I have always wondered how professional websites like ebay, amazon and a lot smaller websites decide what products to show you under related products. You know when you buy something and there is that recommendation section that you see afterwards where they say: People who bought this also bought this! Similarly in youtube when you are watching a video there is a bunch of other videos that you can see on the side that are somehow related. Usually they are actually related indeed even though they come from totally different places. But I bet that this can make too big and complex discussion so therefore I am just looking for some understanding of how to implement this on a small or average online store. I haven't done anything like this before and I don't want to lose myself in complexities. Here is what I have had in mind so far: - I know I can use simply categorizing but i already have links to items under different categories, besides there are products under completely different categories that can still be related. (example: blank CDs, optic drives, flash drives, or control remotes, batteries) - I can use the description of the product and some complex programs that crawl through the descriptions and tons of texts and decide which ones are related? (this will be too complicated for what I am trying to do and I am guessing big websites like youtube are using techniques like this) - or I can just keep track of what people watch and buy and then use that information to infer what is related? (I guess this is if you have a huge amount of customers, and this still looks somehow too complicated) - so the best I can think of is to use tags (specific words) for every product What do you think? What do you recommend is best for a small store with not a lot of customers? How many tags should I use?
As far as I know, there are several types of the additional products blocks possible in shopping carts. For instance, I use CS-Cart and it allows the following: - manually add the related products (you choose which products are related). - customers also bought - the products are displayed automatically from the previous orders you have. - recently viewed and newest products are also displayed automatically. If you have a small store, probably it will be better to add the related products manually.
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Seems like you're jumping ahead of yourself. Since you have a small store, focus on related products such as those in the same or similar category as the product is in or select the related products you want to show on a per product bases. Good luck and all the best to you.
The products probably share some kind of server-side connection like a set of keywords or categories. Every time one product in a category is selected, the system automatically chooses a group of products that share the same keywords, customers or categories.
Related products have the same section or the same category. For instance, if someone goes to buy a laptop of a specific model, the related products will show similar laptops.