[intro] When you have completed this Guide, you will have installed the Related Products feature on your EKM online shop and will be able to set Related Products for all of your existing Products. [/intro]

[summary]

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The Related Products feature is an excellent way of encouraging additional sales by selecting some other products that your customer may be interested in and displaying these on a Product Page. This is especially useful in shops where products are used in conjunction with each other, or in the case of clothing and worn together. It’s also an excellent way of tempting customers to visit additional Product and Category Pages on your EKM online shop.

Installing the feature

1. From the Dashboard, click Features on the left-hand menu:

2. Click the Feature Library tab:

3. Scroll down to the Product Management features and click the View More button on the right-hand side:

4. Click the Related Products icon:

5. Click the green button to install the feature:

Manually Adding Related Products

To begin, you will need to manually set up some Related Products on a single existing Product. After you have done this, you can then decide whether you want to repeat this process on all of your Products or if you have a lot of items for sale, to use this first Product as a template to add Related Products to the rest of your Products using a spreadsheet and the Import/Export System feature.

6. Now you need to click Shop on the left-hand menu:

7. Navigate your way to a Product and click the Edit button:

8. Click More Options on the left-hand side of the window:

9. Click the Related Products tab:

10. You’ll then see this list of ‘folders and boxes’ icons:

11. Each ‘folder and box’ icon represents a Category. If there’s a green cross next to a Category, it means that there are existing Products within that Category - simply click the green cross to see them.

Products have a ‘box’ icon, and you can select a Product by clicking the grey box next to it. A red star symbol on the box indicates what Product you are currently adding Related Products to. What you need to do here is select three Products that would be suitable Related Products. It’s always a good idea to start with three, to begin with, as how they display depends on the Theme you have applied to your EKM online shop.

Ideally, you need one full row of Related Products - so you don’t create any negative white space on the Product Page - and limiting the Related Products to a single row means that the Product Page will remain shallow ensuring a positive customer experience (as they won’t have to scroll down lots to see all of the content).

12. When you have selected your three Related Products, click the Save & Close button:

13. Now you need to visit the Product Page and take a look at how the Related Products display with your Theme:

14. Three Products look fine but there is some spare space, so it is worth adding an extra Related Product to populate this:

[remember] Some Themes, such as the one I’m using - Loki - limit the number of Related Products that are displayed on the Product Page. Loki will only allow a maximum of four Related Products to display, regardless of how many you have selected within the Edit Product window for that particular Product.

However, not all Themes do this, so it’s important that when adding Related Products you add three first, and then check how they display before adding any more. Again, you are aiming to create a single row of Related Products on the Product Page - anything more can negatively affect your shop in terms of design and customer experience. [/remember]

Adding Related Products using a Spreadsheet

When you have built Related Products onto a single Existing Product as we did above, you can either continue to work on each of your Products in this way or if you have a lot of Products, you can use this Product as a template and spreadsheets to apply Related Products to the rest of your range.

16. To do this, you would need to have installed the Import/Export System feature and have downloaded a spreadsheet listing all of your existing Products. Look for the Product where you’ve manually added the Related Products, and you’ll see in the RelatedProducts column for the template Product a list of numbers separated by colons, like this:

17. If you scroll to the left on your spreadsheet and look at the ID column, you’ll see that the Related Products are listed in the RelatedProducts Column by their ID:

18. Therefore, to add Related Products to the rest of the Products on your EKM online shop, you would need to jot down the IDs of the Products you want to add as Related Products and populate the RelatedProducts column of your Spreadsheet, separating each ID with a colon and no spaces, like this:

(I’ve coloured the ‘Products’ rows light blue, so I can work out which row I need to add the Related Products to. The white rows are Product Variant rows that don’t need Related Products added.)

[caution] When you add the IDs of Related Products into the RelatedProducts column, you cannot relate a product to itself. For example, if the ID of the Product you are adding Related Products to is 6987, you need to make sure the 6987 is not one of the IDs that you are adding to the RelatedProducts column. [/caution]

[remember] You don’t need to add Related Products to Product Variants - as the Product Variants are not displayed on separate Product Pages. Just apply Related Products to Product rows on your spreadsheet. [/remember]

19. When you have added your IDs to the RelatedProducts column, your next step is to amend the Action column with the ‘Edit’ command so that it reads ‘Edit Product’ or ‘Edit Product Variant’ accordingly, like this:

20. When you have completed this task, save your spreadsheet and upload it to your EKM online shop using this Guide.

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[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Account Manager or Customer Support, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm on the weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions board. If you have a non-account specific question ask the EKM Team, join us in EKM Community.  [/contact]