Effective Product Recommendation Strategies to Boost Your Sales in 2023

How often have you exited an eCommerce website because you couldn't find something you liked? Most of us have experienced that. Don't let it be the case for your own eCommerce store!

In order to boost your sales by converting more visitors into customers, you need effective product recommendation strategies. Research indicates that personalized product recommendations can increase the profitability of online stores by 30%.

However, recommending products isn't as straightforward as installing a widget. In this detailed guide, we've compiled a list of 10 top-performing product recommendations strategies. Moreover, we also explain how you can bring them to life on your eCommerce website.

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1. Recommend Top-Rated Products

When customers visit your eCommerce website, they want to find relevant products as quickly as possible. They don't want to scour pages after pages to finally encounter something they like.

You can make their journey easier by recommending top-rated products. AI-powered personalized recommendation engines identify the top sellers on your online store and present them to shoppers.

As a result, you greatly increase the chances of conversion. This product recommendation strategy is based on Pareto's 80:20 rule in marketing. According to Pareto's principle, 80% of your sales are driven by 20% of your products.

The new customers visiting your eCommerce site will likely have a greater affinity towards these top 20% of products.

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2. Leverage Social Proof Elements

Let's do a little exercise.

• Visit Amazon
• Type in 'Office & School Supplies' in the search bar
• Choose a product and scroll down

Notice the 'Recommended for you' section in that category. Each product recommended by Amazon has the price, average rating, and the number of ratings indicated below it.

When you combine product recommendations with social proof, it becomes quite challenging not to view the product and perhaps go through with the purchase. This strategy will amp up your sales if implemented in your online store.

Take the first strategy, for instance. While recommending top-rated products to your customers, why not include social proof? It will surely increase the credibility of your recommendations.

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3. Bundle Frequently Bought Together Products

This is another great product recommendation strategy well utilized by Amazon. If you visit the popular eCommerce platform, search for Apple AirPods, click on it, and scroll down, you'll unmistakably locate the 'Frequently bought together' section.

In our example, Amazon recommends a protective case cover and a silicon AirPods case that people frequently buy with the main product. Such product recommendations will dramatically boost your own eCommerce sales.

Like Amazon, you can display add-on products on the main product page or include them as suggestions on the checkout page. If the add-on products add value to the main product, customers will be inclined to buy those too.

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4. Try 'Complete the Look' Recommendations

This product recommendation strategy is used by eCommerce stores that sell apparel and accessories. Head over to any leading fashion online store like TheOutnet, Lane Crawford, and Farfetch.

Take TheOutnet, for instance. They have a 'Wear It With' section to help customers find complementary garments and accessories.

Try it for yourself!

Select a turtleneck top, and on the product page itself, you'll find the 'Wear It With' section where TheOutnet recommends a hooded wrap coat, leather pencil skirt, hoop earrings, etc. All of these eCommerce fashion stores leverage this strategy. They just have different names for it.

Lane Crawford has a 'How to Style It' feature, and Farfetch has the classic 'Complete the Look' segment on its product pages. If you wish to increase the average order value (AOV) on your eCommerce shop, using 'complete the look' recommendations is a must.

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5. Showcase Trending Products

Trending products are not the same as best sellers or top-rated products. These products typically experience more sales during certain months of the year, say Christmas or Halloween.

If you're selling Halloween-themed baby clothes through your online store, for example, recommending your trending products during the spooky months will definitely lift your sales.

You could say it's a seasonal product recommendation strategy, yet it's highly effective. These recommendations don't require your customers' data as they naturally trend during festivals or the holiday season. Find certain products on your eCommerce store that are likely to be sold out during a particular season of the year.

If you sell beverages, recommending iced tea, cold coffee, or lemonade during summers would prove to be quite profitable. In fact, Starbucks uses the same strategy!

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6. Offer 'You May Also Like' Recommendations

Unlike trending product recommendations, 'You may also like' recommendations do rely on customers' preferences. This is why they are also known as personalized recommendations. It's a widely used strategy among most eCommerce businesses. However, it's not possible to incorporate them manually for hundreds or thousands of customers.

It's the job of AI-powered product recommendation engines like Glood.AI that work in the backend of your eCommerce store.

This is how they recommend 'You may also like' products:

• Content-based filtering: In this method, the product recommendation engine analyzes customers' behavior using website cookies. The algorithm offers personalized recommendations based on interest shown by visitors. For example, if a user liked overcoats, the engine would show them more overcoats.
• Collaborative data-filtering: Using this method, the algorithm also shows products that have been liked by similar customers as well. It's an advanced technique through which the engine identifies customers with similar behavior. The collective user data is then used to make personalized recommendations.
• Hybrid filtering: As the name indicates, it's a combination of collaborative data filtering and content-based filtering. It means that the AI uses both group and personal decisions to offer tailored product recommendations to visitors.

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7. Exhibit Discounts and Promotions

One of the reasons why many eCommerce stores miss out on the chance to boost their sales is that they don't showcase discounts and promotions.

If you're offering attractive discounts on certain products, the only way your visitors will find out about it is if you recommend those across your website.

Old Navy, a fashion eCommerce website, uses a floating bar to display discounts and special promotions on certain products.

Unsurprisingly, about 92% of shoppers in the United States use discounts while checking out. Think about the number of visitors you could convert by capitalizing on this product recommendation strategy.

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8. Use Geo-Location Targeting

An innovative, personalized product recommendation strategy used to display items according to the visitors' location, geo-location targeting is made possible by AI-enabled product recommendation engines. If you sell products internationally through your eCommerce website, you can't miss out on geo-location targeting.

Let's understand how it works. Suppose you own an online apparel store, and 28-year-old Noah from Canada visits it. The AI working in the backend automatically detects the visitor. It understands that Canada is extremely cold during most of the year and hence adjusts the product recommendations according to Noah.

It displays winter apparel like coats, gloves, earmuffs, beanies, sweaters, etc. Do you think Noah will be inclined to make a purchase? Absolutely!

Enabling location-based product recommendations will thus make a huge difference in your eCommerce sales.

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9. Show User-Generated Content

This strategy combines product recommendations and user-generated content. To obtain user-generated content, first, you should encourage customers to post videos and pictures along with your branded hashtag on social media. Use that content to recommend products on your eCommerce site.

Suppose you have a makeup eCommerce brand. You're recommending different types of toners to your prospective buyers. Now, instead of just using the product photos or influencer photos, you can leverage user-generated content that clearly mentions your brand and the product. It will also serve as social proof that we talked about earlier.

People often trust their peers when purchasing products online - more than influencers and the brand itself. User-generated content in product recommendations inspires them to achieve the same results as their peers using your toner or any other product.

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10. Pick the Right Recommendation Engine

If your online store is fairly new, you can get away with manual product recommendations. However, it's not a sustainable approach.

As your customer base increases, your website grows, and you add more products, manually recommending products to each customer becomes a hassle. Over time, it becomes impossible.

Take changing customer trends and seasonal variations into account, and the manual product recommendation strategy goes completely haywire. In order to make quality, personalized recommendations to potentially millions of customers online, you need a powerful product recommendation engine.

Use personalized recommendations by Glood.AI to boost sales on your Shopify store!

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Final Note

Effective product recommendation strategies are the bedrock of eCommerce sales. That said, what worked for one eCommerce store might not work for another. It's important to test and review the strategies from time to time.

What you should seriously consider, however, is investing in a product recommendation engine. If you don't, your competitors will.

It will help you offer the best website personalization for every visitor in the form of product recommendations.