Complementary items
Complementary items are the types of items that customers often buy together in a cart. For example, if a cart contains peanut butter, your storefront might display a list of complementary items, such as a selection of jams, jellies, marmalades, bananas, and bread. A well-curated list of complementary items can improve the customer's shopping experience and might increase the number of items in the customer's cart.
Complementary items on your storefront
In your storefront, you'll see complementary items displayed in product carousels, such as:
- Complementary items
- Suggested items
- Related items
- You might also like
How complementary items are generated
Instacart uses machine learning to rank items based on popularity, and then generates a list of popular items that are complementary to the items in the cart.
When displaying complementary items, the following rules also apply:
- Items must be available in the selected store.
- If a complementary item is currently in the customer's cart, it's omitted from the list.
- Items are displayed in order of popularity, unless other tools are used to boost items to the beginning of the list.
A customer's previous purchases can be a factor when generating complementary items, but it depends on where the complementary items show up in the user journey. Other factors might also be used to adjust the list.
Sponsored products in complementary items
Sponsored product ads can appear with complementary items. Some of the sponsored products are boosted to the beginning of the list. Other sponsored products may be interspersed among the items in the list. The number and placement of the ads are subject to change without notice. For more information about the ads service and where ads appear on the storefront, see Ads.