Your store’s own orders are the starting point
For each eligible Cart product using global mode, the GoScript Smart Cart Recommendations WordPress plugin looks at qualifying past WooCommerce orders that included that product. It then identifies the other products that appeared in those same orders.
Those shared purchases create practical evidence of product relationships your customers have already made-not a generic related-product list or a manually maintained pairing system.
What makes an order count?
The recommendation query is shaped by the settings you choose. Smart Cart Recommendations considers the configured recent history window, the current WooCommerce order statuses you include, and the minimum shared-order evidence required before a historical relationship can contribute to a recommendation.
Recent, relevant historyChoose a 30-, 60-, 90-, or 180-day history window that reflects the pace of your catalogue.
Evidence you controlSelect current order statuses and a minimum shared-order threshold that fit your store’s confidence level.This gives you room to make the logic broader for a newer catalogue or more selective when you have a deeper, more established order history.
Shared orders build the relationship strength
When another product occurs in the same qualifying order as a Cart product, it becomes a candidate relationship. The stronger the shared-order evidence, the stronger that candidate can rank before the final Cart rules are applied.
The historical logic works from distinct qualifying orders rather than treating product quantity as extra relationship strength. This keeps the focus on how consistently products are bought together across real customer orders.
WooCommerce Analytics keeps the query focused
Smart Cart Recommendations reads WooCommerce Analytics lookup data rather than loading every order and line item into WordPress. The historical co-purchase query is limited to the relevant Cart products, the selected history window, included statuses, and a bounded candidate pool.
That focused approach puts the reporting data WooCommerce already maintains to work for Cart discovery while avoiding a separate recommendation index or an expensive scan through individual orders.
History is only one part of the final result
After the plugin finds history-based candidates, it can apply an optional same-category, same-tag, or same-category-or-tag relevance rule. Global exclusions and final product availability checks then help ensure only appropriate products reach the Cart section.
Manual recommendations for individual products follow their own direct path, and your selected fallback can fill spaces when historical candidates are limited. Together, these layers help you balance real purchase evidence with the merchandising choices that matter to your store.
Next steps
Continue with the guides that explain how historical evidence is combined, narrowed, and turned into final Cart suggestions.
