Next time you are waiting your turn in the check-out line take a look at the items placed closest to the register. At retail stores its items like jewelry, sunglasses, socks and belts. At media stores like Best Buy or GameStop its batteries, additional controllers, memory cards and travel cases.
These items are all impulse buy items that retailers use to squeeze a little bit more money out of you, the customer. Traditional brick and mortar stores have figured out the art of upselling and cross-selling. If you’re not implementing this same strategy in your online business you’re missing out. These tactics often increase the average order amount per customer by over 20 percent!
Cross-selling is selling an additional product to a customer, it’s usually an item related to what they are already buying. An example of this is selling headphones to a customer buying an mp3 player or offering a ink cartridges to someone buying a printer.
Upselling is selling a more expensive product to a customer than the one they had originally intended to buy. Like tempting a customer buying chicken breasts with more expensive organic chicken breasts. Or getting a customer to upgrade from regular, digital cable boxes to high-definition cable boxes like Comcast did to me this past weekend.
Both are ways to get the customer to buy more from you without any extra effort! And what’s great is that you can put these on auto-pilot so you don’t have to continually work on them.
Cross-selling and upselling are two of the easiest strategies you can use because you’re selling to people who are already making a purchase with you. The key is to do it well and without the customer knowing they are being cross sold or upsold to.
The first step you should take is coming up with products that are natural up-sells and cross-sells for each item or service you offer. Suggesting just the right good or service is so important to using this strategy correctly. Offer items or services that are natural extensions to the item they are interested in. You wouldn’t suggest a customer who brings a ladies hat to the register also purchases a fishing pole, would you? No! Those two items don’t make sense together. But you might suggest a customer buys a helmet when they purchase a bicycle. Items like that naturally go together.
It’s also important to pick the right time to try a cross-sell or up-sell tactic. While it’s true that customers tend to browse all kinds of items at traditional brick and mortar stores that’s not true on the web. Online shoppers are focused. They have certain items they are looking for and it’s hard to distract them from their task. Trying to up-sell or cross-sell to them while they are shopping online is usually ineffective.
It’s best to wait till they are done shopping to offer them additional, more expensive items. When a customer adds an item to their shopping cart use a pop-up window to suggest other items that fit with what their buying. Once a shopper has added a product about starting their own internet business to their shopping cart suggest they also purchase information about joint ventures or online marketing strategies. Or suggest they upgrade to the version of the product that includes mentoring or phone consultations.
It’s also imperative that you use appropriate language. Everyone hates pushy salespeople when they’re shopping in person. Assertive language when shopping online can be just as annoying. Up-sells and cross-sells should come off as recommendations, instead of additional necessary parts customers must purchase.
Instead of saying phrases like “we think you’ll like this” or “You should also try”, say “Customers who bought this also bought” or “You may also be interested in.” The point is to put the choice in the customer’s hands.
Another good tactic is to offer a lower price to bundle products. By bundling products customers should get them cheaper than if they were to buy them separately. This improves customer satisfaction because you are helping them save money. For example if a customer adds a product about marketing on Twitter, offer to bundle it with a report about social media at a reduced price than if they were to purchase them individually. You should add bundle recommendations for each item you sell.
Amazon.com and Apple.com are two companies that have really nailed the art of upselling and cross-selling. Browse both of their websites and check-out how they use these tactics to increase their average order amount. Then go back to your own website and make sure your upsells and cross-sells are as seamless and unobtrusive as theirs.
Remember that for these two tactics to work, the focus should always be on the customer, not on pushing additional items or services onto the customer. Whatever you sell them should solve their problem. The suggestions must be natural extensions of the items they are intending to buy from you. When done appropriately the customer will leave your website with a greater customer satisfaction because you helped them solve their problem instead of selling them more stuff.
Good luck!
Ethan Warrick
Editor & CEO
