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Overview

You can create custom relationships between products in Product Experience Manager, allowing you to link or associate your products in certain ways based on criteria of your choosing. These relationships help improve user experience, boost sales, and enhance product discoverability.

Parent/Child Groupings​

You can create parent/child relationships between products using custom relationships instead of using variations. Using custom relationships instead of variations has several benefits.

  • You can use existing products. You do not have to create new products to get started. Simply, create a custom relationship and start relating products.
  • If your catalog's source of truth is maintained externally, outside of Elastic Path, you do not need to make changes to the way your product data is generated or managed. The data can flow into Elastic Path and, once the product data reaches Elastic Path, you can immediately relate products using custom relationships, without having to evaluate, change and build variations and options data.
  • Custom relationships allow more flexible and complex associations. Large numbers of variations are difficult to maintain and variations are often limited to predefined attributes like size or color, which can restrict how products are related.

Product Groupings​

There are some common custom relationship types.

  • Cross-selling: Suggesting related products that customers who might want to buy in addition to the product they are viewing. For example, if a customer is looking at laptops, you might suggest memory cards, laptop bags, external mouse, and so on. Cross-selling encourages customers to purchase complementary items.
  • Up-selling or alternative products: Suggesting products that serve the same function as the product a customer is viewing, but may be different brands, prices, better specifications, or have additional features. This ensures customers find the best product for their needs and may increase the order value by guiding customers to more premium options.
  • Custom collections: Create custom collections of products that share a theme, like Back to School or Summer Holiday Fashion. These guide customers to multiple products that fit a specific purpose or occasion.