AI Best Sellers for Shopify: Automated Homepage Recommendations to Improve Sales

Many successful Shopify stores manually add their homepage product recommendatinos. You pick your featured collections, arrange your product grids, maybe rotate them. The problem isn't the selection, it's that these choices need to be replaced within weeks.

Updating requires editing your theme or waiting for developers. By then, your best sellers have changed.

In this guide, I'll show you how to avoid all these blockers with Wisepops, which promotes popular and personalized products automatically through AI popups and the onsite feed—a social media-like notification feed.

How AI best sellers work in practice on Shopify

The Wisepops proprietary AI algorithm analyzes purchase behavior and cart activity, then shows each visitor products most likely to convert for them. New visitors see proven best sellers for instant social proof. Returning customers see trending items or recently viewed products. The recommendations update automatically as sales patterns change.

OddBalls

OddBalls, a UK clothing brand with 300+ designs, used Best Sellers in their feed for new visitors. Rather than manually selecting which designs to feature, they let AI surface products with the strongest conversion history.

Result: 632 orders over 6 months, 11% average CTR.

Pierre Hardy

Pierre Hardy, a French luxury footwear brand, used Best Sellers to guide visitors through their collections without overwhelming them.

Their best sellers campaign achieved 11.6% CTR and 69 conversions. The feed worked particularly well for maintaining their luxury positioning compared to traditional popups.

Maison Lejaby

Maison Lejaby used Best Sellers to help new visitors navigate their lingerie catalog while keeping the premium feel intact.

Their campaigns hit 15% average CTR and 124 conversions over four months.

AI best sellers campaign playbook

This playbook breaks down the highest-performing campaigns we see Shopify brands using today. Click them to see how they work.

When to use Best Sellers vs Trending

Best Sellers

This category shows what consistently converts over time. It's built on 90 days of sales and cart data, updating automatically as purchase patterns shift. Use this for year-round homepage recommendations when you want social proof based on actual purchase behavior.

Fashion stores, beauty brands, and supplement stores use this to show newcomers what people actually buy.

Trending products

This category captures products with recent activity spikes over 7 days. Use this for seasonal merchandise, new product launches, or limited-edition drops when you need recommendations that respond quickly to sudden demand changes.

If you're launching a summer collection or running a limited drop, Trending picks up momentum within days rather than waiting for 90 days of sales history.

Most stores start with Best Sellers for new visitors, then add Trending during specific campaigns or seasonal periods.

How to set up: Best Sellers on Shopify store homepage and more for new visitors

Create a campaign in Wisepops and pick your format:

• Feed notification - Sits in corner, doesn't interrupt (what Pierre Hardy and Maison Lejaby used) - first image below

• Popup - Higher visibility, appears as overlay (second image below)

• Embed - Built directly into page layout

Get an account here if you'd like to test recommendations on your store:

Choose a dedicated template or add the AI Product Recommendations block to yor chosen one and select "Best Sellers" as your strategy. The system pulls top performers automatically from your Shopify data.

Set how many products to display (3-4 works best) and choose quick add-to-cart buttons or redirect to product pages.

Configure targeting for new visitors:

• Target: New visitors

• Pages: Homepage, category pages

• Exclude: Product pages, checkout pages, best seller pages, visitors with active cart

• Delay: 4 pageviews, 5-10 seconds

The six AI product recommendation algorithms and when to use each

Wisepops includes six recommendation strategies for different journey stages:

• Best Sellers - Homepage and category pages for new visitors. Year-round baseline that updates automatically as top performers change. Based on 90 days of sales and cart additions.

• Trending - Collection pages, new arrivals pages, seasonal campaigns. Responds quickly to sudden demand shifts. Based on 7 days of recent activity.

• Recently Viewed - Browse abandonment for returning visitors who viewed 3+ products but didn't add to cart.

• Frequently Bought Together - Cart upsells. Show only to visitors with items in cart. Based on actual purchase patterns.

• Others Also Viewed - Product pages only. Shows items viewed together with current product.

• Personalized Picks - Homepage personalization or email re-engagement for existing customers based on their browsing and purchase history.

Start with Best Sellers on homepage for new visitors. OddBalls combined Best Sellers for new visitors with Recently Viewed for returning customers. The system switches automatically based on behavior.

Next steps

These resources will help you improve your store's results with product suggestions:

• Product recommendation popups: examples and tips

• Four ways to implement AI product recommendations on a Shopify store

• Helpful AI tools for ecommerce stores