[Old UI] How to use Shopify's smart recommendations

Important Note: If you are not seeing smart recommendations and are a new store, you will need to wait until some orders come in in order for smart suggestions to start showing. In the meantime, you can setup some Global Cross Sells while you wait for orders to come in.

Cross Sell v3 now supports smart recommendations, which are based on Shopify's algorithm that predicts the most relevant products based on the product a customer is interacting with. These might be a good option if you:

(a) don't want to Handpick unique cross sells for all of your products
(b) Need unique suggestions for your products, and 
(c) if showing one set of suggestions via Global Product or Global Cart Cross Sells is not the right fit for your store

Once activated, the algorithm will identify recommended products based on data about products that were purchased together and products with similar descriptions. It will use this data to provide a mix of those related products to show as recommendations.

In cases where purchase or product description data aren't available for a given product, products from a related collection are shown.

How to enable 

For product pages:

1. Go to Settings -> Product Page Settings

2. Choose "show global product cross sells on all product pages..." or "only show global product cross sells on product pages if no handpicked cross sells exist"


3. Toggle on "use auto-generated smart recommendations"

4.Hit Save 

5. Clear your Global Product Cross Sells in the Dashboard (this is optional, see below) 

Once active, if Global Product Cross Sells exist, they will be appended and shown with the smart recommendations.. 

For cart pages:

1. Go to Settings -> Cart/Basket Page Settings

2. Choose "Show cross sell items on the cart/basket page" (leave "Use Handpicked Cross Sells..." checked OFF, other wise they will show if setup)3. Toggle on "use smart recommendations (auto generated) on your cart cross sells"

4.Hit Save 

5. Clear your Global Cart Cross Sells in the Dashboard (this is optional, see below) 

Once active, if Global Cart Cross Sells exists (or Handpicked Cross Sells are active & exist), they will be appended and shown with the auto generated recommendations. This behavior however is unpredictable, as Shopify might generate 3 or 15 "smart recommendations" based on its algorithm (and your Max Items setting). This is why we suggest clearing your "Global Product and/or Cart Cross Sells" in the Dashboard if using this option. 

Limitations

• The types of product recommendations that appear are determined by your online store and your Shopify plan:

  • Purchase history and product descriptions: Plus plan and having <7000 products published in your Online Store, with an English storefront
  • Purchase history only: Plus plan and having <7000 products published in your Online Store, with a non-English storefront
  • Purchase history only: Non-Plus plan and having <7000 products published in your Online Store
  • Collections: Any plan with >7000 products published in your Online Store

• You can't customize the recommendation algorithm to exclude specific products. 

• The recommendation algorithm doesn't use orders that have been imported from another store or ecommerce platform to generate product recommendations.

• Products that are out of stock / set to a price of 0 / gift cards, aren't included in recommendations.