Frequently Bought Together

Frequently Bought Together shows complementary products next to the product a shopper is viewing and gives a discount when they buy them together.

In this article

• What Frequently Bought Together does
• Before you start
• Create a Frequently Bought Together campaign
• Choose suggested products
• Set the discount
• How the discount works in the cart
• Customize the widget
• Cart notice and popup
• Checkout upsell
• Tips and limitations

What Frequently Bought Together does

A Frequently Bought Together campaign has two parts:

• Anchor products: the products whose page shows the widget. The product being viewed is always the first item in the widget, labeled "This item".
• Suggested products: the products recommended alongside the anchor. You pick them yourself, or let the app pick them automatically with AI recommendation.

Shoppers tick the suggested products they want, pick variants, and add everything to the cart with one button. The discount is applied automatically at checkout by Pareto's Shopify discount, so no discount code is needed.

The campaign can appear in four places:

• A widget on the product page
• A notice and a suggestion popup on the cart page
• A card in the cart recommendation slider
• An upsell block on the checkout, thank you, and order status pages

Before you start

• Frequently Bought Together is available on the Basic plan and above. It is not available on the Free plan.
• The app embed must be turned on in your theme so the widget can appear on product pages.
• Specific collections, All products, and Group products as anchor options need the Basic plan or higher.
• Segment and Market targeting needs the Advance or Unlimited plan.

Create a Frequently Bought Together campaign

1. In Pareto, go to Campaigns and click Create campaign.
2. Choose one of the two templates:

• Frequently Bought Together: you pick the suggested products yourself.
• AI-powered bought together: the app picks suggested products automatically.

3. Enter a Campaign name. This is required. Optionally enter a Display name, which shoppers see instead of the campaign name.
4. Under Apply offer to, choose which products show the widget:

• Specific products (default)
• Specific product variants
• All products
• Specific collections
• Group products

5. Under Suggested products, choose Manual pick or AI recommendation. See Choose suggested products.
6. In the Discount card, set the discount value and type. See Set the discount.
7. Optionally set Customer, Schedule, Segment/Market, and Limit discount, the same as in other campaign types.
8. Open the Display settings tab to style the widget, then the Checkout upsell tab if you want the upsell block.
9. Click Save.

Choose suggested products

Manual pick

1. Select Manual pick.
2. Click to browse and add products. You must add at least one product, or Save shows "Products have not been selected yet!".
3. Set a Quantity for each suggested product. The default is 1. This is the quantity added to the cart and needed for the discount.
4. Drag the products to change their order in the widget.

Good to know:

• Every variant of a suggested product can be chosen by the shopper. You cannot limit suggestions to specific variants.
• If a product is both an anchor and a suggestion, it is removed from the suggestions automatically.
• There is no maximum number of suggested products.

AI recommendation

1. Select AI recommendation.
2. Set Maximum suggested products, a whole number from 1 to 10. The default is 3.
3. Set Quantity per suggested product, a whole number of 1 or more. The default is 1. The same quantity applies to every suggestion.

Suggestions are generated separately for each anchor product, in this order:

1. Complementary products from Shopify's product recommendations
2. Related products from Shopify's product recommendations
3. Other products from the same collection as the anchor

The anchor product and duplicates are skipped. The preview on the right shows sample suggestions for the first anchor product.

Set the discount

Choose one discount type for the whole campaign:

The helper text under the Suggested products card sums up the rule: the discount applies when the anchor and at least one suggested product are in the cart.

Subscription discounts and Fixed price are not available for Frequently Bought Together.

How the discount works in the cart

The discount applies when the cart has:

• at least one anchor product, and
• at least one suggested product in at least its required quantity.

Shoppers do not need to buy every suggestion. Suggestions that are missing from the cart are simply left out, and the discount applies to the anchor and the suggestions that are there.

Example: the anchor is a Coffee Maker. The suggestions are Filters (quantity 1) and a Mug (quantity 2). The discount is 10%.

• Cart has Coffee Maker and Filters: 10% off the Coffee Maker and the Filters.
• Cart has Coffee Maker and 1 Mug: no discount, because the Mug needs a quantity of 2.
• Cart has Coffee Maker only: no discount.

Multiple sets: if the shopper buys more than one anchor, the discount covers as many full sets as the cart holds. For example, 2 Coffee Makers and 2 Filters gives 2 discounted sets. 2 Coffee Makers and 1 Filter gives 1 discounted set, and the second Coffee Maker is full price.

Customize the widget

Open the Display settings tab.

1. Under Layout, pick one:

• Grid: cards side by side, Amazon style (default)
• Stacked: a row of thumbnails with a list below
• Vertical list: one product per row
• Carousel: a horizontal slider, best for 4 or more products

2. Turn Show variant selector on to let shoppers choose a variant for each product.
3. Turn Show original price on to show the full price struck through next to the discounted price.
4. In the Labels tab, edit the text:

• Title card: supports {{campaign_name}} and {{display_name}}
• Badge text: supports {{discount}}, for example "{{discount}} OFF"
• Text total and Text button
• Anchor item label: the "This item" tag, up to 30 characters
• Recovery nudge: shown under unticked suggestions. Supports {{product_name}} and {{discount}}

5. Use the Color and Font tabs to match your theme.
6. Click Save.

On screens narrower than 768px, the widget always uses the Vertical list layout.

Cart notice and popup

When a cart item is an anchor but the bundle is not complete, a notice appears under that item to invite the shopper to add the suggestions. The notice disappears once the discount is applied.
To set it up, go to Display settings > Labels:

1. Under Notice in cart, edit the Cart notice text. Supports {{discount}}.
2. Under Pop-up suggestions, choose a mode:

• Automatically display suggestion popup: the popup opens by itself on the cart page.
• No auto display (show notice only): the popup opens only when the shopper clicks the notice.

3. Edit the popup Header (up to 100 characters), Description (up to 200), Discount badge text (up to 30), and Button text (up to 30).
4. Choose whether to show the variant selector, discount badge, and items summary in the popup.

Checkout upsell

The Checkout upsell tab shows the bundle as an upsell block after the shopper reaches checkout.

1. Choose where to show it:

• Checkout page (Shopify Plus stores only)
• Thank you page
• Order status page

2. Edit the Title, Button text, and Total label.
3. Choose whether to show the discount badge and the original price.
4. Optionally add a countdown.
5. Click Save.

To show the block, add the Pareto - Upsell Bundle block in the Shopify checkout editor.

Tips and limitations

• The quantity of each suggested product is set by you. Shoppers cannot change it in the widget.
• If a shopper unticks every suggestion, the button adds only the anchor product, without a discount.
• After adding to cart, the shopper is taken to the cart page.
• In AI recommendation mode, if Shopify returns no suggestions for a product, the widget is hidden on that product page.
• Frequently Bought Together campaigns cannot use product exclusions.
• Stock is not checked in the widget. If a suggested variant is out of stock, Shopify shows an error when the shopper adds to cart. Consider removing out-of-stock products from Manual pick lists.

Updated on: 18/09/2026