Complementary products

This feature was added in v5.6.0 on Jan 6, 2022. See our Changelog and theme update guide to learn more.

The Complementary products block displays recommended products that pair well with the main product.

• Show automated recommendations or select a custom list of products

• Display the block in the product overview's left or right column

• Display block as a collapsible row

For similar features, see guides for Product recommendations section and Cross sells in the cart.

Add complementary products

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Under Product overview, click (+) Add block and select Complementary products. Use the drag-and-drop handles ⋮⋮ to re-order blocks. Click the block to start customizing.

Editing a template changes all pages that use that template. To edit specific pages, you can create new templates or insert dynamic content with metafields

STEPS

In your theme editor (Customize):

1. Under Product overview, click (+) Add block and select Complementary Products.

2. Click on the new Complementary products block to open the settings.

3. Change the Heading to a short title of a few words.

4. Select which Column to display the Text block: Either the Right (in the product form) or the Left (beneath the product media).

5. Change the Maximum products to show using the slider.

6. Under Products to show, choose to use a Custom product list or Search & Discovery app recommendations.

7. (For custom product list) Click Select products to manually choose what products to display.

   Tip: Complementary products are ideally the same cost or lower as the original product.

   To show different products on different product pages, follow the steps below to add a Product metafield to use as a dynamic source.

8. (For Search & Discovery recommendations) Download Shopify's Search & Discovery app to use and customize automated recommendations. Learn more here ↗.
9. Choose whether to Enable swipe on mobile.

10. Choose to display the complementary products as a Collapsible row.

    As a collapsible row, the products Expand by default. You can choose to disable this option.

11. Click Save.

Add dynamic content for different products

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If you want to show different complementary products on specific product pages, you can use Shopify's metafields and dynamic sources. These features allow you to store custom information for each of your products and automatically display that information on the correct product pages.

Watch the video or follow the steps below to create metafields for your products, add complementary products to those metafields, then use Dynamic sources to connect those metafields to the complementary products block.

For a general introduction, see our Dynamic sources and metafields tutorial.

1. Create product list metafield

Create a Product metafield to add multiple complementary products to each product page in your Shopify Admin.

Shopify's Metafields lets you store additional information about your products. You can create custom fields to hold different types of information in your Shopify admin, and enter unique content for each of your products.

The steps below tell you how to add a metafield for storing text that you want to display in the collapsible rows block.

STEPS

In your theme editor (Customize):

1. Click the Complementary products block to open the settings.

2. Next to Custom product list, click the Insert dynamic source button and select (+) Add Metafield.

   Alternatively, go to Settings > Custom data in your Shopify admin.

3. Click the Products tab.

4. Click the Add definition button in the top-right.

5. Enter a Name that describes what information the metafield will contain. For example: "Related products".

   
6. Click (+) Select type button and select List of products.

7. Click Save.

2. Add products to metafield

Once you've created a product list Metafield, you can now add multiple products to those fields by going to your products in the Shopify admin.

STEPS

In your Shopify Admin:

1. In the Shopify admin, open one of your Products.

2. Scroll down to the Metafields section and find your product list metafield, then click on the field to Select products.

   
3. Click Save.

4. Repeat steps 1 - 3 to populate the product list metafield for each of your products.

3. Insert metafields as dynamic sources

You can go to the theme editor to insert a Dynamic source in the Complementary products block.

STEPS

In your theme editor (Customize):

1. Click on a Complementary products block to open the settings.

2. Click the Insert dynamic source button next to Customer product list

   
3. Select the Metafield that you created.

4. You can now preview your store to confirm the correct product list appears when viewing different products.

5. Click Save.

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Related links

Product template Cart cross sells Recommended products section