Shopify Product Network customer experience

When you use the Shopify Product Network app, customers can discover and purchase recommended products from other brands on your online store, also known as seller products.

This page describes the customer journey from discovering products from other brands and adding them to the cart, to making a purchase and receiving customer support afterward.

To learn how Product Network chooses which products from other brands to recommend on your store, refer to How Shopify Product Network recommendations work.

How customers discover recommended products on your store

During setup, you choose placements to control where customers encounter products from other brands on your store or in marketing emails. Depending on the placements that you choose, customers might encounter products in the following parts of your store or marketing emails:

Search
Collections pages
Your Thank you page after they complete an order
The Order status page for tracking their order
Your Shopify Messaging email campaigns

Recommended products from other brands include a Sold by label when they're listed alongside your products, so customers can identify those items. For placement details and visual examples, refer to Choosing where seller products display on your store.

If you set up multiple placement types, then the same customer might encounter recommended products in more than one place during one visit to your online store. For example, in search results and later on collection pages.

Opening a recommended product

When a customer clicks a recommended product from another brand, it opens on your online store in one of the following ways depending on the placement:

Search, Collections, or Shopify Messaging email campaigns: The product opens as a product listing on your online store.
Order status and Thank you pages: The customer is redirected to the Shop app to complete their purchase.

Each listing includes a Sold by label that indicates the brand that sells the item, product details, and links to that store's shipping policy, return, and refund policy. If a selling store doesn't have a shipping policy, then the listing omits that store's shipping policy link, and customers should contact that store for more information about shipping.

Making a purchase

Customers can add recommended products to their cart along with your own. What happens at checkout depends on whether the cart includes any of your products:

Checkout paths for Product Network purchases
What's in the cart	What customers experience	Payment and delivery options
Only products from other brands (nothing from your own catalog)	The customer checks out on your store using your branded checkout. Orders are created in the selling store's Shopify admin.	The same payment and delivery options apply to both checkout paths: Payment methods: Shopify Payments or Shop Pay only. The following payment methods aren't supported: accelerated checkout wallets such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, manual payment methods, Shop Pay Installments, and Shop Cash. Delivery Shipping only. Shopify Product Network orders aren't compatible with local delivery, pickup in store, or pickup points. To use Buy with Prime, the customer must check out using Shop Pay.
Your products and products from other brands (multi-store checkout)	The customer uses multi-store checkout on your store, and the following applies: Products are grouped by store. Taxes and shipping are calculated for each store. Payment is processed separately for your store and for other brands' stores. If a store has added policy links, then customers can open them from checkout, including shipping and return or refund policies.

Each selling store receives its order in its own Shopify admin, and you're paid commission for qualifying orders according to Shopify Product Network commissions, reports, and payouts.

Multi-store checkout considerations

When a customer buys from your store and from other brands' stores in multi-store checkout, the following also applies:

Checkout branding and customizations: Only your own checkout customizations apply at checkout. Checkout customizations from other Shopify stores whose products are recommended don't display.
Shipping rates and discounts: Your shipping rates and discounts apply only to your products at checkout. For example, a free shipping rate you offer covers only your products, not products from other brands in the same checkout.

Post-purchase support for customers

After checkout, the customer receives an order confirmation email from each store that they purchased from. When the order includes products from your store, they get your store's confirmation email as usual. For products from other brands, they can track those orders separately from yours, and the selling store fulfills and supports those orders.

Learn more about Shopify Product Network orders and fulfillment.

Contacting the seller store

After a customer purchases another brand's product through your store, that store is responsible for fulfilling the order and for handling customer questions, returns, refunds, and disputes according to its own policies. You can't edit Shopify Product Network orders or issue refunds on another Shopify store's behalf.

For questions about shipping updates or anything specific to a product from another brand, customers need to contact the store that sold the item. The order confirmation email that they receive from the other Shopify store should provide them with a contact method. If a customer contacts you first, then you can provide them with the other store's name and contact email from Product Network order details.