Up-selling and cross-selling are, without a doubt, the proven revenue-generating sales strategies for eCommerce stores. And Magento is also one of the platforms that have tasted the piece of the pie. The personalized recommendations can drive 26% more sales and help in simplifying navigation. These product recommendations add more value to the shopping experience of your customers, which more than 78% of the customers expect from you.
Many marketers and eCommerce store owners use up-selling and cross-selling interchangeably. While both the terms are different. But what’s the difference? Let’s find out.
What is Up-selling?
Up-selling means offering a higher value product instead of the one the customers are looking to buy. This higher value product would be high in price and better in features than the one in consideration.
An up-sell is generated by offering a high-priced product or suggesting an upgrade for customers while they are making a purchase. A good example of this would be a McDonald’s cashier asking to upgrade your meal. Thus, you have to pay more for similar food but for large size.
As per econsultancy, up-selling can generate up to 4% of the total sales. This signifies how important it is but the question is why customers would choose to upgrade their choice of product? It is an important thing for Magento store owners to keep in mind while laying out plans for up-selling. Show them the benefits of doing so without them feeling getting ripped-off. Make your customers understand how and why the product recommended can be more beneficial for them, then the one they are looking for.
What is Cross-selling?
Cross-selling is an act of offering a product that goes with the product customers already want to purchase. To cross-sell a product, it should add some value to the product customer already have or want to purchase. The best example of the cross-selling would be offering a case or glass protector when someone buys a mobile phone. These items go well with the product in question which is a mobile phone and add some value to it too.
Cross-selling is also a successful way to increase order value and overall revenue of your Magento store. Due to the psychological factors, consumers are buying products impulsively. Customers may like that they are being offered with additional products to purchase but they don’t like to get pressured to purchase them.
Why Cross-selling and Up-selling are Important for Ecommerce?
When cross-selling and up-selling is done in a more personalized way, it can improve the trust and loyalty of your customers. By assisting them in their buying journey, you can offer them a brilliant product that they would like to buy. And all of these things improve customers’ retention. One thing you should know that retaining a customer is actually 5X less costly than going out to acquire a new customer.
Cross-selling and up-selling techniques, if mastered and done properly, can increase the revenue of your eCommerce store significantly. But don’t try to overuse them as it can reverse the results. If you keep nagging your customers with constant up-selling and cross-selling recommendations, then it will irritate them and they might leave your site for good.
You can implement up-selling and cross-selling techniques manually in your Magento store with default functions provided by the platform. Or you can install a module that can do the work for you. Also, there are specific pages of your Magento site where you can up-sell and cross-sell products. If you want to up-sell a product, then show them on the product pages of your Magento store. If you want to cross-sell an item, then show them on the shopping cart page. You can also recommend product while live chatting with customers.
There are a few proven strategies to up-sell and cross-sell items that you need to adopt for your Magento eCommerce store for the best results possible.
Proven Up-selling Sales Strategies to Implement in Magento store
- Take into Account Your Customers’ Needs
Before implementing any sales strategy, it is important to know what customers really want. What their needs are? Once you know all their needs and wants, you can better come up with products that they would really appreciate you for recommending.
To get the relevant information about your customers, you can track their behavior and past purchase history if any. You can ask them to take a survey or include necessary fields into the checkout page. With all this information in hand, you can better serve your customers and show them that you truly understand their needs by recommending items that match their requirements.
- Limit Available Options
Don’t go overboard in recommending products. Limit the number of options available to up-sell and cross-sell items. You should up-sell or cross-sell either the most reviewed product or best-selling product. Your goal here shouldn’t be to bombard customers by recommending too many items at once. Otherwise, the customers would storm out of your Magento store to never return back.
- Leverage Bundle Products
Grab your customers by recommending them with a bundle of products. Entice your customers with an exciting bundle of products that people usually buy together. By default, Magento provides an option to bundle products, which you can use on different pages of your Magento store.
You can create as many bundles of products as you need. Another benefit of the product bundle is that when customers opt for them the average order value goes high. And that helps to increase the overall revenue of your Magento store.
- Put Email Marketing to Use
With email marketing, you can take up-selling and cross-selling to a whole new level. It is a great opportunity for Magento eCommerce store owners to take advantage of it. You can send a follow-up email to cross-sell items after the customers have purchased something on your store. Include additional products that possibly go with their purchased product. Also, you can send email to those customers who have abandoned their carts with some discount offer to up-sell and cross-sell items.
- Personalized Suggestion
Personalization is the ultimate demand from shoppers that eCommerce store owners have to fulfill to generate sales and increase their revenue. And it is very important that you personalize up-selling and cross-selling recommendations and suggestions. At the up-selling and cross-selling part of the website, instead of saying “We recommend,” it should say “Product that may interest you” to add the personalization effect. Due to this personalization, “Recommended for you” portion of the website works really well.
Wrap Up
The up-selling and cross-selling has brought amazing results for eCommerce brands who have implemented them. It is one great marketing strategy that works effectively since the last decade. In 2006, Amazon had increased their sales to 35% just by implementing the cross-sell and up-sell into their eCommerce site.
This statistic suggests that if you put up-selling and cross-selling techniques into use, you are likely to get a better result than you may expect. And therefore, we have come up with a few up-selling and cross-selling techniques that you can adopt right away. Consult an eCommerce expert If you still have any doubts about up-selling and cross-selling techniques and how to implement them on your eCommerce store.