Smart Product Suggestions on Squarespace: What Works and What Doesn't
Product suggestions on Squarespace sound simple. Show a customer what else to buy alongside what they're viewing. But the reality is more nuanced — some approaches work well, others don't, and knowing the difference saves you time and protects your store experience.
Here's an honest look at what works and what doesn't when it comes to smart product suggestions on Squarespace.
What Works: Data-Driven FBT Suggestions
Frequently Bought Together (FBT) suggestions — driven by your actual Squarespace order history — consistently outperform manually curated suggestions over time. Why? Because they reflect what your customers actually do, not what you think they should do.
A plugin like UpsellGrow analyses your order data and surfaces the product pairs that appear most often in the same transaction. These suggestions carry an implicit social proof signal: other customers who bought this also bought that. Trust and relevance in one suggestion.
Works best when: Your store has at least 50 to 100 orders of history to generate meaningful patterns. The more orders, the better.
What Works: Tightly Curated Manual Cross-Sells
Manually pairing products you know are complementary — because of your product knowledge and customer understanding — works well when done with specificity. One or two carefully chosen suggestions per trigger product, placed at the right moment in the buying journey.
Works best when: Your catalog has clear natural pairs, and you're selective about which products you suggest alongside which. Quality over quantity.
What Works: Bundle Offers With Clear Savings
A bundle showing the original price, the bundle price, and the savings amount in one clear widget is a high-converting format. The value proposition is instantly obvious. Customers don't have to calculate — they just see what they save.
Works best when: The bundle contains products with a natural relationship, and the discount is meaningful (15 percent or more).
What Doesn't Work: Generic Category Suggestions
Showing products from the same category as what the customer is viewing is almost useless. These are competing alternatives, not complementary additions. A customer looking at a blue linen shirt doesn't want to see a different blue linen shirt — they want to see the trousers or belt that goes with it.
What Doesn't Work: Too Many Suggestions
More than three or four product suggestions in a widget starts to look like a secondary catalog page. It creates choice paralysis rather than a clear, easy recommendation. One or two strong suggestions convert better than five mediocre ones.
What Doesn't Work: Suggestions at the Wrong Moment
A product suggestion that appears before the customer has engaged with the main product — or that interrupts the product description they're reading — feels intrusive. Position matters. Below Add to Cart, in the cart, or on the confirmation page are high-intent moments. Top of product page, before the customer has seen the product details, often isn't.
What Doesn't Work: Suggestions Without Analytics
Running product suggestions without tracking impressions, clicks, and conversions means you can't improve them. The first suggestions you create won't be your best ones. The data tells you what to change. Without it, you're flying blind.
The Bottom Line
Smart product suggestions work when they're relevant, timely, and informed by data. They don't work when they're generic, overwhelming, or placed at the wrong moment. Start with two or three carefully chosen cross-sell pairs, measure the results, and use what you learn to build out a more complete suggestion system.
Ready to Start Earning More From Every Order?
UpsellGrow adds upsells, cross-sells, bundles, and frequently bought together offers to your Squarespace store — across 5 pages and 19 positions. No coding. Setup takes minutes.