Getting Started

Refinery Product Recommendations displays intelligent, relevant product suggestions on WooCommerce pages. It uses a multi-signal relevancy algorithm — analyzing categories, attributes, pricing, sales history, and recency — to surface recommendations that help customers discover products they are likely to buy.

Prerequisites

• WordPress 6.0 or higher
• WooCommerce 5.0 or higher
• PHP 7.4 or higher
• An active Refinery Product Recommendations license key

Installing the plugin

1. Download the plugin ZIP file from the Refinery account dashboard.
2. In WP Admin, navigate to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
3. Select the ZIP file and click Install Now.
4. Click Activate to enable the plugin.

On activation, the plugin creates its database tables and begins generating relevancy scores for all products in the background. A progress indicator on the Dashboard shows the current status.

Navigating Recommendations

Access the plugin by navigating to Products → Recommendations in WP Admin. The interface includes five tabs:

• Dashboard — Sync status, analytics summary, and recommendation health
• Strategies — Create and configure relevancy algorithms with weighted ranking signals
• Placements — Control where recommendations appear on the storefront
• Settings — Global options, auto-refresh schedule, and advanced configuration
• License — Activate and manage the license key

How recommendations work

The plugin pre-computes a relevancy score between every pair of products in the catalog. When a customer views a product page, the plugin looks up the top-scoring related products and displays them instantly — no real-time computation needed.

Relevancy scores are based on five core ranking signals:

• Category — Products in the same category score higher
• Attributes — Shared product attributes (color, size, material) increase relevancy
• Price — Products in a similar price range score higher
• Sales — Best-selling products receive a boost
• Recency — Recently published products receive a boost

Each signal has a configurable weight, so the algorithm can be tuned to match the store’s priorities.

Quick start

The plugin works out of the box with sensible defaults:

1. Activate the plugin and let the initial sync complete (shown on the Dashboard).
2. Visit any product page on the storefront — recommendations appear automatically below the product tabs.
3. Optionally customize the strategy weights or add placements for other pages.

Compatibility

Refinery Product Recommendations is compatible with:

• All WooCommerce themes — Recommendations render using standard WooCommerce product markup, so they inherit the active theme’s product card styles.
• Block themes and classic themes — Works with both WordPress block themes and classic PHP themes.
• Custom taxonomies — Supports additional product taxonomies (brands, collections, etc.) as ranking signals.

Activating the license

1. Navigate to Products → Recommendations → License.
2. Enter the license key from the Refinery account dashboard.
3. Click Activate.

An active license enables automatic plugin updates and access to support. Without an active license, the plugin continues to function but does not receive updates.