Pets & Animal Care is a high-emotion, loyalty-driven vertical where buying behavior is influenced by factors such as pet type (e.g., dog, cat, bird), pet age, health needs, and recurring essentials like food, litter, or grooming products.
Pet owners typically shop on a routine basis and value convenience, trust, and personalization. In this context, recommendations should reinforce care routines with timely replenishments while also encouraging discovery of useful or entertaining pet accessories.
What you can achieve with Smart Recommender
Replenishment reminders on homepage
Remind returning users to restock consumables such as dog food, litter, or grooming wipes.
Personalize reminders based on each customer’s past purchase cycle.
New pet essentials for first-time owners
Recommend bundled starter kits like “New Puppy Essentials” or “Kitten Starter Pack.”
Help new pet parents cover all must-have items for a strong start.
Cross-selling at the right moments
On food product detail pages, surface complementary items such as chew toys, treats, or supplements.
Encourage bigger baskets by enhancing the value of each purchase.
Reactivating inactive customers
Win back dormant shoppers by recommending curated picks aligned with their past pet type and purchase history.
Checkout add-ons for extra value
Use cart page campaigns to highlight last-minute essentials like leashes, dental chews, or flea treatments.
Boost Average Order Value (AOV) with quick add-ons.
Pet-type personalized homepage experiences
Tailor homepage content by pet type:
“Everything for Your Cat”
“Dog Gear Picks”
Drive relevance with browsing and purchase history.
Affinity-based product discovery
Apply Attribute Affinity to recommend products based on demonstrated preferences, such as:
Food flavor (salmon, beef).
Product format (dry vs. wet).
Brand loyalty.
Built-in A/B testing across the funnel
Test strategies such as:
Replenishment timing.
Bundle composition.
Placement of recommendations.
Identify what drives the most engagement, conversions, and repeat orders.
Walkthrough: Boosting AOV with Cross-Sells
One of the most effective ways to increase your store’s Average Order Value (AOV) is by encouraging customers to add complementary products to their purchase. In the pet care space, purchases are often part of a larger routine—such as restocking food, updating grooming supplies, or refreshing accessories—so recommending related items at just the right moment can drive meaningful cross-sell opportunities.
In this example, we’ll walk through how to create and test a cross-sell campaign on pet food product pages designed to boost the AOV of customers with currently low AOV. The goal is to test and compare which complementary category leads to a higher AOV when recommended alongside pet food.
Identify the best-performing complementary category for pet owners and use it to maximize basket size while creating more complete care routines.
1. Create your Recommendation Strategy
It's time to create your first recommendation strategy. Navigate to the Recommendation Strategies and click Create.
Select your page type as Product Detail Page.
Select your algorithm as Purchased Together to recommend suitable products for cross-selling.
Enter the number of products you want to recommend.
Exclude the recently purchased products in the last 4 weeks to keep your customer engaged.
Add a filter for the category attribute to display recommendations from the “Grooming Essentials” category.
Then, create your second strategy that you want to test against.
Select your page type as Product Detail Page.
Select your algorithm as Purchased Together to recommend suitable products for cross-selling.
Enter the number of products you want to recommend.
Exclude the recently purchased products in the last 4 weeks to keep your customer engaged.
Add a filter for the category attribute to display recommendations from the “Wellness Products” category.
2. Launch your campaign
Now, launch your first campaign using your strategies.
Go to the Web Smart Recommender page and click Create.
Select your integration method for the widget.
On the Segments step, pick the audience.
For this example, you can select customers with a low AOV under Purchasing Behavior and set your threshold.
On the Rules step, decide where and when to show your campaign.
Use Page Rules to target the product detail pages of cleanser products.
On the Design step:
Assign your two strategies to the variants.
Assign traffic allocation for each variant.
Now you’re ready to design your widget. Click Edit Design to open the Advanced Product Card Designer. Here, you can customize your product cards however you like.
Make sure all the attributes you want to display are included in your product catalog. If you need to show more information on your product cards, you can create custom attributes from Product Attributes page.
After finalizing your campaign design, the next step is to select the locales and stores where you want the campaign to appear.
Once your targeting is set:
Review the campaign details.
Confirm that all settings match your objectives.
Click Launch to activate your first campaign.
3. Track your campaign metrics
You’ve launched your campaign—great work! Now it’s time to track how it’s performing.
Go to the Smart Recommender Analytics page.
Locate your campaign under the Campaign and Variant Metrics table. Once the experiment duration ends, click your campaign name.
Compare key metrics, including Direct Revenue, Average Order Value (AOV), and Conversion Rate.
You can see which product category—Grooming Essentials or Wellness Products—led to higher AOV for low-spending customers.
If one variant is clearly winning, adjust the traffic allocation to 100%. This ensures the best-performing strategy receives all traffic and maximizes impact.
You can also test and compare additional cross-sell strategies by adjusting the rules and filters based on other product categories across other Pet categories.
4. Optimize your campaigns
Once your campaigns are live and running, it’s time to review results and apply data-driven improvements.
Go to the Smart Recommender Analytics page.
Evaluate campaign performance based on engagement metrics.
Track Engagement Funnel Metrics: Understand how users interact with your recommendations at every step. View product impressions, clickthrough rate, add-to-cart rate, and conversion rate for each campaign to pinpoint where you’re driving engagement and where there’s room to improve.
Compare Campaign and Variant Performance: Use the Campaign and Variant Metrics table to review key KPIs like AOV, Conversion Rate, and Direct Revenue. Identify which strategies are delivering the best results and refine or scale your winning variant accordingly.
Analyze Product-Level Impact: Visit the Top 100 Product Analytics to see which products are performing well within your campaigns. Consider giving extra visibility to low-performing but strategic items by highlighting them in future recommendation widgets.
Review Category Trends: Use the Category Analytics view to assess which product categories drive the most conversions. You can prioritize high-performing categories to maximize conversions or spotlight underperforming categories to help boost their visibility and performance.
Use cases based on the page types
Home Page
Pet of the Month Features
Showcase seasonal care or trending products for specific pets (e.g., flea control in summer for dogs).
Create a strategy using the Trending Products algorithm to highlight the top-viewed, most popular products on your homepage.
Utilize the filters by pet_type and season to customize recommendation results based on seasonality.
To filter your recommendations based on the season and pet_type, create new custom attributes from the Product Attributes page and add season and pet_type information for your products.
After creating your strategy, you can A/B test your widget designs with pet_type visual cues (e.g., icons, colors) or try different widget positions (top of page vs. below banners) to determine what drives the most engagement.
First-Time Owner Kits
Help users get started with pet & animal care with tools like animal food tailored to their needs.
Create a strategy with the Top Sellers algorithm.
Add Category + is + Food filter to your strategy to display products from animal foods.
Set segments for new users on the campaign to address the right audience for starter kits.
To recommend kits, create a custom attribute called Kit ID on the Product Attributes page. Assign the same Kit ID (e.g., Food Kit 01, Food Routine 02 ) to all items in the kit. Then, use the Kit ID attribute in your filters to recommend other products from the same kit.
A/B test different headlines like “Find the Best Food for Your Pet” vs. “Ready to Start Spoil Him?” to see which copy boosts conversions most.
Product Detail Page
Frequently Bought Together Items
Highlight products that are commonly purchased right after the current item to guide users toward completing their purchase. For example, recommend food bowls after a customer views or adds pet food to their cart, or suggest chew toys after they browse dog treats.
Create a strategy with the Purchased Together algorithm.
Exclude the recently purchased products.
You can use this widget with headlines like “Find the perfect Matches” to capture more attention.
Pet-Specific Extensions
Highlight complementary products commonly explored alongside the current item to enhance basket size. For example, if a user is viewing a dog leash, recommend related gear, such as harnesses or poop bags, that match the same category and pet type.
Create a strategy with the Viewed Together algorithm.
Exclude the recently purchased products.
Add pet_type + matches currently viewed item filter to your strategy to display products from the same pet_type.
You can use this widget with headlines like “Find the perfect Matches” to capture more attention.
Category Page
Seasonal Essentials by Pet Type
Drive engagement by surfacing timely, high-value products tailored to seasonal needs. For example, highlight cat grooming tools with the highest discounts during shedding season, filtered by pet type and time of year.
Create a strategy with the Highest Discounted algorithm.
Exclude the recently purchased products.
Add category + contains the currently viewing category’s attribute filter to your strategy to display products from the same pet_type
If your category type is hierarchical, enable the “Expand the category filter to include recommendations from the next category if there aren't enough products to display.” checkbox to make sure recommendations are shown even though there aren’t enough products to recommend from the category the user is visiting.
Enable the “Enhance recommendations based on Attribute Affinity” toggle to personalize recommendations based on your customer’s affinities.
Trending in Category
Guide users toward what’s popular right now within the category they’re browsing to build confidence and urgency. For example, when a user explores dog toys, show bestsellers or highly rated items currently trending in that category.
Create a strategy with the Trending Products algorithm.
Apply category + contains the currently viewing category’s attribute filter.
If your category type is hierarchical, enable the “Expand the category filter to include recommendations from the next category if there aren't enough products to display.” checkbox to make sure recommendations are shown even though there aren’t enough products to recommend from the category the user is visiting.
Enable the “Enhance recommendations based on Attribute Affinity” toggle to personalize recommendations based on your customer’s affinities.
Cart Page
Finish the Kit
Encourage customers to complete their pet care routine by suggesting practical add-ons that align with their current interests. For example, after a user shops for a cat litter box, recommend related items such as litter box deodorizers, liners, or scoops to complete their purchase.
Use Most Popular algorithm.
Add a Category + is one of + Pet Food, Food Pot, Leashes filter to suggest practical add-ons.
Leave affinity off to prioritize functional relevance.