Let’s face it, e-commerce consumers are a savvy bunch. Once upon a time, it might have been easy to pull the wool over their eyes and draw your customers towards simple and obvious upselling deals, but chances are, your customers aren’t falling into those traps anymore. So, how to upsell on Shopify to a modern, savvy consumer? I’m so glad you asked.
Here, we’re going to discuss the best practices for upselling on Shopify, with techniques that have proven results in the modern e-commerce landscape. We’ve also included some examples of subtle upselling on Shopify, so that you can learn from the best.
Let’s go!
Upselling, cross-selling, down-selling – what are all these words and what do they mean? Upselling and cross-selling can be difficult to distinguish, but it’s important to know the difference so that you can use both techniques effectively throughout your store.
Upselling generally refers to the act of enticing your customer to buy either a) a better, more expensive version of a product, or b) more quantity/a larger version of a product. An example would be upgrading a customer to a computer or device with greater storage capacity, that’s more expensive than the base model.
Cross-selling, on the other hand, refers to increasing a sale by selling related or similar products to your customer. A classic example made famous by Amazon is the “customers also bought” product bundles that display additional, related products as you are browsing.
Both upselling and cross-selling can be equally effective, and can also be used in tandem – there’s no need to choose between the two and use one technique exclusively. As well as how to upsell on Shopify, we’ll also show some examples of cross-selling deals and techniques below.
Driving traffic to your store is difficult, and acquiring customers is usually quite expensive when you consider the advertising and marketing costs involved. Therefore, once a customer is browsing your online store, it’s important to do everything you can to make a sale.
In fact, making a sale is not enough. You need to do whatever you can generate as much revenue as possible from every single customer. It’s much easier (and cheaper) to sell to an existing customer, which is why upselling to each store visitor is crucial to your e-commerce success.
You don’t need to take my word for it. Jeff Bezos has previously confirmed that a staggering 35% of Amazon’s revenue comes from their upselling and cross-selling deals, including “frequently bought together” and product recommendations.
There are a few mistakes that merchants sometimes make when first learning how to upsell on Shopify. To make sure your upselling deals are optimized right away, let’s take a look at some upselling best practices:
The point of upselling is not to give away your products. You don’t need to offer excessive discounts to incentivize your customers, and you do need to make sure that your upselling deal is making you money, not costing it.
In many cases, the psychology of a perceived discount is just as important to your customer as the actual monetary saving. As long as they feel like they are getting a great deal, they will be more inclined to go for it. Therefore, you only need to add a small saving in order to convince your customer to buy.
Don’t make your customer choose between eight slightly different variations of the same product, each with different features and pricing. They will likely give up, worried that they won’t make the right choice, and will find a simpler solution. Only upsell with highly relevant, related products.
The same goes for your discounts. Clearly show your customers what they are saving when they purchase the upsell you are offering – you don’t want them to have to get our their calculator and figure out which of the three options is the best deal.
With PickyStory, you can create highly optimized, personalized deals allowing you to upsell on just about every page of your store. All deals can be tailored and customized to suit your brand’s style, and will blend so seamlessly into your product pages, your customers won’t even realize they are being upsold to.
Let’s take a look at a few examples.
Creating an upselling deal and selling it as a separate product in your store, rather than an add-on to an existing product, is an amazingly powerful way of upselling to your customers. For example, if you sell t-shirts, and want to give your customers the option of buying a 3-pack of shirts, why not create a 3-pack product and offer it as a separate listing?
With PickyStory, you can create a Combo Product, which is essentially an aggregate of several separate products. The best part is that you are selling this as one product – your customer is able to purchase the whole pack at once, dramatically increasing your average order value (AOV). You can even add your Combo Products to collections, as you would with regular products.
One of the best ways to make sure your customers spend more, is to encourage them to save more. Tiered pricing and quantity breaks are a great way to achieve this. Tiered Pricing refers to offering different pricing levels, or tiers, based on the quantity purchased.
For example, you can offer a single product full-price, then offer a 10% discount when two are purchased, a 20% discount when three are purchased, and so on. This gives your customer the freedom of choosing the pricing tier that best suits their budget, as well as the product quantity they need.
PickyStory’s Kits are designed exactly with this in mind. Simply add the product (or products) to the kit, set your pricing tiers, and choose where to display the kit in your store. Kits are commonly displayed on product pages – you can display the option of a three-pack below the single product to entice your customers.
The cart page is a great place to display upsell deals to your customers, because by the time a customer reaches the cart page, their intent to buy is significantly higher than when they are simply browsing through a collection of products.
The most effective way to upsell in the cart is to use highly specific products and add-ons, based on the products your customer already has in their cart. Upsell with a larger or premium version of the product in the cart, and if your customer is close to receiving a reward or discount for their order (such as free shipping), don’t forget to let them know!
With PickyStory, you can offer product bundles as an upsell in the cart. Create a bundle containing the specific products you want to upsell, and the offer will only be displayed when one of those products is already in the cart. It’s too easy!
PickyStory is designed specifically to help you generate more revenue from every store visit. Upselling deals are a great way to make that happen, and hopefully this article has provided you with some easy to implement strategies when it comes to how to upsell on Shopify.
Learn more on the PickyStory blog.
Good Luck!
PickyStory is the e-commerce conversion platform. It enables merchants to uplift their revenue in store. PickyStory offers a variety of deals like Bundle Products, Combo Products, Bundle Builder, Kits, Looks, and coupons.
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