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
- Download the plugin ZIP file from the Refinery account dashboard.
- In WP Admin, navigate to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
- Select the ZIP file and click Install Now.
- 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:
- Activate the plugin and let the initial sync complete (shown on the Dashboard).
- Visit any product page on the storefront — recommendations appear automatically below the product tabs.
- 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
- Navigate to Products → Recommendations → License.
- Enter the license key from the Refinery account dashboard.
- 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.