WooCommerce Related Products: How to Upsell & Cross-sell the Right Way

Among the best strategies that brought Amazon to the top of the eCommerce game as of today, upselling and cross-selling have accounted for at least 35% of their total revenue since 2006, and product recommendations take up 70% of the Home page. If you’re not optimizing these selling tactics on your WooCommerce site, you’re leaving a great amount of money on the table.
WooCommerce related products, upsell and cross-sells are originally built in the WooCommerce plugin. However, in our opinion, they are not yet optimized in both UX and UI to the full potential to help you increase online sales.
In this article, we will point out why the way WooCommerce designs these 3 tactics is not optimal, and how you can make a few tweaks for better conversion and sales.
Why the built-in Woocommerce related products feature is not optimal?
WooCommerce groups upsells, cross-sells, and products having the same tags or categories as 3 types of its Related Products design:
- Up-sells are products that you recommend instead of the currently viewed product.
- Cross-sells are products that you promote in the cart, based on the current product.
- Related Products is a section on some templates that pulls products from your store that share the same tags or categories as the current product.
They similarly display on the site as a product slider section on the bottom of the page, differentiated by the section title. In terms of conversion, this default WooCommerce related product feature is not optimal.
- Related products, up-sells and cross-sells are all sorted randomly, meaning they will not display simultaneously to your customers, but take a random turn that you cannot set up as you want.
- The upsells and cross-sells in similar form to related products are not interactive and motivating enough to talk customers into spontaneous buying
- There is no way to offer discount if customers purchase recommended products generated by WooCommerce Related Products
- The cross-sells should be presented as a bundle offer to encourage customers to buy a package / kit / combo. They should also display on product pages, not just cart page.
- If customers add the base item to cart and see the upsell section, there is no option to replace with the alternatives upsells as an upgrade.
- There is no best seller type of recommendation
- There is no featured products type of recommendation
- There is no concrete analytics report to let you know which type of recommendation works better or which items should be paired together for better conversion so you can take further steps.
With this built-in WooCommerce related products alone, you only have control over the product section position or the number of products displayed.
How these 3 strategies should be designed in different UI/UX to maximize conversion rates?
Up-sells:

WooCommerce Upsells vs. Boost Sales | Upsell Popups
To make upsells more interactive with customers, you can set up the offer in popup form instead of static product section to attract more attention.
The offer will pop up right after customers add the base item to cart, introducing more options that can either be bought with or alternate the previous choice. Offer a discount if customer buy the upsell items to motivate spontaneous purchasing.
Cross-sells:

WooCommerce Cross-sells vs. Boost Sales | Cross-sell Popups
Similar to upsells, cross-sells can also be presented in popup form to drive attraction. Different from WooCommerce cross-sell which only displays in cart page, this cross-sell UI resembles a combo bundle that suggests itself right when customers are interested in an item. Combined with a progress bar, the offer motivates customers to buy the whole package in order to receive a discount on total bill.
Instead of waiting until cart page to sell more, you increase the order value per customer right on product page, and can continue to sell more when they hit cart page (see how below).
Personalized Recommendation:
While WooCommerce Related Products is one product section on product pages that pulls out items having the same tags or categories, personalized recommendation strategy, as executed by Amazon, is much more than that. Beside suggesting products that other customers usually bought with the base item,

WooCommerce Related Products vs. Personalized Recommendation
you can also recommend best sellers, recently viewed products, or featured recommendations,

or introduce products customers might be interested in based on their cart items.

How to set up upsells, cross-sells, personalized recommendations in optimized UI/UX?
Boost Sales | Upsell & Cross-sell Popups and Personalized Recommendation are powered in Beeketing for WooCommerce plugin.
Step 1: Download and Install Beeketing for WooCommerce plugin on your WooCommerce online store
Step 2: Register for an account and connect the service with your website (just follow the onboarding process and you should be good without hassle)
Step 3: Activate Boost Sales and Personalized Recommendation apps
Step 4: Set up Upsell & Cross-sell offers with Boost Sales app
Follow this detailed tutorial video on Youtube if you’re like the video type, or follow the tooltip instruction within the app.
Step 5: Setup recommendation widgets with Personalized Recommendation
Once activated, it normally takes 3–10 mins to sync products and historical sales data from your shop into the app for analysis. After that, just turn on the widget on any pages you want, and customize the look of the widgets so they match your store’s design.
Chance is here, Choice is yours
Copying the Amazon’s secrets doesn’t guarantee you the same success. Yet, do the best you can to monetize the strategies if that’s what it takes. Beeketing for WooCommerce plugin is an essential for any WooCommerce online store which is looking for ways to boost average order value and total revenue. It’s your chance to maximize the potential of upselling & cross-selling, personalized product recommendations, email marketing and leads generation. Yet, it’s up to you to make the move and win your market.
Original Published at Beeketing Blog: WooCommerce Related Products
