Magento Guide → Product → Recommendations

Magento product recommendations: a complete beginner’s guide

What are product recommendations in Magento?

Magento product recommendations are dynamic suggestions designed to help your customers discover products they’re most likely to be interested in. These can appear in a variety of formats and on different parts of your storefront, such as related items on a product page, “You may also like” suggestions on the homepage, or upsells in the cart.

Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce product recommendations

Magento product recommendation options depend on the version and tools your store uses.

Magento stores don’t all have the same recommendation tools available. Magento Open Source users can still build strong recommendation experiences, but they may need more manual merchandising or a third-party extension.

How Magento product recommendations work

In Adobe Commerce, product recommendations are powered by Adobe Sensei, an AI and machine learning platform that learns from customer behavior. Rather than requiring merchants to create manual product rules, Sensei automatically surfaces recommendations based on actual shopper activity.

1.  JavaScript is added to your storefront to track real-time shopper behavior, like clicks, views, and purchases.
2.  This behavioral data is sent to Adobe’s cloud infrastructure for processing.
3.  Adobe Sensei uses this data, along with your catalog metadata, to generate product suggestions.
4.  The engine continuously learns and refines suggestions over time, improving with every visit.

Main types of Magento product recommendations

Magento offers different recommendation types for different shopping moments. Choose the type based on the page, shopper intent, and sales goal.

Shopper-based, item-based, popularity-based, and similarity-based recommendations

• Shopper-based recommendations use a specific shopper’s actions to personalize suggestions, such as “Recommended for You.”
• Item-based recommendations use interactions with a specific product, such as “Customers who viewed this also viewed.”
• Popularity-based recommendations use aggregate site behavior, such as trending products or most purchased products.
• Similarity-based recommendations use catalog attributes or visual similarity to suggest similar items. This can be especially useful when a store doesn’t have much behavior data yet.

Where to display product recommendations

Effective placement should support the way shoppers move through your store. Each block should feel useful at that moment, whether it helps someone compare options, find an add-on, or continue browsing.

Common placements include:

• Homepage: Feature trending or personalized products to draw shoppers in.
• Category pages: Suggest “More like this” or trending products to keep shoppers browsing.
• Product pages: Use related products, upsells, viewed/viewed, or viewed/bought widgets to suggest relevant alternatives or add-ons.
• Cart and mini cart: Offer cross-sells or bought/bought suggestions before checkout.
• Thank-you pages: Encourage repeat visits with recommended products.
• Customer account pages: Re-engage returning shoppers with recently viewed or personalized items.
• Search result pages: Help shoppers continue browsing when search intent is clear.

Keep recommendation blocks visually distinct without overwhelming the page. Carousels tend to work well on mobile, while grids or horizontal blocks often perform better on desktop.

How to set up product recommendations in Magento

Step 1: Choose the goal

Start with the business goal before choosing the recommendation type.

Common goals include increasing average order value, improving product discovery, promoting accessories, moving slower inventory, improving personalization, or reducing abandoned carts.

Step 2: Choose the recommendation type

Pick the recommendation type based on the goal and page placement. For example, use cross-sells in the cart, trending products on the homepage, and related products or upsells on product pages.

Step 3: Enable or configure product recommendations

 If you’re using Adobe Commerce, product recommendations are built in and relatively easy to configure.

A typical Adobe Commerce workflow includes:

1. Install or enable the Product Recommendations module.
2. Configure the Commerce Services Connector with the required API keys and SaaS Data Space.
3. Confirm catalog sync and behavioral data collection.
4. Go to Marketing > Product Recommendations in Admin.
5. Create recommendation units.
6. Choose the recommendation type, page type, placement, and display settings.
7. Deploy the unit to the storefront or use Page Builder where appropriate.
8. Monitor clicks, revenue, and conversions.

Step 4: Let behavioral data collect

Behavior-based recommendations need data. If your store is new or low traffic, start with catalog-only options such as “More like this” or visual similarity while the system gathers more shopper behavior.

Step 5: Test the storefront experience

Check that recommendation blocks look good, show relevant products, work on mobile, and don’t slow down the page.

Manual vs automated Magento product recommendations

Manual recommendations can work well for smaller catalogs. Larger stores usually benefit from automation because product relationships change often, and customer behavior can reveal opportunities that manual merchandising may miss.

Combining AI with merchandising rules

AI recommendations can automate much of the product matching, but merchants still need a clear strategy. You may want to combine AI-powered recommendations with manual rules or merchandising goals when you need more control.

For example, you may want to promote higher-margin products, avoid out-of-stock items, feature seasonal products, push accessories with specific product lines, or support a current campaign.

Use automation for scale, then add rules when you need to support a campaign, margin goal, or inventory push.

How to measure Magento product recommendation performance

Product recommendations should be reviewed regularly.

Track:

• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Average order value
• Add-to-cart rate
• Revenue per visitor
• Recommendation-assisted revenue
• Product views from recommendation blocks
• Engagement by placement

Measure each recommendation unit and placement separately. A cart recommendation may have a different goal than a homepage recommendation.

Benefits of using product recommendations

Key benefits include:

1. Higher average order value: Suggesting related items or bundles encourages customers to buy more.
2. Improved conversion rates: Personalized recommendations help shoppers find what they need faster.
3. Better customer experience: Showing relevant products reduces friction and improves satisfaction.
4. Smarter merchandising: Data can help guide which products get promoted.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

New Magento users often run into the same avoidable issues when setting up recommendations.

• Misconfigured catalog data: Incomplete or outdated product info leads to bad suggestions. Keep your catalog updated.
• Out-of-stock recommendations: Avoid recommending products shoppers cannot buy.
• No mobile testing: Always preview how recommendation blocks render on different screen sizes.
• Ignoring analytics: Use reporting to tweak or remove underperforming widgets.

Performance and hosting considerations

Magento product recommendations can add storefront scripts, widgets, tracking, reporting, API calls, and personalization logic. That can support a better shopping experience, but it also means performance matters.

Recommendations work best when hosting, caching, database performance, search, and frontend performance can support personalization without slowing the store.

Product recommendations for headless or PWA storefronts

Headless Magento and PWA storefronts may need extra integration work to display product recommendations correctly. Custom frontends may rely on APIs, SDKs, GraphQL, or custom event collection.

This is especially important if you rely on recommendation analytics, because tracking may need to be implemented differently on non-standard storefronts.

Magento product recommendation FAQs

Getting started with Magento product recommendations

Magento product recommendations help shoppers discover relevant products and help store owners increase engagement, average order value, and sales opportunities.

Start by choosing one goal, one recommendation type, and one placement. Then test performance before adding more recommendation blocks.

Magento product recommendations work best when your store can support personalization, tracking, caching, and fast page loads. Explore Liquid Web Magento hosting for infrastructure built to help Magento stores perform with confidence.