Adding related products to your product pages and at the checkout is a great way to increase AOV & improve the overall shopping experience. Widely recognised as one of the most effective ecommerce techniques, related products, up & x-sells are easy to set up in your Magento store.

The benefits of product relations

Would you like fries with that? Offline retailers have been up & cross-selling for decades and there’s a lot of advantages to be had by both customer and retailer. It’s estimated that 10-30% of ecommerce revenue is now generated by product relations and so it’s easy to understand why this technique is so popular.

For customers, showing related products is an opportunity to present highly relevant additional items that may help to improve overall experience and product satisfaction. Alternatively, it can help to highlight possibly superior products that may serve their purposes better; adding a seemingly more personal touch the ecommerce experience.

For retailers the benefits are obvious. Showing related products offers another opportunity to make a sale, as well as giving retailers complete control over the products on offer. Retailers can choose the products with the best margins while remaining relevant to the customer’s needs. This essentially means higher AOVs and improved profit margins.

Magento's core set-up offers three types of product relations, each with its own unique purpose. These are related products, up-sell products and cross-sell products.

Related products

Related products are intended to be purchased in addition to the original product. These items should ideally enhance the experience or benefit the product in some way. For example, a charging cable for a mobile phone would be an important related item that provides additional features to the original product. Alternatively, showing accessories that complete an outfit or match with an item of clothing the customer has bought can enhance the online shopping experience whilst increasing order revenue.

Up-sell products

Up-sell products are typically a superior product or upgrade that replace the customers original choice. For example, after selecting a desktop PC, the customer could be presented with the option to upgrade the processor or memory. With an upsell you’re trying to get the customer to spend more on the same product or product type they are looking at.

Cross-sell products

Cross-sell products are more akin to impulse buys found at the checkout; they appear on the shopping cart page and offer last minute purchases. As with up-sell products, customers may be more inclined to buy if the item is related to their original purchase in some way. For example, a customer who buys a pair of black leather shoes may also be interested in shoe polish.  It’s a good idea to introduce a promo or discount at the checkout to increase uptake.

How to add related products

To add related products in Magento navigate to your full product list by selecting Catalog and Manage Products.

Search for the product you want to add related products too. If you have a specific product in mind, search by name or SKU, or you can work down your product list.

Edit the desired product and choose Related Products from the left-hand menu bar.

Ensure Any is selected from the drop down menu.

Enter the SKU, product name or ID number to search for the related product you want to add.

Click the orange Search button on the right-hand side to search for the product.

Select the checkbox to the left of the relevant product to add the item as a related product. 

Continue with the same process to add more related products.

Click Save and Continue Edit once you’ve added all your related items.

You can now decide on the order you want them to appear in by putting a number in the Position column on the far right. 1^st position is 0.

Save your changes as normal and you’re done.

This process is the same for the other two product relationships, by selecting instead either ‘up-sell’ or ‘cross sell’ from the left-hand column.