Tips to Make Upselling Effective & Profitable for your eCommerce Business
Walk into any coffee shop, and you are bound to hear, “would you want to try a new variety of doughnuts or, do you want a sandwich to go with it?”
How often have they tried to lure you with another product to go with what you are having? In the eCommerce language, that is called upselling. In other words, they try to sell you something else with what you are planning to buy.
Go to Amazon, and add a particular product to the cart, and you will receive the message “people also bought” along with some items that go with your product.
The primary purpose of this technique is to increase sales and make the entire purchase more profitable for the brand.
Now, let us dive deeper into upselling and how it can help your business.
Upselling & Its Impact On The Businesses
As discussed above, upselling is all about persuading your customers to purchase more items than they originally intended to, thus encouraging sales and profits. The idea is to sell something more expensive or premium to the customer.
Why is upselling important to the eCommerce domain?
When you are an eCommerce store, you must engage your customers and build a relationship with them. with upselling, you are not only directing your customers towards products that may complete their needs but also focusing on their happiness in general
As they say, retaining existing customers is much easier than acquiring new ones. For one, the acquisition cost is higher. Secondly, you will see that acquiring requires a lot of your effort. Upselling can help you retain your customers while selling them more products. You also get more profits from selling two different products to the same person, with negligible investment.
The customer lifetime value measures how profitable the customer is to the organization. If you get a higher CLV from a particular customer, it simply means that they are very beneficial for your organization. With upselling, you can get a better CLV from the same customer, as they intend to spend more than what you would get from a newly acquired customer.
When you upsell, there is more engagement, and loyalty increases as a result. In addition, you will see more of your customer at your store with good upselling practices.
Upselling Tips for eCommerce Stores
- When you upsell, you must choose the right type of upselling, one that works for your users. For instance, if you are offering a particular product, then a version upgrade is an upselling that you can provide to the users. Instead of choosing a burger, the user can go for a happy meal. In addition, the product protection, service guarantee, etc., are some kinds of upselling that you can try for your brand.
- You must show the upsell as many times as possible whenever the customer is on your page. This way, you will be able to convert better. Show them once a particular product is added to the cart. Then, you can show them on the product pages. Here, you will need to tell them the type of products that can be bought along with the one they are planning.
- Please don’t push the upsell, so the customer gets annoyed and decides not to purchase the product they once considered. Your main aim is to ensure that the customer sees the upsell. If your upsell is in the form of a popup that appears as soon as the user enters your website, the chances are that they would decide to move out even before they get an opportunity to engage with your website. Therefore, you need to understand some display rules before you decide to place your upsell on the website.
- Upsell should always be personalized to meet the user’s requirements. If they are not relevant to the user, you might lose your only chance at converting the user. So instead, browse their order history, check what they have been considering all this while, and upsell by sending them a mail using their first name.
- When you send them an email or a message to convert, you need to use reliable and powerful words that have the will to convert. The idea is to make them believe that your upsell is truly beneficial to them, and they will be in a win-win situation if they buy the product. When you send a note to them, make sure there is a certain urgency in your tone that attracts them to the upsell
- When you are upselling, make sure the product’s price is not more than 40% of the product that the user was already planning to buy. This way, the upsell would work. If the upsell price is higher than that, you may not be able to will the conversion.
Upsell Best Practices
- Excellent customer service is vital for a good upsell. It is only when your customer service recognizes the customer’s needs and answers all their questions correctly that you manage to complete the upsell
- To complete a successful upsell, you must have a credible range of products. Always choose products that have been rated well on your website. That way, you have a higher chance of completing the sale.
- Too much upsell is not good for your brand. Always make sure you sell limited products at restricted pricing when you decide to upsell
- If you are upselling a particular product, make sure you let the customer know what they are purchasing. Include all the details in the upsell for better results. Once the customer knows what they will buy or how the product will be useful to them, they are more likely to complete the purchase.
- It would be best to simplify the upsell by making it easy for the users to navigate between the cart and the upsell products you defined for the customer.
Please make sure you offer good discounts that make them want to complete the purchase.
Summing up
Upselling is a great idea to engage the customer and make them profitable for your website. However, upselling can become a liability for your eCommerce store when done the wrong way. Always ensure that you have strategized a simple upsell for your customers personalized to their needs. You will maximize your conversions only when you have something enticing to offer, which the users are unable to resist.
Author Bio: Atman Rathod is the Co-founder at CMARIX TechnoLabs Pvt. Ltd., a leading Magento development company with 13+ years of experience. He loves to write about technology, startups, entrepreneurship, and business. His creative abilities, academic track record, and leadership skills made him one of the key industry influencers.
