If we have to learn from someone to optimize our Ecommerce, who better than Amazon, the current king of e-commerce, right?
There are many things we can learn from Amazon to sell more, and one of them is how well its sales funnel works, always aimed at getting you to include more products in your cart.
And, with this in mind, one of the elements that we are used to seeing is that section called “Frequently bought together“
This type of related products is a kind of cross-selling without having to go through the cart, which appears under the current product, encouraging you to take more products with you, and sometimes get a discount or other advantages.
Whether it is to expand your reading and knowledge if we are talking about books, or to add a case and a headset to your new tablet, it is a very good sales argument, which if well used, will increase the amount per cart.
But the question is: Can we incorporate this kind of functionality in WooCommerce?
And the answer, as always, is yes, thanks to the powerful plugins, of which we are going to know the best, both free and paid, seeing the differences between them.
Free plugins to add the “usually bought together” feature
In this category, of all the plugins that are available, which are a few, I want to highlight 2.
WPC Frequently Bought Together for WooCommerce
This free plugin offers very interesting functionalities to be able to show products bought together regularly, frequently, or whatever you want to call them.
- Predictive search by SKU, title, phrase
- Define the discount price by entering a percentage or a fixed amount
- Drag and drop to reorganize the order of the products
- Activate/deactivate all default options
- Customize the position of the product list
- Various button interfaces
- Adjusting product visibility, image and price
- Customizable before/after texts
- Show/hide product details
- Allow customers to choose quantities
- Set minimum/maximum quantity for the offer
- Add separately according to which products
- When no product is chosen, you can specify that targeted/crossover sales be used
As you can see, it is quite complete, and the interface from which to add the products purchased together is very simple.
And, then, the in-store display, although somewhat removed from the Amazon look, is admittedly very practical, maybe even better depending on the type of stores.
Personally, I don’t think it’s the best interface in the world, since it’s far from the more tried and tested Amazon model, but it’s a very good option, and easy to configure, especially everything related to discounts.
YITH WooCommerce Frequently Bought Together
From the hand of Yith, something that is always a guarantee, we have this free plugin with which to offer the feature of products purchased together usually in our online store WooCommerce.
A highlight of this free plugin:
- You can specify an unlimited number of suggested products for each product in your store
- Customization of the title of the section “Frequently bought together“.
- Customization of the text and colors of the “Add to Cart” button in the “Frequently Bought Together” section
The settings, in the administration menu Yith -> Frequently Bought Together is simple and easy to configure.
Then all you have to do is select the products that will be displayed to buy them together, in the data sheet of each product.
The final aspect of the section of bought together is usually perfect.
If there is something to highlight in this plugin is the appearance of the section, but on the other hand lacks many options for selection and customization of products, which does have the previous one, also free.
Which of the free plugins do I choose?
Although the first one is much more complete, it still has some shortcomings, such as not being able to select variations, and above all the integration with the product page, which although original, is not what the customer is used to, and that always plays against us when it comes to filling the cart, getting more sales.
On the other hand, the free Yith does follow exactly the Amazon design guidelines, and this is good, but it is too limited in terms of options.
So I personally would not choose any, because it is about having a powerful sales tool, without limits, and I am afraid that in this case, we will have to opt yes or yes for premium plugins, which really help us to sell more in each cart.
Premium plugins to add the “frequently bought together” feature
Having said that, let’s see what the main premium plugins offer us with which to add the section we usually buy together.
Premmerce Frequently Bought Together ($49/year)
This payment plugin is based on the creation of product bundles, so as soon as you install it you have to go through the Product Bundles section and create the product groups that, later on, we will use as bought together frequently.
Then, in the data of each product, we will select the bundle that we will associate to it, as a list of products usually bought together.
The products associated with the bundles can be chosen, associated with discounts, etc.
Or you can create bundles directly associated to product categories.
And, when you have your bundles, you can customize the look of the section of products usually bought together from the customizer.
The summary of its main characteristics would be this:
- It can be used with simple and variable products, associating bundles to concrete variations.
- Creation of bundles by category.
- Personalization of the aspect, position, styles, etc.
- Creation of offers with two or more products.
- Assigning several offers to a product.
- Assigning discounts by percentage or fixed price to all products in a bundle.
- Deactivate/activate bundles without deleting them.
What did I like about the plugin?
What, at first sight, seemed to be a departure from the “natural” way of working with products, through bundles, is ultimately very practical and simple, and can also be done on your own page or directly on the product’s editing page.
Also, the fact that it is integrated into the customizer for the look of the plugin seems to me a good idea, as it is the usual way we have to customize everything.
What did I like less about the plugin?
Before trying the Yith premium plugin I found it to be a very good solution, quite customizable, but I have to admit that after installing and trying the next plugin in this guide I was overwhelmed, as the difference between the two is abysmal.
There are things that I like more from this one than Yith’s, but the possibilities of customization and automation of Yith’s premium plugin (below) are overwhelming, and vital at times.
Yith WooCommerce Frequently Bought Together (€69,99/year)
In theory, this plugin is the premium version of its free counterpart, but the difference is so great that you almost better forget about its free version. In fact, I think they should even remove the free version from the WordPress.org directory, or add more features because the jump is brutal, exaggerated.
I understand that we must offer a free version, almost a trial, but it does not show, the difference is so great that they seem different plugins, especially when there are free plugins that offer much more than the free version of this.
Having said that, let’s see what the one that -I anticipate you- offers is the best and most complete plugin with which to add sections of usually bought together.
To begin with, the labeling and style options are really complete, all in the plugin’s own section, in the menu Yith -> Frequently Bought Together.
In this case you do not use the customizer for colors and so on, but there are settings for almost everything.
And for everything else there are general settings in which to customize every aspect and size of the plugin’s display.
But where the magic really happens is in the product data tab, because in the settings section of the plugin we will find all its potential.
Here you can do everything:
- Specify products purchased together for each variation.
- Select customized products or use the ones chosen as cross-selling or targeted.
- Choose whether to display all the selected products or only a certain quantity.
- Define if you want all products to be selected by default or leave this choice to the customer.
- Add additional text to help with the sale.
- Apply discounts by percentage or fixed quantity.
- Apply conditional discount if the customer reaches an amount and if you want to apply the discount only if the user chooses at least x products.
Once you decide on all the possibilities, the look of the product page is fantastic, and fully customizable, from the size of the thumbnails to the texts, including the position in which the products usually bought together will be shown.
As you will have seen the look is unbeatable, totally customizable, and with lots of adjustments and options, really complete.
What did I like about the plugin?
I find the amount of customization options essential, as well as how easy it is to configure the products purchased together on the product edition page, with their discounts, etc.
One thing the plugin has that no other has is the linked products settings page, on the plugin settings page, where you can see at a glance which products have products viewed together, to know where this customization is and where it is not.
What did I like less about the plugin?
I think Yith should abandon the idea of his own customization page and put everything that is aspect settings in the customizer, his natural place, and leave his settings page for the general options of the plugin.
I know that sometimes it can be confusing for the user to have to go to different sites depending on what they want to do but I think the site is the customizer.
Something that I would also add, which the Premmerce plugin does have, is the possibility of deactivating products bought together, not just deleting them, as well as being able to assign products bought together to entire categories, not because they are more effective, which they are not. It is always better to customize for each product, but sometimes it takes a lot of work.
Otherwise there is no doubt, it is much more complete than any other plugin, and above all more customizable. It’s another thing if you manage better by working on products or using bundles, but that’s a matter of taste.
And you, are you going to incorporate the products bought together regularly? Do you think it’s important to sell more?
Of course, I would like to know your opinion, about this kind of functionalities, if you think they contribute, if you have experience with them in terms of increasing global or per-cart sales, even if you use another system.
Read this post in Spanish: WooCommerce: Cómo mostrar productos comprados juntos habitualmente
