6 Best Product Recommendation Strategy For Ecommerce

Updated on December 14, 2022 in Ecommerce by Nishant Shrimali

One of the most critical eCommerce metrics is the Average Cart Value.

A metric that helps us track, on average, how much a customer spends on your online store. Naturally, we want the following metric scores to be high. We want customers to place higher-value orders at the time of checkout.

One of the easiest ways to increase the average cart value is with the help of product recommendation strategies.

These strategies help in motivating people to buy more than one product at a time.

And to help you get started, this guide includes the best product recommendation strategies and examples you can learn from.

Since there’s a lot to unpack, let’s get started with this ultimate guide.

What is a Product Recommendation Strategy?

Product recommendation strategies are methodologies of recommending the right products to customers — products they are most likely to buy along with the ones they are currently interested in.

To do so, product recommendation engines are used to study customers’ recent behavior on eCommerce, collect data points, and suggest products based on various strategies and experiments.

Here, the data can be of the specific customer, a customer type, product, and buying history of various other eCommerce customers.

It is one of the most effective ways to increase sales.

And because these are so common, your e-commerce store likely already offers some product recommendations. 

For example, if you look at a product page on Amazon, you’ll see the “customers who bought this item also bought…” section. This example is a product recommendation strategy in action.

Importance of Product Recommendation Strategy For Ecommerce

By implementing a product recommendation engine, you can significantly increase your sales. 54% of retailers credit product recommendations as the primary source behind their increasing order value.

Other benefits of product recommendation strategies are:

1. Improved average order value

The first and the most apparent benefit of product recommendation is the increase in average order value. Whenever a customer lands on a product page, they can also view complementary products they can buy along with the one they are interested in. It increases the cart value, resulting higher average order value of the whole eCommerce.

2. Increased average order quantity

Along with the cart’s value, the product’s amount also increases. That means more products are moving from the inventory, lower average shipping costs, and lower order management problems.

3. New product discovery

If a customer lands on a particular page of your eCommerce, having a product recommendation engine and strategy in place will help them discover other products. Also, if you are introducing a new range of products, recommendations can help you increase your reach without spending a penny on ads for these audiences.

4. Increased average customer retention rate

For example, they might bounce off when they land on your product page and don’t find what they are looking for. Having a product recommendation engine in the place will allow you to showcase other alternatives and similar products that customers can look at.

5. Lower cart abandonment rate

Which scenario would you prefer? First, you must buy products from 2-3 stores or everything from one store. Surely the second scenario, right? When you showcase products that complement each other, it saves customers from the trouble of finding another pair. Hence the recommendation benefits you by lowering the cart abandonment rate.

6. Higher customer satisfaction

One of the essential benefits of product recommendation strategy and the engine is increased customer satisfaction. It reduces the customer’s effort and helps them discover products according to what they might be interested in.

6 Best Product Recommendation Strategies For Ecommerce

After learning about the benefits, starting the strategies immediately is only fair. Here are six ultimate product recommendation strategies that psychologically make customers comfortable adding another product to the cart.

1. Best Sellers

Best sellers are a collection of products that are—as it says—best selling. These are the products that most people are buying, and as an eCommerce, you know they are in high demand in your store.

You can create a sub-best seller recommendation for each product type if you have multiple categories.

Bestseller recommendations are the most influential product recommendation, showing people that others have already trusted and liked this product.

This impacts buying behavior, motivating people to buy proven products that are a great deal.

2. New Arrivals

The following product recommendation strategy is to showcase the new products. You might have seen this used in many fashion eCommerce where new styles are launched regularly.

As discussed in the benefits, this strategy helps organically increase the reach of the products. Moreover, as the trust increase, customers are more likely to try new options.

So, if you have loyal customers or even an effective return policy for your eCommerce, the new arrival section could be among the most valuable for you.

3. Related Items

You can use these product suggestions to cross-sell similar products that people would be interested in buying.

For example, you can recommend sofa pillows if someone buys a sofa. These are proven sales techniques to increase the cart value, increasing the profit of eCommerce.

This section of the product recommendation engine is the most effective on the product page and checkout cart. That is when customers learn about the product and check out.

When they see they can add another item to complement the purchase, they are more likely to do so.

4. Similar Items

Another sales technique you can use with a product recommendation strategy is upselling. This is a strategy where you showcase similar products to help people discover another variety or variation of the products.

Some eCommerce even use this technique to increase the visibility of products that have lower sales and clear the inventory.

But it’s best you stick with the data, understand what customers prefer, and recommend it to them.

5. Recently Viewed Product

This is a much-personalized product recommendation strategy to improve the customers’ buying experience.

It showcases products that they recently viewed and showed interest in. The recommendation engine keeps track of the product pages you visited to make it easy for you to revert to them quickly if you want.

These recommendations are often at the bottom of the product, category, and home pages.

6. Based On Previous History

This product recommendation strategy is highly personalized, as the product recommended here is based on the customer’s previous buying history.

This is commonly used in email marketing, but if your eCommerce saves users’ data, you can use it to help people buy more related products that complement their previous purchases.

Bottom Line

Using a product recommendation strategy can directly impact sales. That is something that we have learned. What you must also know is it helps customers find better fits.

To make these product recommendations stand out, one step that you must take is to improve your product photo editing.

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