Recs vs. Picks

Post-purchase offers can pull products two ways. Shopify recommendations uses Shopify's Recommendations API, which reads your order history, product descriptions, and collection relationships, then picks per shopper. Specific products, Products from collection, and Products with tag let you decide instead.

Recommendations scale without maintenance and improve as your order history grows. A hand-picked list gives you control over margin and inventory. Which one earns more per order is worth answering rather than guessing.

What this test design might look like:

	Control	Variant A
Products shown	Shopify recommendations	Three hand-picked accessories

Recommendations need order history to work well. On a newer store, or in a category where your catalog doesn't cluster cleanly, a curated list usually starts stronger.

Both options are set in the THEN SHOW half of your order rules, covered in How to Set Up a Post-Purchase Upsell Experience. You can also mix them, using recommendations as your catch-all rule and a specific list for orders that contain a particular collection or tag.