It is very time consuming to set Related Products, Cross Sells, Up Sells on individual product basis, and not accurate if you work them out just using your brain. It is good to see Magento has these marketing terms built in, but I hate to do the job by hand (or brain).
So I am thinking of developing a business intelligence module for Magento to let computer work Related Products, Cross Sells, Up Sells for us.
Here is the overview of this module:
First, we need record more data than what Magento provides. we specify a period of data to data-mine.
Then, for Related Products, mine product pageviews by each visit. Put a visitor’s all visited products into an array, and count all visitors’ arrays for every product-product combination.
As for Cross Sells, mine orders received or fulfilled. The algorithm is similar to Related Products.
As for Up Sells, mine the products were added to cart but dropped from final order. Compare the product dropped with the products in final order, and if the former is of higher value, and some sort related to the latter, we can call the former Up Sells. This is my definition, and the algorithm is some sort complicated.