Boost Sales: Relevant Product Recommendations for Unique Collectibles on Shopify Dawn

Hey fellow store owners! We've all been there: you've got amazing products, but sometimes, the tech just doesn't quite 'get' them. This came up recently in a fantastic community discussion, and it's a common pain point for unique inventory, especially in the antiques and collectibles space.

The original question came from a store owner, mathiasmeyerco, who runs a shop with over 500 unique, one-off collectible items – think signed jerseys, historical documents, period pieces. The challenge? Only 1-2 sales a month. Shopify's native recommendation engine, which typically relies heavily on co-purchase data and co-view signals, was falling flat. It was showing semi-random picks, like a signed boxing glove next to an unrelated handwritten letter. Not exactly inspiring for a customer!

Why Shopify's Native Recommendations Struggle with Unique Items

The core issue, as pointed out by Recomento in the thread, is that the collaborative filter has "essentially zero signal to work with" when you have such low sales volume and unique items. It's designed for stores where many people buy Item A and Item B together, or view them consecutively. For one-off collectibles, that data simply doesn't exist.

So, what's a store owner to do when the algorithm isn't your friend?

The Community's Consensus: Manual & Rule-Based is King

The brilliant minds in our community quickly converged on a clear path: stop trying to feed an algorithm that has nothing to chew on. Instead, make your recommendation logic deterministic from your catalog data. This means taking control and setting up rules or manual picks that make sense for your unique inventory.

Starting Simple: Shopify's Free Search & Discovery App

For a completely free and low-code starting point, several experts, including Recomento and Ploqo, highlighted Shopify's own Search & Discovery app. You can install it for free, and it allows you to manually assign 'Related products' or 'Complementary products' per item. If you have 500+ items, you don't need to do them all. "I'd genuinely start with Search & Discovery first to hand-curate your top 30 highest-value pieces before paying for any third-party app," suggested Recomento.

You can group similar items into tight, themed manual collections (e.g., '1960s Sports Memorabilia' or 'Presidential Signatures') and use the app to point related slots to those specific sub-groups. This is a great way to get relevant recommendations for your hero products without any code.

Going Deeper: Smart Fallbacks with Custom Liquid on Dawn

If you want a solution that scales beyond just your top items and provides a smart fallback for everything else, the community strongly recommended a Custom Liquid approach. "No theme switch needed. Dawn handles this with one Custom Liquid section," said Ploqo, who provided a detailed, actionable solution.

The idea is simple: for your most important items, you hand-pick related products. For everything else, the system intelligently pulls from relevant collections, but with crucial filters. DanielAnderson, Jack_BuildsShopify, and Icey.Lane all emphasized using specific attributes (like person, team, era, subject, type, price band) over broad categories, and filtering out sold items or marketing collections.

Here's Ploqo's excellent step-by-step guide to implement this smart fallback:

Step-by-Step: Custom Product Recommendations in Dawn

This method uses a metafield for your hand-picked items and then falls back to intelligently selected collection products if no manual picks are set.

1. Add a "Related products" Metafield Definition
   • Go to your Shopify Admin: Settings > Custom data > Products.
   • Click Add definition.
   • Name it Related products.
   • Set the Type to Product.
   • Turn on List of values.
   

2. Pick Related Items on Your Key Products
   • Open a product in your Shopify Admin.
   • Scroll down to the Metafields section.
   • Under Related products, add 2 to 4 truly related pieces.
   • Leave this empty for products you don't want to manually curate; they will automatically fall back to the collection logic.
   

3. Add the Custom Liquid Section and Hide the Old One
   • Go to your Shopify Admin: Online Store > Themes > Customize your Dawn theme.
   • Navigate to a Product template (e.g., Default product).
   • In the left sidebar, click Add section and choose Custom Liquid.
   • Paste the following code into the Liquid box.
   • Find the native Related products section in the sidebar, hover over it, click the eye icon to hide it, and then Save.
   

   {%- liquid
     assign limit = 4
     assign picks = product.metafields.custom.related_products.value
   -%}
   
     
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       {%- if picks != blank -%}
         {%- assign shown = 0 -%}
         {%- for item in picks -%}
           {%- if shown < limit and item.available -%}
             
   
               
                 {%- if item.featured_image -%}{{ item.featured_image | image_url: width: 500 | image_tag: loading: 'lazy', widths: '200,300,400,500' }}{%- endif -%}
                 {{ item.title }}
                 {{ item.price | money }}
               
             
             {%- assign shown = shown | plus: 1 -%}
           {%- endif -%}
         {%- endfor -%}
       {%- else -%}
         {%- assign skip = ',frontpage,all,sale,new,new-arrivals,featured,home-page,' -%}
         {%- assign seen = ',' | append: product.id | append: ',' -%}
         {%- assign shown = 0 -%}
         {%- assign cols = product.collections | sort: 'all_products_count' -%}
         {%- for c in cols -%}
           {%- assign probe = ',' | append: c.handle | append: ',' -%}
           {%- unless skip contains probe -%}
             {%- for item in c.products limit: 60 -%}
               {%- assign key = ',' | append: item.id | append: ',' -%}
               {%- if shown < limit and item.available -%}
                 {%- unless seen contains key -%}
                   
   
                     
                       {%- if item.featured_image -%}{{ item.featured_image | image_url: width: 500 | image_tag: loading: 'lazy', widths: '200,300,400,500' }}{%- endif -%}
                       {{ item.title }}
                       {{ item.price | money }}
                     
                   
   
   
   

   This code is quite clever! It prioritizes your hand-picked items. If those aren't set, it then looks at the product's collections, sorting them to use the narrowest, most specific collection first. It also automatically skips marketing collections (like "Sale" or "New Arrivals"), excludes the currently viewed product, and – critically for one-off items – filters out sold products and those without images. This means a jersey now shows other jerseys and legends, never a random letter!

   

When to Consider AI & Third-Party Apps

While manual and rule-based systems are powerful for low-volume stores, some community members explored where AI can still play a role. DanielAnderson, for instance, uses AI for analysis and recommendations, but always with human oversight for "money decisions." He also highlighted a key area where rules fall short: semantic search. If someone searches for "Muhammad Ali" but your item is listed as "Signed 1974 Boxing Glove," native search might miss it. That's where AI-powered tools like his app, Carti, which searches by meaning, can fill the gap. Recomento also mentioned their app, which uses visual similarity or catalog embeddings, bypassing the need for purchase history entirely (though it's a paid solution).

Measuring Success Beyond Sales

Icey.Lane offered a crucial piece of advice for low-volume stores: don't just measure sales directly from recommendations. Track leading indicators like "recommendation impression → recommendation click → PDP view → add to cart." With only 1-2 sales a month, conversion reads will be unstable, so look for engagement signals first.

Ultimately, for stores like mathiasmeyerco's, with unique, low-volume inventory, the consensus is clear: taking a hands-on, structured approach with manual curation and smart, rule-based fallbacks trumps relying on algorithms that lack sufficient data. Whether you use Shopify's free Search & Discovery app for your top items or dive into Custom Liquid for a robust, site-wide solution, the goal is to make every recommendation count. It's about providing a relevant, curated experience that genuinely helps your customers discover more of your treasures.