Increase Revenue Through Relevance

Cross-Selling and Dynamic Product Groups in Shopware

Anyone working in B2B or technical retail is familiar with the problem: The customer finds the product—but accessories, consumables, and service products remain hidden from view during the search. This is exactly where intelligent cross-selling comes in: It guides customers to the right accessories, increases the cart value, and saves them the trouble of searching.
Cross-selling from the customer’s perspective: What happens on the product page

In our example store—a manufacturer of industrial pumps—we find two cross-selling tabs at the bottom of the centrifugal pump product detail pages: pump accessories and compatible maintenance and service products.
Conversely, the accessories pages also link to the products with which the respective accessories are compatible.

Cross-selling on the product detail page; two tabs for compatible accessories and maintenance have been created here

For the customer, this means:
•Relevant accessories at a glance instead of a long search through categories
•The ability to add additional products to the shopping cart immediately
•Convenient navigation: From the accessories, you can go back to the compatible pumps

Search engines also benefit from this additional internal linking between products—an SEO effect that should not be underestimated.

From a retailer’s perspective, the goal is clear:

The customer should not only buy the main product, but also purchase consumables, replacement parts, and services.
Cross-selling in the backend: Manual or dynamic?

In the Shopware backend, cross-selling can be managed directly on the product page. There is a dedicated tab for cross-selling where existing configurations such as “Accessories” or “Compatible with” are visible and new ones can be created.
There are two ways to create them:

• Manual assignment:
  Using a product search (e.g., for “lubricating oil” or “O-ring”), matching items are selected and assigned to cross-selling. This is precise, but can quickly become very time-consuming when dealing with many products.
• Dynamic product groups:
  Instead of selecting each product individually, a rule is defined that determines which items are included in cross-selling. This is significantly more efficient—especially when product ranges change regularly.

In the example, an existing dynamic product group “FP200” is selected, and the maximum number of products to be displayed is limited to eight so that the accessories widget on the product page does not become too cluttered. A preview function allows you to check which products would currently be included in this group and how many are actually in stock.

An example of cross-selling with manual assignment

Dynamic product groups:

Rules instead of lists

The real key lies in dynamic product groups. They work like saved search queries: Instead of selecting products, you define conditions based on which Shopware automatically compiles matching items.
Rules could include:

• Category: All products from “Gaskets and O-Rings”
• Inventory: Only items with available stock greater than 10
• Product number: Items whose number contains a specific value (e.g., “200” for seal set 200
• Metadata: Creation date, technical specifications, prices, product series, and much more
  
  Example of a dynamic product group based on the “Product Series” attribute, which was imported from the PIM system

This creates a dynamic group that updates automatically when new products are added or inventory levels change. This is particularly useful when the desired products can be uniquely identified by common attributes—for example:

• "New Arrivals": All products that have been newly listed in the store within the last 14 days
• Series logic: All products that belong to a specific product series
• Accessory clusters: All replacement parts for a specific assembly

These dynamic groups can then be integrated directly into cross-selling widgets—for example, as accessories, recommendations, or “Other related products.”

Why this makes a difference in everyday B2B business

Cross-selling with dynamic product groups really comes into its own in the B2B environment, where equipment and replacement parts are complex:

• Less maintenance effort: Instead of manually maintaining hundreds of relationships, a clearly defined rule is all that’s needed.
• Up-to-date results: Changes to the product lineup or inventory are automatically reflected in cross-selling.
• Fewer mispurchases: Only compatible products are displayed when rules are clearly mapped to technical specifications and product lines.
• Better shopping experience: Customers feel guided rather than left to their own devices—especially new or infrequent shoppers.

PIM integration: Import cross-selling data from upstream systems

In many larger e-commerce projects, cross-selling information is not maintained within the store itself but is imported from upstream systems such as the Product Information Management (PIM) system. That would be the right place to clearly model product relationships such as “Accessories,” “Spare part for,” or “Compatible with” and then use them across all output channels, e.g., in print advertisements or on the website.

Shopware offers a dedicated API endpoint for cross-selling.

This allows you to:

• import existing relationships from the PIM,
• populate or manage dynamic product groups, and
• automatically create cross-selling configurations.

This is the standard approach, especially for large B2B catalogs: Cross-selling logic belongs in the PIM; the online store takes it and showcases it effectively in the front end to drive sales.

Relevance over chance

Cross-selling is more than just “flooding customers with accessories.” When implemented correctly, it aligns the customer’s needs with the retailer’s goals: The customer finds what they need more quickly, and the retailer increases sales and product line loyalty.

With dynamic product groups in Shopware, rigid cross-selling becomes a flexible, rule-based logic that adapts to the product range, inventory, and product logic. And with a seamless PIM integration, this becomes a consistent process from the data source all the way to the product detail page.