How to Add Frequently Bought Together to WooCommerce
When running a WooCommerce store, every detail matters, from product images to descriptions to the layout of your checkout page. But one feature consistently proves its worth when it comes to increasing average order value: the “Frequently Bought Together” product recommendation.
It mirrors the customer-friendly tactics of ecommerce giants like Amazon, and it taps into the psychology of convenience and social proof at the same time. Learning how to add Frequently Bought Together to WooCommerce opens the door to increased sales, happier customers, and better product visibility, without heavy manual effort once it’s set up. Updated June 2026 to reflect the latest plugin options.
You’ll learn not just the how, but also the what and why behind this feature. Whether you’re launching a new store or optimizing an existing one, integrating this upsell strategy can make a tangible difference to your bottom line.
What Is “Frequently Bought Together” in WooCommerce?
The “Frequently Bought Together” feature is a product recommendation module that suggests related or complementary products directly on a product page. Typically, these are items that previous customers have purchased in combination with the one currently being viewed.
For example, if you sell cameras, the section might recommend tripods, SD cards, and camera bags. Done well, this mimics intelligent shopping assistants, offering helpful suggestions while subtly encouraging customers to spend more per visit.
WooCommerce doesn’t include this out of the box, it has to be added through a plugin or custom code. It’s a visual, data-driven prompt that nudges users toward bundled purchases with minimal extra clicks, which is exactly why understanding how to add it properly is worth the setup time.
Why Frequently Bought Together Matters for WooCommerce Stores
Online shoppers value convenience above almost everything else. When customers can quickly find products that work well together, they’re more likely to purchase those items in the same order rather than coming back later, or never coming back at all.
From a business perspective, the feature meaningfully boosts average order value. Rather than relying on one product per customer, you multiply purchase potential on every single product page. It also improves the overall shopping experience: when a customer sees a genuinely relevant bundle, it signals that the store understands what they need, and that kind of thoughtfulness converts.
For store owners, implementing this feature positions your shop closer to the polished, data-informed experiences offered by major retailers, without requiring a data science team to pull it off.
How to Add Frequently Bought Together to WooCommerce
There are several practical methods here, and the right one depends on your skill level, budget, and how much customization you actually need.
Method 1: Using a Dedicated Plugin
The easiest and most recommended route for most stores is a plugin built specifically for this purpose. Options like Frequently Bought Together for WooCommerce and WPC Frequently Bought Together are mature, well-supported, and require no coding at all.
Step-by-step:
First, install and activate the plugin. Navigate to Plugins, then Add New, in your WordPress dashboard, search for a relevant plugin like “WPC Frequently Bought Together,” and install and activate it.
Second, configure the settings. Go to the plugin’s settings page, choose default layouts, discounts, and product selection logic, and decide whether you want automatic recommendations or manually assigned products.
Third, assign linked products. Go to a product page in the backend, scroll to the “Frequently Bought Together” section, and add the related products you want bundled with it.
Fourth, test on the front end. Visit the live product page, confirm the bundle appears and functions correctly, and test the add-to-cart flow along with any discount logic.
This method suits most users because it combines ease of use with real customization. It also lets you apply bundle discounts or build smarter recommendations based on actual purchase history rather than guesswork.
Method 2: Custom Code Implementation
If you want a lighter footprint or something genuinely tailor-made, custom code is an option, though it requires comfort with PHP and WooCommerce hooks.
The rough approach: hook into woocommerce_after_single_product_summary, query related or upsell products using WooCommerce’s built-in functions, build a custom output section and style it with CSS, and handle the add-to-cart logic programmatically.
This gives you maximum control, but it’s best reserved for developers or store owners genuinely comfortable editing theme files and child themes. A half-finished custom implementation is worse than a well-configured plugin.
Choosing the Right Plugin: Features That Matter
With several solid plugins on the market, picking the right one is a real decision, not a coin flip. Here’s what separates the useful options from the bloated ones.
Compatibility and Speed
Make sure the plugin integrates cleanly with your theme and doesn’t slow the site down. A bloated plugin that loads unnecessary scripts on every page can hurt user experience more than the feature helps it, especially on mobile.
Customization Options
The strongest plugins let you control layout and position, manual versus automatic product selection, pricing and discount rules, and add-to-cart behavior. Pick something that matches your store’s branding and existing user flow rather than forcing your design around the plugin’s defaults.
Reporting and Analytics
Some of the more advanced plugins offer performance tracking, showing exactly which bundles convert best. These insights let you adjust your bundling strategy over time instead of setting it once and hoping it keeps working.
Design Matters: Positioning and User Experience
Even the best upsell tool falls flat without good placement. Where and how you position the “Frequently Bought Together” section has a real effect on whether anyone notices it at all.
Position It Strategically
Most stores place it just below the product description or near the “Add to Cart” button. That keeps it visible without cluttering the page. Some plugins also support placing the bundle in a sidebar or a modal, depending on your layout and theme.
Focus on Visuals
Use clear product thumbnails, short titles, and dynamic price updates that reflect the bundle total in real time. If you’re offering a discount, make it visually obvious rather than buried in fine print. Simplicity wins here: show customers exactly what they get and why it benefits them.
Best Practices to Maximize Results
Setting up the feature is just the starting line. A few practices consistently separate stores that see real lift from ones that add the feature and forget about it.
Bundle Logically
Don’t throw random products together for the sake of hitting a bundle count. Use actual purchase data where you have it, or basic product logic where you don’t. Pairing genuinely related accessories or commonly co-purchased items produces far better results than arbitrary groupings.
Offer Real Incentives
A small discount or free shipping threshold tied to the bundle increases both conversion rate and average order size. It also creates a mild sense of urgency that a plain recommendation without an incentive doesn’t.
Test and Adjust
Monitor performance regularly. Run basic A/B tests on layout, product combinations, and offer structure. The more data you accumulate, the sharper your recommendations get over time, and stale bundles that never get revisited tend to underperform quietly for months, sometimes without anyone noticing until a quarterly sales review flags flat average order value.
Common Mistakes That Undercut the Feature
A handful of mistakes show up repeatedly on stores that add this feature and don’t see the lift they expected. The most common is manually assigning bundles once at setup and never revisiting them, product catalogs change, seasonal relevance shifts, and a bundle that made sense at launch can quietly become irrelevant six months later. Another is bundling for the sake of hitting a round number of items rather than genuine relevance, three well-chosen products beat five loosely related ones every time.
A third mistake is ignoring mobile layout specifically. Frequently Bought Together sections often render as a horizontal row of thumbnails that were designed and tested on desktop, and on a narrow viewport that row can get cramped, forcing awkward horizontal scrolling or images too small to actually evaluate. Test the exact layout on a phone before considering the feature done, not just the desktop version.
A fourth, more subtle mistake is stacking too many upsell mechanisms on one page, Frequently Bought Together, a separate “related products” grid, and an “upsells” carousel, all competing for the same visual real estate. When everything is trying to sell something, nothing gets the customer’s full attention. Pick the one or two mechanisms that fit your catalog and give them room to work rather than cramming in every available tactic.
Frequently Bought Together for Different Store Types
How this feature performs varies meaningfully by what you’re actually selling. Stores with genuinely complementary physical products, electronics, kitchen goods, outdoor gear, see the strongest and most obvious lift, because the logic of “you’ll need this too” is immediately clear to the shopper. Fashion and apparel stores do well pairing items that form a complete outfit or look, though this requires more thoughtful manual curation than an automated “customers also bought” algorithm typically produces on its own.
Digital product and software stores can still use the feature effectively, bundling a plugin with a related extension, or a course with a workbook, but the psychology shifts slightly: since there’s no physical inconvenience to ordering items separately later, the incentive (a bundle discount, in particular) tends to matter more than it does for physical goods where shipping cost and delivery timing already nudge customers toward buying together. Subscription and service-based stores get the least natural mileage from a classic Frequently Bought Together widget and often do better with tiered package upsells instead, though a hybrid approach (services plus a genuinely complementary one-time product) can still work well when the pairing is real.
How This Differs From Related Products, Cross-Sells, and Upsells
WooCommerce ships with a few native product relationship fields, and it’s worth being precise about how they differ from a dedicated Frequently Bought Together module, since store owners often conflate them and end up with redundant, competing sections on the same page.
Related products are generated automatically based on shared categories or tags, they’re a general “you might also be interested in this” signal, not a purchase-pattern-based recommendation. Upsells are manually assigned alternatives, typically a pricier or higher-quality version of the same type of product, shown to nudge the customer toward a better option before they commit. Cross-sells appear in the cart itself and suggest complementary add-ons at the point of checkout, a phone case cross-sold against a phone, for instance.
Frequently Bought Together is distinct from all three: it’s specifically about items genuinely purchased together, shown at the moment of product evaluation rather than in the cart, and it’s usually presented as a bundle with a combined price rather than as a simple list of suggestions. Understanding this distinction matters because running all four simultaneously without a clear hierarchy just creates visual noise. Most stores get the best results using Frequently Bought Together on the product page and cross-sells in the cart, while leaving related products and upsells as secondary, lower-visual-weight elements.
Real-World Examples of Success
A WooCommerce store selling kitchen gadgets added “Frequently Bought Together” recommendations, spatulas, cookbooks, and non-stick pans alongside a frying pan, and saw a 32% increase in average cart value over three months. A beauty brand offering facial kits saw something similar: when customers added a facial cleanser to their cart, the store suggested a toner and moisturizer as a natural next step, which led to more complete skincare routines and meaningfully higher revenue per order. Neither result came from a fancy algorithm, just sensible pairing and clear presentation.
How Frequently Bought Together Compares to Other Upsell Tactics
It’s worth understanding where this feature sits relative to the other upsell tools WooCommerce store owners typically reach for. Cross-sells, shown in the cart, catch customers after they’ve already committed to buying, which makes them useful but lower-impact since the customer’s attention is already narrowing toward checkout. Upsells, shown on the product page as “you might also like this pricier version,” compete directly with the product the customer is already considering, which can occasionally create hesitation rather than resolve it.
Frequently Bought Together sits in a sweet spot: it appears at the exact moment a customer is evaluating a purchase, and it reinforces the decision rather than second-guessing it, since the suggested items complement rather than compete with what’s already in view. Stores that run all three tactics together, rather than picking just one, typically see the strongest combined lift, but if you can only implement one, this is usually the highest-return starting point.
Setting Up Automatic Recommendations vs. Manual Curation
Most plugins in this space offer two ways to populate the bundles: automatic recommendations built from actual order history, and manual curation where you pick the paired products yourself. Automatic mode is genuinely powerful once you have enough order volume, it surfaces real co-purchase patterns you might not have anticipated, and it updates itself as buying behavior shifts without any ongoing work on your part. The tradeoff is that a new store with limited order history will get thin or occasionally nonsensical automatic pairings until enough data accumulates, sometimes months, depending on traffic.
Manual curation is the better starting point for new or lower-traffic stores. You already know your catalog better than an algorithm does with a handful of orders to learn from, and manually pairing a camera with a specific memory card and case guarantees relevance from day one. The practical approach most established stores land on is a hybrid: manual curation for hero products and best sellers where getting the pairing exactly right matters most, and automatic recommendations for the long tail of the catalog where manually curating every single product isn’t a realistic use of time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does WooCommerce have a built-in Frequently Bought Together feature?
No. WooCommerce doesn’t include this natively. You’ll need a plugin like WPC Frequently Bought Together or a custom code solution to add it to your store.
Can I add bundle discounts to Frequently Bought Together recommendations?
Yes. Most dedicated plugins support percentage or fixed-price discounts when customers add the bundled products together. Check your plugin’s settings for the discount configuration options specifically.
Will adding this feature slow down my WooCommerce store?
A well-coded plugin should have minimal performance impact. Choose lightweight options and test site speed before and after installation. Avoid plugins that load unnecessary scripts on every page rather than only on relevant product pages.
How many products should appear in a single bundle recommendation?
Two or three additional items alongside the main product tends to perform best. More than that and the section starts competing for attention with the core product information, which can actually depress conversion rather than help it.
Should out-of-stock products still appear in a bundle?
No, and most well-built plugins handle this automatically by excluding out-of-stock items from the recommendation. If yours doesn’t, check the settings for a stock-status filter, showing a bundle with a greyed-out unavailable item is a small but avoidable source of customer frustration right at the point of decision.
Final Thoughts: Elevate Every Product Page
The beauty of the “Frequently Bought Together” feature lies in its simplicity. It doesn’t require a total overhaul of your store, it enhances what’s already there, guiding customers toward smarter, more complete purchases. Once it’s set up properly, you unlock a high-ROI tactic that improves the buyer journey and boosts your bottom line, whether you implement it through a plugin or custom code.
Take the next step: implement this feature this week, start with your five or ten best-selling products where the pairing logic is obvious, and let your WooCommerce store start selling smarter, not harder.
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