There is a certain kind of online store that just feels more engaging to shop on than others and a lot of the time when you dig into why, it comes down to the fact that the customer is not just picking items off a shelf but actually building something. That is the experience that WooCommerce mix and match products create and it is one that more store owners should be taking seriously as a revenue and engagement strategy rather than treating it as a nice-to-have feature.
The Custom Mix and Match Product Boxes and Bundles plugin by Extendons is what makes this possible on a WooCommerce store and this blog is going to cover the full picture, from what mix and match products actually are and which types of businesses benefit most from them, through to why the business case for adding them is stronger than most people initially assume, and how to get everything set up properly using the plugin.
What WooCommerce Mix and Match Products Actually Are
Before getting into the business case it is worth being precise about what mix and match products actually mean in a WooCommerce context because the term gets used loosely and not always accurately.
A mix and match product is essentially a customizable box or bundle where the customer decides what goes inside it rather than the store owner making that decision upfront. The store owner defines the container, sets the rules around how many items can go in, establishes the pricing structure, and optionally pre-fills the box with recommended products, but the customer has the freedom to swap, add, or remove items within whatever parameters the store owner has set.
This is different from a standard product bundle, where the contents are fixed and the customer is buying a pre-determined combination. With mix and match products WooCommerce the customer is an active participant in building what they are buying rather than a passive recipient of a pre-packaged selection and that distinction matters more than it might seem because it fundamentally changes how engaged the customer is with the purchase before they even check out.
What we have observed is that customers who build their own product boxes spend considerably more time on the product page than those browsing standard products, they feel more ownership over what they are buying, and they arrive at checkout with a much stronger sense of certainty about their order than someone who is just adding a pre-determined bundle to their cart and hoping it matches what they wanted.
What Types of Stores Benefit Most From This Feature
We think it is worth being honest that mix and match products WooCommerce is not a feature that every store needs equally. It suits certain business models considerably more than others and understanding where it fits best helps you figure out whether it is worth investing the setup time for your specific store.
Food and Beverage Stores
This is probably the most natural fit for custom product boxes. Gourmet food stores, coffee and tea retailers, chocolate and confectionery shops, craft beer or wine stores, snack subscription businesses, these are all setups where the whole point of the purchase is often a curated personal selection or a thoughtful gift. Letting customers pick their own combination of flavors, varieties, or products from a defined selection is exactly what these customers want to do and the box format makes the whole thing feel like a premium, considered experience rather than just adding individual items to a cart.
Gift and Occasion Retailers
Any store where a meaningful portion of purchases are gifts benefits from the mix and match format because gift buyers are specifically trying to create something that feels personal and considered. A generic pre-packed gift set is fine but a box that the buyer assembled themselves from a range of options feels considerably more thoughtful even if the contents are similar. The personalized gift note feature that the plugin includes reinforces this further because it lets the buyer attach a message to the box which completes the gift experience within the checkout flow.
Health, Beauty, and Wellness Stores
Skincare, supplement, and wellness stores are another strong fit because customers in these categories often have specific preferences and routines that a standard bundle cannot accommodate. Letting them build a custom bundle from the available products means they get exactly what they actually use rather than a combination that includes things they do not need, which reduces the friction around bundle purchases in categories where personal preference varies significantly.
Stationery, Craft, and Hobby Stores
Stores selling stationery sets, craft supplies, or hobby products often have customers who want specific combinations of items that do not correspond to any pre-built bundle the store offers. The mix and match format is a natural solution because it lets customers build the exact combination they need without having to place multiple separate orders or settle for a bundle that is close but not quite right.
Corporate and Wholesale Buyers
On the B2B side, businesses ordering products in bulk for gifting, promotional purposes, or operational use often have specific requirements around what goes into each order. The user role restriction feature in the plugin means you can make certain product boxes visible only to wholesale or corporate account holders, creating a tailored ordering experience for that customer segment without exposing it to regular retail buyers.
Why This Is Actually a Smart Business Move
This is the part we want to spend the most time on because the business case for WooCommerce mix and match products goes considerably deeper than just giving customers a fun way to shop. What we have observed across stores that have implemented this properly is that it tends to move multiple business metrics simultaneously in ways that most individual feature additions simply do not.
It Increases Average Order Value Without Aggressive Upselling
The most straightforward business benefit is that customers building their own box tend to fill it. When someone has committed to the idea of creating a custom bundle they are mentally in a building mode rather than a browsing mode and the tendency is to add more to the box rather than less, especially when the pricing structure makes adding items feel like getting more value rather than spending more money.
We noticed that this effect is particularly pronounced when the dynamic pricing option is used because customers can see the per-item cost adjusting as they add products which makes the decision to add one more item feel like a value decision rather than a spending decision. That is a meaningfully different psychological context than adding a separate product to a cart independently.
It Drives Higher Customer Engagement Before the Purchase
Time spent on a product page is generally a positive signal for both conversion likelihood and customer satisfaction with the eventual purchase. A customer who has spent several minutes building a custom box has a level of investment in that order that a customer who spent thirty seconds adding a standard product to a cart simply does not have.
What we think happens in these longer engagement sessions is that the customer answers their own objections as they build. They consider what they want, they make deliberate choices, and by the time they hit add to cart they are not second-guessing the purchase in the same way that someone who made a quick decision might be.
It Reduces Returns on Bundle Orders
Returns in the bundle and gift category often happen because the contents of a pre-packed bundle did not match what the recipient actually wanted or needed. When the customer builds the bundle themselves, that mismatch between expectation and reality is largely eliminated because they selected every item individually with full visibility of what they were choosing.
We believe this is one of the more underrated business benefits of mix and match products WooCommerce because the cost of processing returns, both financially and in terms of customer relationship damage, is significant enough that reducing return rates meaningfully is a genuine business improvement even if it is harder to quantify than average order value.
It Opens Up a Gifting Revenue Stream
Stores that did not previously have a strong gifting offering can effectively create one through custom product boxes without needing to design and source dedicated gift products. The box format combined with the gift note feature and the ability to pre-fill boxes with curated suggestions creates a gifting experience that customers can personalize to their own taste, which is often more appealing than a fixed gift set at a comparable price point.
The Discount Feature Creates a Purchasing Incentive
The bundle item discount feature lets you offer fixed or percentage discounts on specific products within the mix and match box and display a discount widget that shows customers exactly what they are saving. What we observed is that this creates a natural incentive to fill the box because customers can see the savings accumulating as they add items, which nudges them toward higher value orders without any hard selling required.
Setting Up Custom Product Boxes Using the Plugin
With the business case established it is worth walking through how to actually get this set up on your store using the Custom Mix and Match Product Boxes plugin by Extendons.
Installation
Getting the plugin installed is straightforward:
- Download the plugin from your WooCommerce dashboard
- In your WordPress admin panel go to Plugins > Add New > Upload
- Select the downloaded ZIP file and click Install Now
- Click Activate Plugin once installation completes
- Navigate to WooCommerce > Settings where you will find the Custom Boxes tab
Configuring the Global Settings
Inside Custom Boxes > General Settings configure the defaults that apply across all your mix and match products:
- Layout Style: Choose between Detailed which shows product descriptions and Compressed which keeps the display more minimal
- View Style: Select Grid or List view for products displayed inside the box
- Add to Cart Text: Customize the label on the add to cart button
- Heading Label: Set a custom heading for the product boxes section
- Out of Stock Error Text: Write a message for when a product in the box is unavailable
- Box Success Message: Set the message that appears when a box is completely filled
- Form Width: Adjust the width of the product box form to fit your layout
- Background Color and Primary Color: Match the box display to your store theme
- Image Placeholder: Upload a placeholder image for empty box slots so the layout always looks intentional
Creating a Mix and Match Product
Go to WooCommerce > Products > Add New and in the Product Data tab change the product type to Custom Product Boxes. This reveals the Product Boxes tab where all the bundle specific configuration lives.
Work through these settings:
- Pricing Type: Choose between Fixed Pricing for a set box price, Per Item Price with Base Price which adds individual product costs to a base price, or Per Item Price without Base Price which charges only based on what goes in
- Enable Gift Message: Check this to allow customers to attach a personalized note to their bundle
- Hide Out of Stock Products: Automatically removes unavailable items from the selection
- Box Quantity: Set the total number of items allowed in the box
- Enable Per Product Limit: Restrict how many times the same product can be added
- Allow Partially Filled Boxes: Let customers check out without filling the entire box, with a minimum quantity requirement if needed
- Enable Add New Box: Allow customers to start a second box after filling the first
- Enter New Boxes Limit: Cap how many boxes can be added per session
Selecting Products for the Bundle
In the Bundle Items section choose which products customers can pick from. You can select individual products or pull in entire categories which is the more efficient approach for stores with large catalogues. For pre-filled boxes enable the Pre-Filled Box option and add the products that should appear by default, marking each as optional or mandatory depending on whether customers can remove them.
Setting Featured Products
Enable Featured Products to pin specific items to the top of the selection within the box. What we found is this works particularly well for promoting high margin or best-selling products within the bundle context because it guarantees visibility without being heavy-handed about it.
Applying Bundle Discounts
In the Bundle Items Discounts section:
- Check Enable Box Discount to activate the discount feature
- Enable Show Box Discount Widget to display the savings information visibly on the product page
- Set the Widget Button Text to something that communicates the saving clearly
- Select the specific products or variations the discount applies to and set whether the discount is a fixed amount or a percentage
Setting User Role Restrictions
If certain boxes should only be visible to specific customer types go to User Restrictions, enable user role restrictions, select the allowed roles, and set a custom message for customers who do not qualify. What we think works well here is using this for wholesale-specific bundles that retail customers simply never see rather than showing them an access-denied message.
A Few Things Worth Getting Right Before Going Live
Before making your mix and match products WooCommerce setup live for customers there are a few things we would recommend reviewing because they tend to be the details that affect the customer experience most noticeably once real orders start coming in.
- Make sure the box placeholder image is uploaded and looks intentional because an empty box with no placeholder image looks unfinished and can confuse customers about what the box format is even for
- Test the partial checkout setting by deliberately filling a box below the minimum and verifying the error message is clear and helpful rather than just a generic system message
- If you are using dynamic pricing test the price calculation by adding and removing different combinations of products to make sure the totals are accurate and updating visibly as expected
- Check the gift note field is appearing correctly on the product page if you have it enabled and that the note carries through to the order confirmation
In Summary
What we keep coming back to when thinking about WooCommerce mix and match products is that the feature does something relatively rare in eCommerce which is improve the experience for the customer and the outcomes for the business at the same time without those two things being in tension with each other. Customers get more control and a more engaging shopping experience. The store gets higher average order values, better engagement metrics, lower return rates, and a gifting offering that practically builds itself.
The Custom Mix and Match Product Boxes plugin by Extendons handles all of the configuration that makes this work properly and once it is set up correctly it runs as a natural and integrated part of how the store sells rather than feeling like an add-on that does not quite belong. For the right type of store, and we think there are more of them than most people initially assume, adding mix and match products WooCommerce is genuinely one of the more impactful things you can do to how the store sells and how customers feel about shopping on it.