Shop Admin Tips – Simple Upsell and Cross sell Techniques that I Use
Categories: Shop Admin Tips
In this article I will share a few simple upselling tips that I personally use without irritating the customer and have had success with. Please note that my goal with upselling is not to trick a customer into buying something or sell them some junk.
My aim is to show the customer additional products or services that might better meet their needs or will add value to the product that they are already buying. It’s a way of demonstrating that I am aware of my customer’s needs and care about their satisfaction.
What is Upselling?
“Upselling is a sales technique whereby a salesperson induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Upselling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, but upselling can also be simply exposing the customer to other options he or she may not have considered previously.” – Wikipedia
1. Place Offers on the Checkout Page
There are many places on your website where you can upsell. The most common would be the view cart/checkout page. Visitors who come to your checkout page are potential buyers and most likely have the credit card ready. So it is a lot easier to upsell them something relevant as it will most likely benefit them.
You can also introduce an upsell page that the customers have to pass before they can go to the “Checkout Page”.
2. Offer Bundle Product and Discount
If you have multiple products that are relevant then offering bundled/packaged product at a special price works very good.
Giving out coupons that give discounts when buying multiple items work well too. Most e-commerce software will let you configure coupons so use them. If you are using the WP eStore plugin then you could configure conditional coupons that gives discounts like the following:
- Give 25% discount if the total amount is greater than $50.00
- Give 20% discount if the total number of items in the cart is more than 5
- Give free shipping if the total amount is greater than $100.00
3. Offer Special Discount Coupon
You can give special discount coupons or promotional offers to customers after they make a purchase. This usually gives them incentive to buy more from you. All you have to do is place your offer on the Thank You (Post payment landing page).
Again,if you are using the WP eStore plugin then you can configure a block of Text/HTML (your customer only special offer) that automatically gets displayed to the customer with the transaction result on the “Thank You” page like the following screenshot:
Upsell Offer on the Thank You page
4. Use words like “Special Offers” to communicate
Use words like “Special Offers”, “Great Deals” to draw customers attention. It is very easy to communicate “savings”, “value” using those words and everybody likes to save.
Some Things to Keep in Mind
- Don’t be unethical… you want to give customers more than what they pay for so they go away happy. Never sell them unnecessary items just to make a sale.
- Don’t be too pushy and make your checkout page like GoDaddy (I am not sure if I am the only one who gets annoyed with their checkout system).
- Don’t overdo and clutter your page with every offer you can think of.
- Don’t promote competing products on the view cart page.
As a general guideline… try to keep in mind that the key to successful upselling is to focus your efforts on meeting the customer’s needs, rather than simply pushing more products and services.
I have shared some of my upselling tips now it’s your turn. Please share your upselling tips in the comment area below so I can learn 
#1 by Darren (Green Change) on February 18, 2010 - 7:19 am
I’ve seen people doing some cool upsells with eBooks lately. Their checkout page allows you to add an audio-book of the eBook to your order, or to get a hard-copy printed and bound version of the eBook sent to you, both for a pretty reasonable additional amount.
Darren (Green Change)´s last blog ..Kiama Show 2010
#2 by admin on February 18, 2010 - 8:22 pm
Yeah and given that you can outsource this printing and shipping bit of work, it is very easy to add this option for extra revenue without much overhead.
#3 by Donna on February 23, 2010 - 9:55 am
“Don’t be too pushy and make your checkout page like GoDaddy (I am not sure if I am the only one who gets annoyed with their checkout system).”
You’re certainly not alone there! I hate using GoDaddy simply because of that! In fact, I moved all my domains (and I had about 50 at the time) over to Namecheap because I couldn’t stand GoDaddy and all the time I was wasting trying to navigate their system to figure out what I needed to do to get the free year’s worth of whois guard that they advertised, and make sure that they didn’t ‘trick’ me into buying things I didn’t want because they set it as a default.
#4 by Lillea Woodlyns on February 28, 2010 - 6:27 pm
Excellent tips! I’ve seen upsells down well and done badly, and GoDaddy is a good example of badly IMO, but I guess they are doing well overall so it’s working for them.
I still have a small number of domains with GoDaddy which, like Donna, I should move to Namecheap. Namecheap is a LOT better. GoDaddy’s prices are awful by comparison.
Lillea Woodlyns´s last blog ..WordPress eStore, Affiliate and Membership Site Plugins
#5 by Moja Izba on March 1, 2010 - 7:31 pm
Hi Amin and Ivy, I can relate to the special offers idea; or in other words quantity discount structure e.g. buy 5 get 20% off from the total – one item free value instead of purchasing 6. Going to get from you also the Affiliate and the Membership plugins today, sending you email about it right now. Thank you.
Moja Izba´s last blog ..Angle units converter
#6 by Paul on March 18, 2010 - 11:29 am
Good Tips. I think cross selling is a great idea without being to aggressive. We sell a range of products that can easily be cross sold. I’ll need to look for a mod that will allow our shopping cart to do this !!
Paul´s last blog ..Correcting Banding in Gradients