What is cross merchandising?
Cross merchandising is placing related products side by side so one purchase suggests the next: the belt hung beside the trousers. It is also called secondary product placement. Online, the shelf is your product page and collection grid, where the matching product can sit in plain view.
Cross merchandising examples in retail
In-store displays pair products in three common ways. Complementary: salsa beside the chips. Occasion: a picnic table set with a blanket, a basket and cups. Impulse: lip balm by the register, where shoppers wait in line.
One placement can move a lot. Supermarket News reported in 2015 on a grocery chain that shelved $15 cherry pitters beside its bags of cherries and sold out in all 15 of its stores.
Cross merchandising vs cross-selling
Cross merchandising is placement. A cross-sell is an offer. The belt on the trousers rail asks nothing: a shopper passes it before choosing anything. A cross-sell appears once a product is in hand, on its page or in the cart, and asks for one more. The product page is where the two overlap.
Both sit inside merchandising, the wider job of deciding what shoppers see first. Visual merchandising covers how the whole display looks, and cross merchandising decides what stands beside what.
Cross merchandising on Shopify
For the product page, Shopify's free Search & Discovery app lets you pick up to 10 complementary products per item. In Horizon, they show through the "Recommended products" section once you set its "Type" to Complementary in the theme editor. Only products in stock appear.
For a collection, add the belt to your Trousers collection, set that collection's sort to "Manually" (you drag products into order) and place the belt among the trousers. A manual sort then stops moving best sellers or new arrivals up on its own.
A photo of the whole outfit puts the pair in one frame, and shoppable content lets a shopper buy each piece from it. A bundle sells the pair at one price. The Shopify merchandising guide covers ordering the rest of the collection.
Cross merchandising with Sledge
In Sledge merchandising, the "Inject product" strategy places a product from another collection onto a collection page Sledge shows, near the top, without adding it to that collection. On product pages and in the cart drawer, the Frequently Bought recommendation cross-sells what your own orders pair, and related products until orders come in. On a paid plan, Growth Intelligence reads your last 90 days of orders for products bought together and can suggest a bundle for a pair. It totals what its fixes could add, labeled "Est. potential", in your store's currency, then measures the result against real sales.
