I have worked with a handful of online stores, all of them used different criteria for what was the most popular item. Some were pretty simple like “highest volume of sales in the past 7 or 30 days”, some others were pretty complex and some were pretty much dishonest, putting expensive products next to slightly higher than average ones in order to make them feel cheaper. Like the other comment have said, there is no consensus and it mainly depends on the company’s goals with that section.
I have worked with a handful of online stores, all of them used different criteria for what was the most popular item. Some were pretty simple like “highest volume of sales in the past 7 or 30 days”, some others were pretty complex and some were pretty much dishonest, putting expensive products next to slightly higher than average ones in order to make them feel cheaper. Like the other comment have said, there is no consensus and it mainly depends on the company’s goals with that section.