross-selling, and "Bought together" items

When it comes to product recommendations, there are three major types of strategies you can look to when crafting your plans:

1 Upselling

In a nutshell, the upsell is getting a buyer to purchase a better version of what they initially came in for. An upsell involves the same product – either as an upgraded or premium version. We've all likely experienced an upsell before, like in this example: A basic car costs $ 22,000 new. The price attracts the customer. However, before you have the vehicle you want, you will often find it much more expensive. With accessories, alloy wheels, leather upholstery, you drive away for $27,000.

2 Cross-selling

Cross-selling is all about getting your customer to buy an additional, closely related product. If you've ever been asked, "Would  you like a cleaning kit with your new shoes?" Then you've encountered cross-selling. Cross-selling adds value to purchase for both the customer and the seller in its most basic form.

A quick tip: Don't overdo it as Amazon or eBay does. Quite often, buyers get confused and misdirected to too many different related or upsell items. The key here is to select products and cross-promoted products so you don't lose the visitor and forget what they came into your online shop for. This is a significant factor in closing a sale.

3 The social proof: "Customers who bought this product also bought this..."

The "Bought together" recommendation strategy operates by offering other products that were often purchased in the same cart as the product(s) in focus. Buyers almost always look for the opinions of others before buying an item that they have never purchased before because they want to know if it's worth their money. They can always request a refund if it doesn't go well. But, they also want to see that it's worth their time and effort and enjoy the convenience of having that item exactly when they need it.

Implement related and recommended products in your ShopFactory online store. How does it work?

ShopFactory makes it easy to get related products in front of your customers.

- To link a product to related products/paragraphs, to other pages in your website, or to external websites, follow the steps on this tutorial.

- To add "Related products" to multiple products at once, product templates can help you save a lot of time and effort. Follow the steps on the following tutorial to discover how  and know more about working with product templates to save time.

- ShopFactory supports the "Recommended Products" feature known as well as "Customers who bought this product, also bought this...". The automated widget shows other items bought together with a specific product. To activate it, just follow the steps on the following tutorial.