Inspiration made easy: How to use product recommendations effectively in e-commerce

We often encounter product recommendations when browsing online stores. They show us alternative or complementary products, new products, or top sellers. While product recommendations in e-commerce provide customers with inspiration for further purchases, they offer you, as a store operator, the advantage of increasing the value of the shopping cart in your online store. Product recommendations can accompany the user throughout their entire journey in the online shop—from the home page to category and product detail pages to the shopping cart and beyond in emails. In this article, we'll show you where product recommendations make sense in e-commerce and what special features you should consider when displaying recommendations depending on their position in the shop.

Existing customers: Online shoppers with a history

If your customers already have a history, you can use this to display relevant recommendations. Personalized recommendations can be calculated based on your customers' click and purchase behavior. These are particularly relevant because they are tailored to the individual interests and preferences of online shoppers.

New customers: Online shoppers with no history

You can't make recommendations tailored to the personal interests of customers who are new to your online store—i.e., who don't have a history with you—but you shouldn't miss the opportunity to engage these online shoppers and inspire them with products from your store. Top sellers, interesting sale items, or new products are ideal for this purpose.

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Home page: Pick up users

Recommendations are already available on the home page. As mentioned above, you can directly target existing customers here with personalized recommendations. Just as in brick-and-mortar retail, where salespeople know their regular customers and what products they prefer to buy, and recommend items that match their interests, you can also show your customers in your online store that you know what they are interested in.

For example, an online pet store knows that a person is a cat owner and what food they always buy. Accordingly, this customer is immediately shown their preferred food on the home page, as well as other cat products that may be of interest to the online shopper.

Since new customers do not have this information, the homepage could feature top sellers, sale items, or new products, for example.

For example, the bicycle shop ROSE Bikes displays top sellers or personalized recommendations on its homepage based on customer history.

Personalized recommendations on the ROSE Bikes homepage (source: screenshot from rosebikes.de)

Product detail page: Recommendations relating to a specific product

On the product detail page, unlike the home page, there is already a specific product that you can refer to. For this page, two different types of product recommendations are particularly suitable: similar products and matching cross-selling recommendations.

Showcase product diversity with similar items

An online shopper navigates to the product detail page because a particular product appeals to them or interests them more specifically. If they already like the selected item quite a bit but are still undecided about their choice, similar products can show them what else your range has to offer. Here, the customer can become aware of products that may better suit their needs.

Suggestions for similar items on the product detail page of babymarkt.de (source: screenshot from babymarkt.de)

Supplement your product selection with cross-selling recommendations

Appropriate cross-selling recommendations are also suitable for the product detail page. If the customer is convinced by the selected product, you can inspire them with matching items. You can draw their attention to other products that complement the selected product.

Overall, it is particularly important that the product detail page takes the customer's preferences into account. These include, for example, the size in which they usually buy items, popular brands, preferred materials, and ingredients. The latter is particularly valuable if there are ingredients that a user must avoid, such as lactose in food products.

It is also important to take availability into account and not to recommend products that are currently not in stock. This will help you avoid disappointing your online shoppers.

No results page: Show alternatives

It can always happen that users search for something in your online store that you don't have in your product range. To prevent your online shoppers from landing on a blank results page and leaving the store immediately because they haven't found what they're looking for, you can use a recommendation widget here too. After all, a visitor should not be considered lost just because their search query does not perfectly match the range of products in your online shop.

Recommendations on the zero results page can show searchers alternatives from your product range. For example, if a user searches for a specific brand that is not in your range, you can recommend products from a similar brand or style. This inspires your customers and keeps them in your shop despite the zero results page.

Recommendations for alternative products from similar brands such as "Nike" on the zero results page in the mybodywear.de shop (source: screenshot from mybodywear.de)

You can find more tips on this topic in the blog article Reduce bounce rate | Part 1: 4 tips for dealing with zero-hit pages.

Shopping cart: Offer additional products

A user has decided on a product and adds it to their shopping cart. Great! That means you're almost there. But the checkout process also offers potential for increasing sales.

Recommendations in the shopping cart layer

By clicking on the "Add to cart" button, you can use a cart layer widget to calculate personalized recommendations in milliseconds and display them via a layer.

Recommendations in the shopping cart layer at Ankerkraut (source: screenshot from ankerkraut.de)

Recommendations on the shopping cart page

But you can also use the shopping cart page itself to display recommendations. It is important to note that you should not show similar products in the shopping cart. This could unsettle the online shopper in their decision. Personalized cross-selling items are more suitable here. Additional products that complement the original product or cheaper cross-selling items are often purchased together and are therefore ideal for increasing the value of the shopping cart. You can set up a checkout area in your shopping cart which, similar to brick-and-mortar stores, encourages customers to purchase cheaper small items.

Personalized recommendations for matching additional items in the shopping cart at MANOR (Source: Screenshot from manor.ch)

You have two different options for the recommendations in your shopping cart. You can take the entire shopping cart into account for your product recommendations, or you can base them only on the most recently added product. Depending on the shop, one or the other may be more effective.

The notes on the recommendations in your shopping cart can also be transferred to the wish list in your online shop.

You can find more information about the checkout process and the potential it offers in the blog article Discover revenue potential in your checkout process.

Thank you page: More than just order information

A thank-you page is also a good place for product recommendations. This page should not only contain information about the order, but can also serve as a source of inspiration. With appropriate, relevant recommendations, you can ideally direct customers straight back to a product detail page and keep your users in your shop for longer.

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Content page: Topic-related recommendations

You have now learned that relevance is key when it comes to recommendations. However, it can sometimes still be useful to manually expand the relevant recommendations with regard to certain attributes. You can use this, for example, if you have planned a specific marketing campaign or want to place your recommendations on thematic content pages.

By combining content and topic-related product recommendations, you can use digital storytelling to engage your online shoppers on an emotional level. You can create a digital story on any topic, such as a skiing vacation or surfing trip. The combination of content and e-commerce—known as content commerce —creates a whole new feeling of online shopping, moving away from purely functional product providers to an emotional shopping experience.

We'll show you what such a content page could look like in an online shop. Our example focuses on the topic of surfing trips. In addition to information and stories about the perfect surfing trip, the page primarily offers visitors inspiration in the form of thematically relevant product recommendations.

Example of a content page with product recommendations related to the topic of 'surfing trips'

Are you curious and want to learn more? In our blog article Content Commerce: Creating Online Shopping Experiences Through Content, we give you a deeper insight into creating emotional shopping experiences.

Personalized shopping area: Relevant recommendations and more

If you want to offer your users even more in terms of relevance and personalization, you can implement a personalized shopping area in your online store. This is an area in the online store that is displayed individually for each customer and is compiled dynamically, intelligently, and fully personalized. It offers a central location in the online store for each customer's favorite brands, categories, and items. The personal stream allows customers to browse through their own product and brand world. Online shoppers also see relevant content suggestions, such as blog articles, and receive shopping news in real time.

Relevant product recommendations also play a role here. For example, recommendations can be integrated in the form of product sets, and users can easily find their desired product via clickable, interactive elements. In addition, "back in stock" or "now reduced" items can be displayed. Sizes and preferences are taken into account across all products. Furthermore, type-specific content, relevant content suggestions, and interactive elements ensure a unique shopping experience.

The personalized shopping area thus offers a particularly high level of inspiration and goes beyond simply displaying personalized recommendations.

Example of a personalized stream in the OUTLETCITY METZINGEN online shop (source: screenshot from outletcity.com)

Newsletter: Real-time recommendations

Product recommendations in e-commerce are not only useful directly within your shop. You can also include them in your emails and newsletters, for example. It is also particularly important that these are personalized and therefore take into account the individual preferences of your customers.

Since your email recipients read your newsletters and email campaigns at very different times, it is particularly important that the recommendations are calculated in real time when the email is opened. This is the only way to ensure that all information (such as the availability of items) can be taken into account.

You also have various options for displaying different types of recommendations:

Cross-selling recommendations

Depending on the email you send, you can tailor your recommendations to the content. For example, if it is an order confirmation email, you can recommend products that complement the purchased item, similar to the thank you page.

Alternative product recommendations

If you want to remind inactive customers of the product left in their shopping cart after abandoning it, you can suggest similar items or product alternatives.

Topic-related recommendations

Newsletters also offer the opportunity to highlight a specific topic and tailor the relevant recommendations accordingly. With the help of theme worlds, you can adapt personalized content in your newsletter to the topic of the newsletter and thus send out topic-specific newsletters. In the Planet Sports newsletter, for example, a theme world was set up for a Naketano brand sale promotion.

Personalized recommendations in Planet Sports' topic-specific newsletter (source: screenshot of email from planet-sports.de)

More information on the relevant recommendations >>