To increase your eCommerce sales, you can use 2 useful marketing techniques to increase the value of each purchase while also improving customer satisfaction.
Let’s take a closer look at what are the peculiarities, advantages, differences between the two methods, and some useful tips on how best to apply them.
Up selling and cross selling to increase eCommerce sales? Here’s what it’s all about
Before understanding how these two strategies can help you increase sales, it is necessary to determine the distinctive features of each technique and their respective strengths.
What is up selling
Up selling is a practice used to convince people who visit your online store to buy the better (and more expensive) version of the product they originally wanted to buy. How? By highlighting its advantages.
To better understand how it works, let’s take an example. A user is looking for a PC on a tech e-shop. In this case, up selling techniques can be useful for you to suggest to him a model with advanced features and a more powerful processor than the one he was looking at or had in mind. In this way, you offer him a better performing (and more expensive) product and you make more money.
The benefits of up selling
One of the main benefits of this technique relates toincreasing the average order value (AOV ), i.e., the amount spent by the customer on your eCommerce.
What is cross selling
A method of showing people a range of additional and complementary products and/or services to those already placed in their shopping cart (or purchased) that may be useful in solving – and implementing – their primary goal.
Let’s take an example. Let’s return to our hi-tech virtual store. If a customer wants to take home a state-of-the-art TV, you can show them a number of related products (such as a home theater system or an extended TV warranty) to enhance their shopping experience.
The advantages
By offering additional products and services, you can increase the number of products purchased and thus the profits and value of each transaction.
Have you ever heard of cart abandonment? We tell you more about it here:
Reduce your e-commerce shopping cart abandonment rate
Increase eCommerce sales with up selling: 4 useful tips
To convince your audience to consider a product of higher value than what they are looking for on your online store, you must choose the right items to offer, including only those that they can really use.
To do this you need to know the needs, preferences and buying behaviors of your target audience. How? By analyzing the data.
- Study the behaviors of customers who have bought from you in the past: note their previous purchases, what they are most interested in, when they do it, and their minimum and maximum spending.
- Analyze your target market through segmentation: consider your target market and break it down by age, gender, interests…identifying targeted products for each segment.
This will allow you to create templates to suggest relevant products for your audience. But how to close the deal?
Here are some techniques for increasing eCommerce sales with up selling:
1. Add reviews
Product reviews (just like Google’s, but explaining the benefits and plusses of the superior model) are a powerful weapon in convincing people to finalize the purchase.
2. Demonstrate the value of the product (and compare it with others)
Making a product comparison is one of the easiest and most effective ways to show the differences and peculiarities between two different goods right away. Ideally, it is best to highlight the advantages right away (even highlighting them graphically, perhaps with a different color or font).
3. Specify the term of the offer
Urgency can help you close the sale. In order not to miss an opportunity, in fact, a user may buy in the short term.
4. Offer a guarantee
You know the phrase “satisfied or refunded”? Here, this wording can be very important in the eyes of potential customers because it manifests the reliability of your proposal.
A fifth tip for selling more is… promote your eCommerce. Find out how to do it, read here: Campaigns for online sales
5 tips increase eCommerce sales with cross selling
To increase your eCommerce sales with cross selling techniques, just as with up selling, you need to know your audience, studying the data available to you to identify their preferences, interests and needs.
Just think, as highlighted in Accenture’s Consumer Research 2024, “75 percent of consumers wish they could more quickly and easily locate options that meet their needs” while “74 percent abandoned purchases because they felt overwhelmed.” Data analysis is therefore a key step because only then can you suggest truly relevant items to them while maintaining your credibility.
Here are some techniques to make cross selling more effective:
1. Show check out related articles
Showing complementary goods in the final stage of the customer’s purchase, just a moment before proceeding with payment, is an easy way to encourage the purchase of a new item. The person will see it and-if he or she takes advantage of it-can add it to the cart and complete the transaction.
2. Incentivize purchasing with unmissable promotions
Combining multiple products sold at a bargain price can be an opportunity to incentivize the purchase of related items, even if this option was not budgeted for by the customer.
3. Offer discounts when a specific threshold is reached
To entice users to complete their purchase, you can offer them a series of discounts when they exceed an agreed threshold by adding the suggested merchandise to their cart.
4. Offer a trial period
Ideal practice for those who want to experience firsthand the benefits of what is offered in the e-shop.
5. Communicate the value of what you suggest
Use microcopy (and appropriate CTAs) to your advantage to clearly describe the benefits the user can gain by purchasing two or more suggested products together.
Increasing eCommerce sales: up selling and cross selling post purchase
The techniques we have seen so far can be applied during the sale and in check-out, but there are some tricks to be taken even after the transaction is completed. Here are some useful examples:
- uses the thank you page after payment to suggest a related item to the one already bought, without interfering with the initial spend; indeed promising a small discount (even for the next purchase, but with time limits)
- send personalized communications and text messages with discounts, coupons or freebies to incentivize your customers to return to your online store again. One trick might be, for example, to include within the newsletter a series of products related to what has already been purchased
- Create tailored offers based on your customers’ data (also considerusing a CRM for increasingly targeted proposals)
Applying them in the right way will allow you to increase the conversion rate, that is, to increase sales in a particular period and with a particular action.
Want to know how to improve conversion rate? We explain it here:
E-commerce conversion rate: effective strategies to improve it
Why you should hire a communications agency to increase your eCommerce sales
The techniques of up selling and cross selling are an attractive investment for a company that wants to increase its turnover but … you have to be very careful how you employ them. If the basis of their use, in fact, is not a careful study of the data and a well-planned strategy you can make some mistakes that can penalize your business. How? For example:
- suggesting the wrong products (think about what would happen if you pointed your customers to buy a swimsuit along with ski equipment)
- Recommending too many related items, thus triggering doubt and uncertainty to your customer
- Communicating too aggressively, sending too many text messages or post-purchase newsletters
The result of an up-selling and cross-selling campaign set up without a clear marketing strategy is to make your brand lose authority and prestige, as well as give away your customers to competitors.
Relying on a specialized communication agency, on the other hand, will allow you to achieve the result in a reasonable timeframe and in a natural way, without the risk that a wrong choice will make you lose control of your business. They will help you analyze the data in the right way, understand the habits and behaviors of your target audience, as well as understand where to apply these tactics in the customer journey (pre, during or post-sale)
In addition, you can count on a team that will suggest all the alternatives to increase your revenues, while also evaluating other options. A few examples? The use of Google advertising, useful for recommending your products to a specific target audience, and social media, to figure out if and how to promote your merchandise on these channels as well.
Rely on Isola to increase eCommerce sales with up selling and cross selling tactics! Find out what we can do for you!
