A store window displays a few carefully chosen products for passing shoppers. Online, featured products are items you highlight in prominent places on your website, from homepage collections to accessory selections on product pages.
Coveo’s 2026 report found that 31% of online shoppers cited too many choices with poor filtering as one of their frustrations with product discovery. A similar figure cited difficulty finding products through search or browsing.
Ecommerce brands can solve this with featured products that introduce new visitors to your brand, promote a seasonal collection, or give overlooked stock more visibility. In this guide, learn which products to feature, where to display them, and how to add them to your Shopify store.
What are featured products?
Featured products are items you select for prominent placement on your ecommerce website. You’ll display them on your homepage, product pages, or personalized landing pages.
Choose featured products based on their merchandising goals. For example:
- Popular products earn that label through customer behavior, such as strong sales or frequent product views.
- A bestseller can be both featured and popular.
- A new arrival can receive featured placement before its first sale.
Why feature products on your online store?
Featured products help customers locate items they’re looking for, highlight SKUs with high profit margins, and increase visibility for slow-moving inventory.
Narrow the selection shoppers must navigate
A small featured collection gives shoppers fewer items to compare at once. To do this, group products around a clear need, so visitors can browse a relevant selection before exploring your full catalog.
Zesty Paws, for example, groups products by benefit and format. Dog owners looking for supplements that help with their skin and coat can choose that category for a filtered list of featured products designed to help.
Highlight higher margin products
Use featured placements to promote relevant products with higher gross margins. These products leave more of each sale after product costs. Account for promotional discounts when comparing margins, and track purchases to see whether shoppers buy the items you promote.
Give slow-moving inventory more visibility
Featuring overlooked products can help you test whether limited exposure contributes to weak sales.
Place them in a relevant collection and track product views, add-to-cart activity, and purchases. If views rise while sales stay flat, review the price, product details, and fit with customer demand.
Where to showcase featured products online
Your homepage, product pages, cart, and collection pages offer space to highlight selected items. Dedicated landing pages can group products for launches, seasonal promotions, or collections, and give your ads and emails a focused destination.
On mobile, keep featured sections compact so shoppers can reach product details, category links, and purchase buttons with little scrolling.
Homepage
Use your homepage to introduce a new collection, seasonal products, or bestsellers. Place the featured selection near the hero section and give each item a clear image, price, and product link.
If you’re using carousels, Baymard’s 2026 benchmark found that 31% of sites using carousels implemented them incorrectly. A static grid keeps products available for shoppers to browse at their own pace. Add manual controls and disable automatic rotation on mobile.
Footwear brand Allbirds, for example, features a “Best Sellers” section on their homepage. Quick-add controls give shoppers a way to select featured styles without clicking through to each product page.
Product pages
Use the space below the main product to feature related or complementary items. Related products give shoppers alternatives to compare, while complementary products suggest items to use together. They also satisfy the 73% of shoppers in Attentive’s 2026 study who are more likely to purchase when they get personalized product recommendations.
Accessories brand Orla Kiely, for example, recommends matching bags and purses on product pages. When launching a collection, their team limits recommendation widgets to items from that collection, giving shoppers coordinating pieces to consider with the product they’re viewing.
On compatible Shopify themes, you can add a related products section through the theme editor. Use Shopify Search & Discovery to manually choose related recommendations and complementary products. Your theme controls the available layout and placement options.
Cart and checkout
Feature a few relevant add-ons in the cart. Keep the order summary and checkout button easy to find so shoppers can review their purchase and proceed to payment.
For example, on Luxy Hair’s website, adding hair extensions to the bag opens a cart drawer with a “Pairs With” section. Recommendations include an extensions carrier, loop brush, and hair ties, each with a price and an “Add to cart” link. The subtotal and checkout button appear below the recommendations:
You can also use post-purchase upsell apps to offer additional products after payment. Accepted offers add items to the original order, while customers who decline keep their completed purchase. Review the app’s supported payment methods and order types when setting up offers.
Offsite
Promote featured products through paid ads, social posts, and email or SMS campaigns sent through Shopify Messaging. Link each message to the relevant product or campaign landing page.
If you go the influencer route, partnerships may involve a flat fee or gifted products for content. Affiliate marketing pays commissions on tracked sales, and creators can participate in both arrangements, provided they follow the disclosure rules in your target markets for each.
Shopify Collabs helps you invite creators, track affiliate sales, and pay commissions. Luggage brand Solgaard used it to grow creator-generated revenue by 287% month over month.
Collection and category pages
Feature a small selection of products on collection and category pages to give shoppers specific options to explore. Link each featured image and product name directly to the relevant product page.
For example, Ugmonk’s Starter Kits collection highlights products with photos, short descriptions, and starting prices. Each card links to their product page, with a navigation bar above the selection so shoppers can also browse other categories.
Keep subcategory navigation visible above promotional content. Baymard’s testing found that promotions could obscure navigation. Google also recommends linking from categories to subcategories and product pages so its crawler can discover your catalog.
Support both routes. Across Baymard’s usability testing, roughly half of participants preferred search for finding products, while the other half used the main navigation.
Shopify Search & Discovery lets you feature particular products in your store’s own search results. Use those placements to promote items relevant to the shopper’s query, and keep collection filters and category links easy to find.
Which products should you feature?
Review your sales and inventory data before choosing featured products. Check which items sell consistently, how much stock is available, and what each sale earns.
Here’s what that might look like:
| Featured product collection | Criteria |
|---|---|
| Bestsellers | Products with the highest sales volume |
| New products | Most recent products added to your site |
| Seasonal | Items suited to a particular holiday, such as gifts for Black Friday |
| Slow-moving inventory | Products with the lowest sales velocity or sell-through rate |
| High-margin products | Items with the highest profit margins |
Bestselling
Use recent sales data to identify the products customers buy most often. Feature well-stocked bestsellers or recently restocked favorites, and display relevant ratings or reviews to help shoppers evaluate them.
Maggy London uses Shopify Flow for this. The free ecommerce automation app identifies the top 20 bestselling products of each week and adds a “Trending” tag to each. The site stays up to date without relying on their team to manually update collections or merchandising pages.
Check return rates separately when deciding which products to promote. A popular product that’s frequently returned may not be as lucrative as you initially thought after counting for reverse logistics costs.
New products
Introduce new arrivals to returning customers through a featured section on your homepage or a launch landing page. Explain what’s new, show the product in use, and link directly to its page so shoppers can review the details. ColourPop Cosmetics does this with a “New arrivals” category.
Seasonal
Feature products ahead of the occasions when shoppers need them. For example, Staples has a seasonal collection for back-to-school products. Drinkware brand YETI also has one that rounds up products suited to holiday gifting.
Use past seasonal sales to plan your timing. This Shopify Flow template can automatically hide products on a fixed date (such as holiday delivery cutoffs), so you can rotate the selection as demand shifts and stock sells through.
Slow-moving inventory
Give slow-moving stock a featured position to test whether greater visibility attracts buyers. Find these products using Shopify sales reports, which pulls data like:
- Average inventory sold per day
- Product sell-through rate
- Sales by product
Group discounted items, end-of-season merchandise, or clearance products in a clearly labeled collection. Check available sizes and colors, and show the current price and any sale terms.
High margin
Choose products with higher gross margins that fit the shopper’s needs. For example, a clothing store could promote a necklace that complements a featured dress.
Compare the gross profit each item would generate after discounts and product costs when choosing your selection.
Shopify’s ABC product analysis report grades product variants by their share of revenue over the previous 28 days, helping you identify your biggest revenue contributors. Shopify’s AI agent, Sidekick, can also answer quick questions like “What’s my most profitable product?”
How to add featured products to your Shopify store
The available sections and settings depend on your theme. These steps cover themes offering Featured collection and Featured product sections on Shopify:
Featured collection vs. featured product
A featured collection displays several products from one collection. A featured product highlights a single item, with purchase options supported by your theme.
To add either section to your Shopify website:
- Open Online Store in your Shopify admin.
- Click Edit theme beside your chosen theme.
- Select Home page or another template from the menu at the top.
- Click Add section > Featured collection or Add section > Featured product.
- Select the collection or product, then adjust the heading, layout, and available display settings.
To move a section, drag its handle to a new position in the sidebar. Click the eye icon to hide it, or open its settings and select Remove section to delete it from the template.
Preview desktop and mobile layouts, then save your changes. If you’re editing an unpublished theme, publish it when you’re ready to make it live.
Featured products FAQ
What are examples of featured products?
Featured products include bestsellers, new arrivals, seasonal items, clearance stock, and products with higher profit margins. For example, a clothing store might highlight winter coats on its homepage or recommend matching accessories on a product page.
What does it mean to feature a product?
Featuring a product means giving it prominent placement in your store or marketing. You might display it on your homepage, recommend it in the cart, or highlight it in an email campaign to direct shoppers to that item.
What is the difference between featured and popular products?
Featured products are items you choose to promote based on goals such as launching a collection or clearing stock. Popular products attract strong customer interest, measured through sales or engagement. A bestseller can be both, while a new product can receive featured placement before its first sale.
How many products should you feature at once?
Feature one item for a focused promotion, or test four to eight products in a featured collection. Adjust the count to fit your layout, especially on mobile. Compare product clicks, add-to-cart activity, and purchases to find the selection size that works for your store.
Do featured products affect SEO?
Featured products can support SEO through internal links to their product pages. Google uses these links to discover pages and assess their relative importance within your site. Link each featured item directly to its product page, and keep products accessible through category and collection navigation.
