People may shop online initially for the convenience, selection and affordability, but consumers don’t mind spending more if they’re getting value.
Instead of opting for more time-consuming measures to improve a bottom line, why not just entice customers to spend a bit more by offering a deal in their interest? Doing so provides a better experience and drives more revenue.
How much revenue? Stores that upsell regularly see impressive results. Per Sumo, upselling increases revenue by 10–30 percent on average and is 68 percent more affordable through which to acquire a new customer.
Every e-commerce store should be experimenting with different upselling promotions. Here are four upselling foundations to base your efforts.
Leverage Your Most Popular Products
Whether you’ve started a furniture business or outdoor gear store, you’ve probably realized that products don’t contribute to your orders and revenue evenly. That’s OK, it’s normal. In fact, when you’re brainstorming different ways to upsell, focusing on your most popular products is a wise move.
Per Neil Patel, upsell criteria should include stores’ most reviewed products, most sold products, and most relevant products. Two of these things will be very easy to suss out, while the latter will require using tracking cookies to understand shoppers better.
Focus on Price Difference
An upselling strategy is only as good as the value offered, and that value starts diminishing when the price difference between the original and the upsell product is too large. E-commerce best practices often preach the rule of 25, which is to say that if your custom furniture store sells a $1,000 dresser, then a suitable upsell would be a slightly nicer (maybe the wood is mahogany instead of oak) $1,250 dresser. Of course, if the upsell offer were for a $1,300 mahogany dresser, all hope would not be lost. Use the rule of 25 with discretion.
Recommend Tailored Products to Customers
Online shopping affords us all the choice we could ever want, and then some. As much as people love to comparison shop and research products before buying them, multiple options and indecision go hand in hand.
Per Forrester, product recommendations are responsible for 10-30 percent of e-commerce revenues. But brands can sweeten the deal even more by leveraging cookies and their shoppers’ preferences to recommend products they’ll love. Salesforce notes that while personalized product recommendations drive only seven percent of visits, but 26 percent of revenue!
Occasionally, you may want to recommend shoppers slightly more expensive options than they’re browsing. A study by Predictive Intent shows that doing so drives an average of over four percent of sales, 20 times more than standard product recommendations.
A/B Test for the Win
No matter which upselling strategies you incorporate into your shopping experience, the importance of A/B testing cannot be overstated. No plan is immune to failure, and the little details can matter more than you think. Weigh the overall results of different upselling promos but also test the various elements that make up your promotion.
Everything from the copy and image to the call-to-action button color (and of course, price and product) can affect shoppers’ decisions and the effectiveness of an upsell promo. Don’t settle for rushed or spotty testing. But at the same time, be careful not to go overboard and test multiple factors at once—otherwise, you’ll have a hard time measuring anything effectively.
These four upselling foundations are the base ingredients for your promo experiments.
When evaluating whether to pursue a given strategy, ask if you’re actually providing value and making your customers’ lives easier. After all, when upselling is done right, it’s not a gimmick; it’s an enhancement to the customer experience and more sales for your e-commerce store.