Product recommendations help customers discover additional products while browsing your store. Depending on your theme and Shopify setup, these recommendations can appear as related products, complementary products, or both.
Pixel Union themes use Shopify’s product recommendation features to display relevant products on product pages. Recommendations are managed partly through your theme editor and partly through Shopify’s Search & Discovery app.
Types of product recommendations
Shopify supports two main recommendation types:
Related products
Related products are similar items that customers may also be interested in. These are often shown in a section such as You may also like, Related products, or Recommended products.
Related products can be generated automatically by Shopify based on product data, purchase history, product descriptions, and related collections. You can also manually select related products using Shopify’s Search & Discovery app.
Complementary products
Complementary products are items that pair well with the product being viewed. These are often add-on items or products that customers may purchase together with the current product.
Complementary products are not automatically generated. They need to be manually selected in Shopify’s Search & Discovery app before they can appear on the storefront.
Before you begin
To use product recommendations, make sure that:
- Your theme includes a product recommendations, related products, or complementary products section/block.
- The section or block has been added to the product page template in the theme editor.
- The recommended products are active and published to the Online Store sales channel.
- The recommended products are in stock, priced above $0.00, and are not gift cards.
- The recommended products are not already in the customer’s cart.
Some settings and section names may vary depending on your Pixel Union theme and theme version.
Add product recommendations to the product page
- In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
- Find the theme you want to edit, then select Customize.
- Use the template selector at the top of the theme editor to open a product page template, such as Products > Default product.
- In the left-side section panel, look for a section named Product recommendations, Related products, Recommended products, or similar.
- If the section is already available, open it and enable the available display settings.
- If the section is not already added, select Add section, then choose the related products or product recommendations section available in your theme.
- Adjust the available settings, such as the heading, number of products, layout, or visibility options.
- Select Save.
Older versions of some themes may include a setting such as Show dynamic recommendations inside the product recommendations section. Enable this setting to display Shopify’s automatic recommendations.
Add complementary products
Complementary products are usually added as a block inside the product information area of the product page.
- In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
- Find the theme you want to edit, then select Customize.
- Open a product page template, such as Products > Default product.
- In the product information section, select Add block.
- Choose Complementary products, if available.
- Adjust the available block settings, such as the heading, layout, number of products, or collapsible row options.
- Select Save.
If the complementary products block is not available in your theme editor, your theme or theme version may not support this block natively.
Choose products in Shopify Search & Discovery
Shopify’s Search & Discovery app lets you manually choose related and complementary products.
- In your Shopify admin, go to Apps > Search & Discovery.
- Select Product recommendations.
- Select Add recommendations.
- Choose the product you want to customize recommendations for.
- Select up to 10 complementary products.
- Select up to 10 related products.
- Choose whether to show only the manually selected related products or show them alongside Shopify’s automatically generated recommendations.
- Select Save.
Why recommendations may not appear
Product recommendations may not appear on the storefront if:
- The product recommendations section or block has not been added to the product page template.
- The section or block is hidden in the theme editor.
- No recommendations are available for the current product.
- Complementary products have not been manually selected in Search & Discovery.
- The recommended products are draft, archived, unpublished, sold out, or priced at $0.00.
- The recommended product is a gift card.
- The recommended product is already in the customer’s cart.
- The theme version does not support the recommendation type you are trying to display.
- Custom code or app changes are affecting the product page template.
Related product recommendations can also change over time as Shopify updates the recommendations based on product and store data.
Troubleshooting
If recommendations are not displaying as expected:
- Confirm that the product recommendations section or block is added and visible in the theme editor.
- Check that the product page is using the template you edited.
- Review the selected products in the Search & Discovery app.
- Confirm that the recommended products are active, published, in stock, and priced above $0.00.
- Test on a product that has several active products in the same collection or manually assigned recommendations.
- Preview the behavior on a fresh, unedited copy of the theme to check whether custom code or apps are affecting the section.