One of the best ways to increase your average order value for your ecommerce business is through upselling products. Upselling is defined as a technique used to persuade customers to purchase more expensive or premium items. You can also choose to include add-ons to your upsell to increase the functionality of the suggested products. Your upselling tactics should be smoothly introduced to your customers through conversation and marketing tactics.
The purpose of upselling products is to make a larger sale while introducing customers to products that better suit their needs. You can use an upsell to build better relationships with your customers. By offering them premium items that suit their needs, you’ll be communicating to them that you want them to get more functionality from the products they purchase with you.
Upselling truly is an art. In order to grow your ecommerce business to execute an upsell, you’ll need to be well-versed in what works best in upselling. Below we’ve put together six tips on how you can upsell products for your ecommerce business, with the hope it will help you build out your bottom line.
Ecommerce Merchandising
The goal of ecommerce merchandising is to connect customers with products that are best suited for their needs. It guides customers through their ecommerce experience, essentially telling them what to buy and why to buy it. Ecommerce merchandising helps every customer that visits your ecommerce business have unique experiences, albeit within their niche. By implementing it on your website, you’ll be able to cater to the needs and interests of your customer base better than ever before. You’ll be ensuring more revenue and potentially even more traffic from positive reviews and interactions.
Provide Side-By-Side Product Comparisons
Side-by-side product comparisons are a great way to get customers to pause and really consider an upsell. Amazon executes side-by-side product comparison upselling probably better than any other ecommerce business, so they’re a great website to learn from. When reviewing your product on their site, you’ll see a chart with items that are similar in nature but are usually higher priced and have higher customer satisfaction ratings.
It’s a great tactic to show consumers as they’re about to make a purchase that they might want to pause and think about something a little pricier, but better for their overall goals. There are plug-ins you can add to your website that allow you to show side-by-side product comparisons. If you’re having trouble implementing them, reach out to the customer service team of the host application for your ecommerce business.
Create Urgency
Customers react to urgent news, making it another great way to upsell products. You can alert customers of low-stock, high-priced items. Highlight how these items are high-performing and how they’ll benefit your customers. The point of pushing an urgent message is to remind them they have limited time to act on the purchase and that if they miss out, they’re going to be missing it in their life. Creating urgency through email marketing has proven to work well for ecommerce businesses, however, you can also post on your social media platforms and website.
Use Strong and Compelling Language
Utilizing language that resonates with your target audience is shown to increase the conversion rate by nearly 13%. The words you use matter, and by recognizing the power they have over your consumers you can begin to use them to your advantage.
Upsell your items by using compelling and strong language to describe their use and why your customers need them. Make sure each of the items you’re trying to upsell has a detailed description, and positive reviews, and is featured prominently on your ecommerce business’s website.
Personalize Your Upsells
You can put the data that you’ve collected from customers to use through personalized upselling. Use your site analytics to create user profiles of customers, new and old. You can add a plug-in so that your customers’ analytics are reflected in the products they receive notifications about. It’s shown that ecommerce businesses that successfully personalize their upsells gain 20% in sales annually.
Offer Free Shipping on Upsell Items
Customers love free shipping and one surefire way to get them interested in items you’re upselling is to offer that over to them. Nine out of ten online shoppers consider free shipping to be the ultimate incentive. They’ll seek out sites that offer the same or similar products to the ones they desire if the shipping is not free. By offering free shipping along with an upsell customers will be more likely to lean towards the more expensive purchase.
