Defining cross-sells and upsell can already be a hard thing to do. Enter Magento: default options for entering cross-sells, up-sells and related products. To throw even more into the mix, there are community modules for “customers also bought” and other cross-references in the product catalogue. Another way to tie products together is using Magento’s grouped and bundled products, which are basically products thrown together in a package to sell them together as one product.

Here’s a quick list of how these terms can be looked at in Magento:

• Cross-sells: shown in the shopping cart page. These can be viewed as “cash register sales”, or products the customer might have overlooked or might be willing to quickly add to his cart while in the conversion process.
• Up-sells: shown at the product page. These are more expensive version of the product currently being viewed.
• Related products: shown at the product page. These have checkboxes. If ticked, the related product is added to the cart along with the main product that is being viewed. Because the checkboxes can be somewhat unclear to use, their usage should be carefully considered.
• Grouped products: a way to group several products that go together. For instance, a chair and a couch. On the frontend, the display of grouped products can be considered a quick order entry screen… quantities for several complementary products can be entered and ordered at once.
• Bundled products: a way to group several products into a configurable main product. The prime example is a configurable computer: the customer orders a computer and can order several (optional) products along with it, such as memory, hard drives, keyboard, etc.

Cross-sells and upsells can already be a muddy concept, hopefully with these hints Magento’s possibilities do not cause additional murky waters.