Marketing Manager
FBT widgets are one of the highest-leverage AOV tactics on Shopify. When done right, they turn single-item purchases into multi-product orders without requiring new traffic, new campaigns, or new product launches. The customer is already on your product page with buying intent. FBT gives them a reason to add two or three more items before they check out.
This guide covers what FBT is, how it works, the two practical ways to set it up on Shopify, the top apps to consider, and an advanced strategy for combining FBT with volume discounts to compound your AOV lift.
Frequently Bought Together (FBT) is a product recommendation widget that suggests complementary items on your product page, with a one-click “Add All to Cart” button. It’s borrowed from Amazon’s playbook and works as one of the most reliable AOV levers on Shopify.
Two ways to set it up:
Top picks: Selleasy (best overall), Wiser (best AI depth). BOGOS and FBT by Code Black Belt are worth considering in specific cases.
For an advanced AOV play, layer volume discounts on top of your FBT bundle to reward customers who buy in larger quantities.
Frequently Bought Together is a product recommendation widget that displays 2 to 3 complementary products on a product page, along with a combined price and a one-click “Add All to Cart” button. It’s a format Amazon popularized, and most Shopify merchants use the term interchangeably with “Amazon-style recommendations.”
The goal is simple: surface items that customers typically buy alongside the main product, and make it frictionless to add them all to the cart in one action.
A standard FBT widget contains:
In the next section, we will take a deep dive into the benefits of using frequently bought together (FBT) bundles for Shopify stores and how to set them up.
FBT earns its place on the product page for five reasons:
For most Shopify stores, even a modest FBT setup can produce measurable AOV lift within the first few weeks, especially if your catalog has natural complementary pairings.
An FBT widget runs on three components: the recommendation logic (how pairings are generated), the widget UI (how they’re displayed), and the placement (where on the site they appear). Understanding each one helps you pick the right setup method and avoid common pitfalls like irrelevant pairings or weak placement.
There are three main ways an FBT system decides which products to pair:
Most advanced apps (like BOGOS, CBB, Wiser) offer all three, so you can start with manual pairings and switch to AI as your order data grows.
A standard FBT widget includes:
Where you place the FBT widget affects how often customers engage with it:
For most stores, product-page placement drives the strongest AOV lift. Cart and post-purchase placements work as secondary touchpoints.
AI-powered FBT needs order history to produce reliable pairings. This is the single biggest limitation new merchants run into.
⚠️ Watch out: If your store is new or your catalog has low-velocity products, AI FBT will produce weak results until you hit the volume threshold. The workaround is manual pairing. Start by hand-picking 5 to 10 “hero” pairings for your bestsellers, then switch to AI once you have enough order data.
There are two practical paths to setting up FBT on Shopify: the free native route using Shopify’s Search & Discovery app, or installing a dedicated FBT or bundle app. Each serves a different need.
| Shopify Search & Discovery | Dedicated FBT App | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Stores that want free related-product recommendations | Stores that want Amazon-style FBT with bundle pricing |
| Recommendation logic | Rule-based (manual) + Shopify’s native similarity | AI collaborative filtering + manual + rule-based |
| One-click “Add All to Cart” | ❌ | ✅ |
| Bundle discount support | ❌ | ✅ (percentage, fixed, tiered) |
| Volume discount layering | ❌ | ✅ (on supported apps) |
| Customization | Limited (theme-dependent) | Extensive (widget design, placement, rules) |
| Analytics | Basic (Shopify Analytics) | Advanced (CTR, bundle take-rate, AOV lift) |
| Cost | Free | Free plans available; paid tiers from around $9.99/month |
Shopify Search & Discovery is Shopify’s free native app that lets you configure related product recommendations on your product pages. It pulls from Shopify’s Product Recommendations API and displays results through Online Store 2.0 app blocks, so any modern Shopify theme can render them without custom code.
With this app, you can recommend products that are frequently bought together based on your past order history. If your store is new, this feature may not work yet, but you can manually select the products you want to recommend.
To learn more about what this app can do, read our “Shopify Search & Discovery App” review.
Step-by-step guide:
At this stage, the recommended products will be automatically generated by Shopify based on related items. However, you won’t have much control over which products are shown. If you want to manually choose specific products to be displayed in this section, proceed to Step 2.
To have more control over the recommended products, Shopify provides the Search & Discovery app, which allows you to manually select items that appear in the “Frequently Bought Together” widget.
By default, every Shopify store will have this app installed since this is an app developed by Shopify.
To customize your recommendations, follow these steps:
| 👍 Pros | 👎 Cons |
|---|---|
| Free and maintained by Shopify | No one-click “Add All to Cart” button |
| No third-party app dependency | No bundle pricing or discount engine |
| Works with any Online Store 2.0 theme | Displays as a standard carousel, not an Amazon-style FBT widget |
| Simple setup for basic related products | No AI collaborative filtering |
👑 Best for: Stores that want a free, low-commitment way to surface related products. It’s a solid first step before committing to a paid app, but it isn’t a true FBT widget.
⚠️ Watch out: Search & Discovery does not support a “frequently bought together” checkbox format or bundle discounts. If your goal is Amazon-style FBT with a combined price, you’ll need a dedicated app.
To better know what the app can do, see our “Shopify Search & Discovery App” review.
A dedicated FBT app gives you the full Amazon-style experience: AI-generated pairings, checkbox selection, combined bundle pricing, one-click add-to-cart, and advanced analytics. These apps are purpose-built for the format and unlock capabilities that Shopify’s native tools can’t match.
How it works:
Most apps offer a drag-and-drop visual builder, so the setup is typically completed without developer help.
| 👍 Pros | 👎 Cons |
|---|---|
| True Amazon-style FBT widget with checkboxes and one-click add-all | Monthly cost (though most have free plans) |
| AI-generated pairings based on your actual order data | Third-party app dependency |
| Bundle discount engine (percentage, fixed, tiered) | Page-load impact if the app isn’t optimized |
| Volume discount layering on supported apps | Theme compatibility varies by app |
| Advanced analytics (CTR, bundle take-rate, AOV lift) | |
| Multiple placement options (product page, cart, post-purchase) |
👑 Best for: Any store past the testing stage that wants measurable AOV lift from FBT. The setup cost is low, and the gap between native Shopify and a dedicated FBT app is significant.
For a side-by-side review of the top FBT apps, see the next section.
We evaluated the leading FBT and bundle apps on four criteria:
For a full explanation of how we evaluate every Shopify app we review, see our article “How We Judge a Shopify App,” where we explain our evaluation process, taking into account that BOGOS Shopify App is our own product.
| Selleasy | Wiser | BOGOS | FBT (CBB) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Dual AI + tiered discounts at a fair price | Dual AI + detailed analytics | FBT + multi-promotion stack with advanced targeting | Focused, dedicated FBT only |
| Rating | 5.0 ⭐ (2,000+ reviews) | 4.8 ⭐ (1,000+ reviews) | 5.0 ⭐ (3,370+ reviews) | 4.9 ⭐ (2,500+ reviews) |
| Pricing | Free plan; paid from $8.99/month | Free plan; paid from $9/month | Free plan; paid from $29.99/month | Free trial; from $9.99/month |
| Basic AI (order history) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Advanced AI (ChatGPT-powered) | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Manual / rule-based pairing | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Tiered discounts on FBT bundle | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Advanced targeting (geo, tags, segments, order history) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Placements | Product page, cart, checkout | Product page, cart, post-purchase | Product page, cart, bundle builder page | Product page |
| Other promotion types | Upsell, cross-sell, add-ons | Related products, upsells | GWP, BOGO, BXGY, bundles, upsells | FBT only |
| Analytics depth | Basic | Advanced | Advanced | Basic |
| Ease of use | Easy | More complex | Easy | Easy |
Best overall → Selleasy.
Selleasy is the strongest FBT app for most Shopify stores. It supports two types of AI recommendations: basic AI that learns from your store’s order history, and advanced AI powered by ChatGPT that automatically finds and matches relevant products across your catalog. On top of the dual AI engine, the widget supports tiered discounts, which is a meaningful advantage. Most competing FBT apps only offer flat bundle discounts. Combined with one-click upsells, cross-sells, and product add-ons at a lower monthly cost, Selleasy gives you more capability per dollar than the alternatives, and it stays easy to set up.
Best for AI depth and analytics → Wiser.
Wiser matches Selleasy on the dual AI setup (basic order-history AI plus ChatGPT-powered AI), and its analytics dashboard goes considerably deeper than most FBT apps, including Selleasy. If you want detailed performance data (widget-level CTR, pairing-level conversion, AOV lift per segment), Wiser gives you more visibility. The trade-off is usability: Wiser is noticeably more complex to configure than Selleasy, with a steeper learning curve. Choose it when analytics depth matters more to you than setup speed.
BOGOS → for stores running multiple promotion types
BOGOS is another practical FBT option, especially for stores that also run other promotions. The widget supports the same product showcase rules as Selleasy and Wiser (collection-based, manual, rule-based), plus a layer the others don’t offer: advanced targeting. You can narrow FBT offers down by geo-location, customer tags, customer segments, or order history to serve different pairings to different audiences. The gap is AI depth. BOGOS supports basic AI recommendations from order history, but not Advanced AI recommendations. Where BOGOS wins is breadth: beyond FBT, the app handles Gift with Purchase, bundles, BOGO, BXGY, tiered discounts, and upsells from the same dashboard, so you don’t need separate apps for each promotion type.
FBT by Code Black Belt → for stores that only need pure FBT.
Code Black Belt’s dedicated FBT app has been on the App Store for years and remains one of the most focused options available. If you don’t need upsells, cross-sells, bundles, or other promotion types, and you just want a clean Amazon-style FBT widget, CBB keeps things simple. The trade-off is that it doesn’t scale beyond FBT.
👉 For detailed reviews, screenshots, and side-by-side pricing, see our “Best Shopify FBT Apps” guide.
Once your FBT widget is live and producing reliable AOV lift, the next step is to increase that lift further. The most effective way to do this is by layering volume discounts on top of the FBT bundle.
Instead of offering a single flat discount when the customer adds the recommended products (for example, “add all 3 items, save 10%”), you structure tiered pricing that rewards customers for buying multiples of each item. The more units the customer adds to the bundle, the larger the discount.
This changes the FBT widget from a fixed offer into a scaling one. Customers who would have bought one of each item now have a reason to buy two or three of each in the same order.
👉 Explore other types of product bundles you can do on Shopify: Shopify Product Bundle Comprehensive Guide.
Example (skincare store):
For consumables and replenishables, customers often plan to reorder these products within a few weeks anyway. A better price on the larger order gives them a reason to buy now instead of later.
To make the tiered offer even more effective, pair it with a progress bar that shows customers how close they are to the next discount tier. A live message like “Add 2 more items to unlock 15% off” nudges customers toward larger bundles and lifts take-rate on the higher tiers.
Setup note: Tier layering is app-dependent. Selleasy and BOGOS both support tiered discounts on the FBT bundle, with BOGOS also including a built-in progress bar. Shopify Search & Discovery does not support any discount engine, so this strategy is app-only.
👉 For the full framework, tier structuring, and pricing math, see our [Bundle with Volume Discounts] guide.
The quality of your FBT pairings is the single biggest factor in whether the widget drives AOV or gets ignored. Most FBT apps generate pairings automatically using order history, product descriptions, and collection structure. But if your store is new, lacks purchase data, or doesn’t use an app with AI recommendations, you need to pair products manually.
Manual pairing isn’t a disadvantage. Automated recommendations run on a small set of logical patterns, and you can apply those same patterns yourself using your product knowledge. A few core approaches:
Once your pairings are live, review performance at least once a month. Remove combinations with low engagement and promote ones that convert. As order data accumulates, you can validate your manual pairings against Shopify’s “Frequently bought together” report or let AI take over.
👉 For the full playbook, including all six pairing strategies and how to validate results, see our “FBT Pairing Strategies“ guide.
Track these five metrics to know whether your FBT widget is actually working:
You’ll find CTR and AOV lift in Shopify Analytics combined with your app’s dashboard. Most dedicated FBT apps (BOGOS, CBB, Wiser) show bundle take-rate and attributed revenue directly in their own reporting.
Directional benchmarks: a healthy FBT setup drives a 5% to 15% AOV lift on orders that include the widget. If you’re seeing less than 3%, your pairings are likely misaligned.
👉 For the full measurement framework and benchmark data by category, see our “How to Measure Bundle Performance” guide.
Setting up Frequently Bought Together on Shopify comes down to two paths. If you’re testing the concept or working with a tight budget, Shopify Search & Discovery gets you basic related-product recommendations for free, but you’ll hit its limits quickly. If you want the full Amazon-style FBT widget with AI pairings, bundle discounts, and measurable AOV lift, a dedicated app is the right call.
Once you have FBT running, the strategic upgrade is layering volume discounts on top of the bundle to reward higher-volume purchases. For consumables and replenishables, this combination consistently drives stronger AOV lift than either tactic alone.
If you want FBT alongside other promotion types like Gift with Purchase, BOGO, and bundles in one app, BOGOS handles all of them from a single dashboard. Start with the free plan and test the widget on your highest-traffic product pages. You’ll have enough data to evaluate performance within 2 to 4 weeks.
Shopify has a free native app called Shopify Search & Discovery that supports related product recommendations, but it doesn’t offer a true Amazon-style FBT widget with checkbox selection, combined bundle pricing, or one-click “Add All to Cart.” For those features, you’ll need a dedicated FBT or bundle app.
Cross-sell and upsell are broad categories. FBT is a specific cross-sell format that recommends 2 to 3 complementary products on the product page with a combined price and a one-click add-to-cart. Upsells offer a better version of the same product (premium tier, larger size). FBT adds different, complementary products to the order.
Two to three recommended products is the sweet spot. More than four creates decision fatigue and lowers completion rate. If you have more potential pairings, rotate them based on performance rather than displaying all at once.
For AI-generated pairings, yes. You’ll need around 50 orders minimum before the AI produces usable recommendations, and around 200 orders before they become high-confidence. For new stores, manual pairing is the workaround. Hand-pick 5 to 10 hero pairings for your bestsellers, then switch to AI once you have enough data.
Yes. Most dedicated FBT apps (BOGOS, CBB, Selleasy, Wiser) support manual pairing, rule-based pairing (by tag, category, or collection), and AI pairing. You can mix all three: let AI handle most of the catalog while manually overriding specific products.
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