Thinking about where to place a cross-sell reveals a strong consensus among experts: the main product image carousel is the wrong spot. That area is sacred ground for showcasing the primary product and getting that first "add to cart" click. Instead, the most effective place for a cross-sell carousel is inside a slide-out cart or cart drawer that appears after the customer has already decided to buy something.
Varun Kundra, speaking on Ecommerce Coffee Break, repeatedly highlights this specific implementation. He describes a cart that slides out from the side of the screen, showing the item the customer just added. Crucially, at the bottom of this drawer, a carousel displays "a bunch of additional items that you can add to cart." On an episode of Honest Ecommerce, Shawn Khemsurov makes the exact same point, emphasizing that if you have a cart slider or drawer, you want to have upsells in there. The psychology here is perfect. You're not distracting from the initial purchase decision. You're catching the shopper in a moment of high purchase intent, right after they've committed, and making a helpful suggestion. This is one of the lowest-friction ways of increasing average order value.
Of course, the success of this carousel depends entirely on the products you show. The recommendations have to make sense. As Jay Myers puts it on Shopify1Percent, you need to recommend a complementary add-on. His example is classic and clear: if you sell a coffee maker, the cross-sell carousel should offer the coffee filters or the beans to go with it. An irrelevant suggestion just creates noise and can feel pushy. Jay mentions that if you're not sure what to offer, AI tools can help surface surprising but effective pairings based on customer purchase data. This is a core pillar of effective cross-selling strategies.
This isn't functionality you're expected to code yourself. The strategy is almost always executed using third-party Shopify apps. Guests like Varun Kundra of AfterSell and John Erck of Rebuy build these tools specifically to create what they often call a "smart cart." These apps replace the default cart experience with a highly optimized, brandable slide-out that has the cross-sell carousel and other features built in. This approach provides a richer, more personalized shopping experience designed to reduce cart abandonment and boost AOV without requiring shoppers to take extra steps or navigate to new pages.
It’s useful to distinguish this specific tactic from other types of upselling and cross-selling. This is not a post-purchase upsell, which happens on the thank you page after the credit card has been charged. Those leverage a "dopamine kick" from the completed purchase, as Varun Kundra notes. The in-cart carousel is a pre-purchase nudge. It's also different from the strategy Chase Mohseni discusses on Up Arrow Podcast, where you might intentionally direct ad traffic to a curated collection page of high-value items. That's about front-loading the discovery, while the cart carousel is about increasing the value of a cart that's already in progress.
My clear recommendation is to focus your efforts on a cart-drawer cross-sell carousel. Keep your main product detail page clean and focused on converting that one item. Use an app to power the cart experience and start by manually curating obvious product pairings. Once that's working, you can explore more dynamic or AI-driven recommendations to scale the strategy. For most stores, this is one of the most direct and effective tactics you can implement to see a meaningful lift in your average order value.