Bundles look like an easy win: put a few products together, knock a bit off the price, watch average order value go up. In practice, many store bundles sit unsold because they combine products nobody wanted together, or the saving isn’t clear, or the bundle is buried somewhere customers never look.

This guide covers how to choose what goes into a bundle, how to price it, the ways to build bundles in WooCommerce, and how to tell whether they’re working.

Why bundles work (when they do)

A good bundle solves a problem for the customer:

• It saves decisions. Someone new to a hobby doesn’t know which five items they need. A starter kit tells them.
• It saves money. A visible saving compared to buying items separately is a straightforward reason to buy more.
• It makes gifting easy. A ready-made set is simpler than assembling one.
• It completes the job. A camera without a memory card, or a plant without a pot, is only half useful.

For the store, bundles can raise average order value, move slower products alongside popular ones, and make your offer harder to compare line-by-line with a competitor’s.

Five types of bundles

A sixth pattern, “build your own,” where customers configure a product from components (like a custom gift box or a PC), is closer to composite products. Our guide to WooCommerce composite products covers that option.

How to choose what goes in a bundle

Don’t start from what you’d like to clear out of the warehouse. Start from what customers already buy together.

Look at your order data

Export recent orders and look for products that often appear in the same order. Even a quick manual review of your last few hundred orders will show patterns. Which items do people add together? What do customers buy on their second order after a particular first purchase?

Ask what’s missing

Look at your bestsellers and ask: what does someone need to get full use out of this? Accessories, refills, care products and storage are common answers.

Watch your support inbox

Questions like “Do I also need X?” or “What goes well with Y?” are bundle ideas waiting to happen.

Mix a hero with supporting items

The strongest bundles usually include one product people actively want, plus supporting products that make it better. Bundling three slow sellers together rarely helps any of them.

Pricing your bundle

The customer needs to see a reason to choose the bundle over buying one item. That usually means a saving, but it doesn’t always need to be large.

Some approaches:

• Percentage off the combined price. Simple to explain: “Save 15% when you buy the set.”
• A round bundle price. “All three for $50” is easy to understand, as long as the saving compared to separate prices is clear.
• Free item. “Buy the grinder and beans, get filters free.” This can feel more generous than an equivalent percentage.
• Added value instead of discount. A free gift box, free shipping or an exclusive item that only comes in the set.

Always show the saving. Display the separate prices, the bundle price and the difference. A bundle that costs the same as its parts, without saying so, gives the customer no reason to choose it.

A quick margin check

Work through the numbers before you publish. Say you have three products:

• Product A: price $30, cost $12
• Product B: price $20, cost $7
• Product C: price $10, cost $3

Bought separately, that’s $60 revenue and $38 gross profit. Priced as a bundle at $51 (15% off), the gross profit is $29. That’s less profit per order than if the customer bought all three at full price, but more than if they only bought Product A ($18 profit). The bundle makes sense if it mostly converts people who would otherwise have bought one or two items, not people who would have bought all three anyway.

Include shipping and packaging in your calculation too, especially for heavy or bulky items.

How to build bundles in WooCommerce

WooCommerce offers a few routes, from built-in features to extensions.

Grouped products (built in)

WooCommerce’s Grouped product type lets you show several simple products together on one page, each with its own quantity box. It’s useful for displaying related items together, but it doesn’t apply a bundle discount on its own, and customers can buy any combination.

A simple product used as a bundle (built in)

For fixed bundles, the simplest method is to create a new simple product called, for example, “Watercolor Starter Kit,” set its price, and describe what’s included. It’s quick, but stock isn’t linked to the individual items, so you’ll need to track component inventory yourself. This works best for low-volume bundles or items you pack together in advance.

Bundle extensions

For bundles that track stock of each component, allow optional items or quantities, and apply discounts automatically, you’ll need an extension. The official Product Bundles extension from WooCommerce.com is one well-known option, and there are several other plugins that do similar things. When comparing, check:

• Whether stock is tracked per component
• Whether customers can choose options or variations inside the bundle
• How the bundle appears in the cart, orders and emails
• Compatibility with your theme and checkout

Quantity-based discounts

For multi-packs and mix-and-match offers, bulk or tiered discount rules can do the job without creating a separate bundle product. For example: “Buy any 3 socks, save 10%.” Our guide to WooCommerce bulk discounts covers the setup.

Where to show bundles

A bundle nobody sees won’t sell. Good places to feature them:

• On each component’s product page. “Complete the set and save 15%” next to the add-to-cart button.
• In the cart. Suggest the bundle when a customer adds one of its items.
• In a dedicated category such as “Kits and sets” or “Gift sets.”
• In emails, especially to recent buyers of one component.
• On the home page during gifting seasons.

WooCommerce’s linked products (upsells and cross-sells) let you point customers to a bundle from related product pages. Our older guide to WooCommerce related products explains how these work. Product recommendation tools can go further by suggesting bundles based on what’s in the cart or what similar customers bought.

Mini walkthrough: launching your first bundle

Here’s a practical sequence for a hypothetical home coffee store:

1. Find the pattern. Orders show that people buying the hand grinder often add a bag of beans in the same order.
2. Design the bundle. “Fresh Start Kit”: hand grinder + 250 g beans + a pack of filters.
3. Price it. Separate price $75. Bundle price $65, with “Save $10” clearly displayed.
4. Build it. Use a bundle extension so stock of each item updates correctly.
5. Place it. Add a “Get the kit and save $10” box on the grinder’s product page, and show it as a cross-sell in the cart when the grinder is added.
6. Photograph it. One photo of all three items together, not just the separate product photos.
7. Measure it. After a few weeks, compare grinder orders, bundle orders and average order value against the previous period.

Common bundle mistakes

• Bundling items no one wants together. If you wouldn’t buy the set yourself, customers won’t either.
• Hiding the saving. Always show the comparison.
• Too many bundles. A handful of strong bundles beats a catalog cluttered with dozens.
• Ignoring stock. A bundle that sells when one component is out of stock leads to cancellations and unhappy customers.
• No bundle photo. Customers need to see what they’re getting.
• Forgetting returns. Decide in advance how you handle a return of one item from a bundle, and say so in your policy.

How to tell if bundles are working

Track these over a few weeks:

• Number of bundle orders
• Average order value before and after launch
• Sales of the individual hero product (did the bundle cannibalize it, or lift it?)
• Gross profit per order, not just revenue

If a bundle doesn’t sell, try one change at a time: the price, the photo, the placement or the products included.

Building bundles customers actually want

The bundles that sell are built from real buying patterns, priced with a visible saving that still protects your margin, and shown where customers are already making decisions. Start with one bundle around your bestseller, measure it honestly, and add more only once you know what works for your store.

If you want product suggestions and bundle-style recommendations driven by what customers actually buy, iConvert Optimizer is one tool that can help alongside WooCommerce’s built-in linked products.

Flavius Noja

Flavius is an online marketing specialist with experience in the digital field. He is passionate about everything that means the online world, sports, but also crypto.