Upsell and Cross-Sell Products on Shopify November 17, 2015 20:00

Upsell and cross-sell opportunities on your Shopify store can boost sales and lead to a better customer experience. Upselling and cross-selling is an important way to increase average order value.

These can also improve customer and user experience on your store site by making related products easier to find. If done right, upselling and cross-selling make recommendations to customers about products they would or should have bought anyway. This ensures that customers don’t have to create a separate order for related items on your store because they weren’t aware, or search for these products on other vendor websites.

Upsell and cross-sell on Shopify

Upselling and cross-selling can be an integral and automated part of your marketing strategy through Shopify apps. But first, let’s discuss the difference between upselling and cross-selling.

Upselling is when you recommend a better version of your product to the customer (typically, also showing the additional price) for that version. For example, if you sell DSLR cameras, recommending that a customer can purchase a higher megapixel version with more features of the same line of cameras would be upselling.

Cross-selling is when you recommend related or complementary products to your customers. For example, if you sell DSLR cameras, recommending better lenses or a camera case to the customer would be considered cross-selling.

Although upsell and cross-sell opportunities on your store can help boost sales and customer experience, these opportunities can have the opposite effect if done poorly. Here are some things to keep in mind as you develop your upsell and cross-sell marketing strategy:

  • Recommendations can be a good place to show customers a newly launched product that can benefit their purchase. Customers may not be familiar with new products on your store, and new customers may not be familiar with the full list of products on your store.
  • Product recommendations should fall within common use cases for the selected products. For example, if you sell low-end DSLR cameras geared towards customers purchasing their first DSLR, recommending a red filter would probably not lead to more sales, and may end up causing confusion for your customers.
  • Display recommendations that are priced less than the selected products, that is, recommendations that don’t increase the order value by too much. For example, a customer is unlikely to purchase recommendations if a customer is purchasing something for $50, and you recommend related products that cost close to $200. This also makes it look like you’re pushing sales too much, and can lead to a bad customer experience.

When designing your strategy, think about what customers would most likely purchase. This may seem like a lot of work, but can have huge rewards. If it still seems like a lot of work, then Shopify has a number of apps that can automate product upsell and cross-sells.

Useful apps

Recommendify ($24.95 – $79.95 per month)
The Recommendify app allows you to cross-sell items on product pages, and the cart page. The app automatically looks at your product information to create recommendations based on similarities.

You can include recommendations based on:

  • similar products
  • top selling items
  • recently viewed products
  • custom recommendations
recommendify to upsell and cross-sell

Recommend products on the cart page (Source)

The Recommendify dashboard also allows you to track clicks on recommendations, and the value of conversions. You can shape your recommendations based on this information and focus on cross-selling products that convert well. High conversion products not only mean that you get more sales, but also show which products customers find useful to purchase at the same time.

Linkcious (Free – $70.00 per month)
The Linkcious app also automatically selects products to show in related product sections on your store. You can let the app choose products automatically, or create recommendations manually. In addition, Linkcious gives you the option to display social buttons on product pages, including the Facebook Like, Twitter, and Google +1 buttons.

Linkcious also allows you to create a widget that can be used on external websites, including a WordPress blog. You can design the widget in the Linkcious dashboard with a number of layout options like grid, list, tile, dynamic layout.

linkcious for upsell and cross-sell

Customize products widget for external sites

Once you design your widget, Linkcious creates code that can be pasted into external sites. Linkcious then picks and recommends products in the widget based on the contextual information of the external site. This can help sell your Shopify products on other sites you manage, instead of putting banner ads.

Product Upsell ($9.99 – $59.99 per month)
The Product Upsell app allows you to add recommendations when customers add a product to the cart, are viewing the cart, and when they click Checkout. The app creates recommendations based on the selected product, and the contents of the cart. You can also create recommendations based on the dollar value of the cart.

Here is a video by BOLD about the app:

You can see the app in action on the demo store.

Unlimited Upsell – Buy X Get Y (Free – $13.95 per month)
Similar to Product Upsell, the Unlimited Upsell – Buy X Get Y app creates a mobile-ready pop-up window for recommendations. These can be based on the selected products, items in the card, or the value of items in the cart.

The dashboard allows you to track clicks and conversion rates on your recommendations. You can also use the Unlimited Upsell app to run promotions where customers get a free product or a discount based on the purchase they make.

Receiptful (Free – $5.00 per month)
You can upsell and cross-sell to customers even after they have made a purchase on your store. The Receiptful app helps you create visually rich and engaging order receipt emails, that can include upsells and cross-sells.

You can use existing templates to design your receipt emails without modifying any HTML code. You can include discount coupons for future purchases, similar products, and referral incentives in your receipts.

Here is a video of how the app works:

Summary

Most popular eCommerce stores, like Amazon or eBay, upsell and cross-sell to their customers. This is
an effective marketing strategy that increases sales, as well as the average order value for your store.

When you display related or complementary products on your store, you make it easier for customers to find things they would look for anyway. This improves the customer experience as customers don’t need to sift through your product pages to buy related items.

Shopify has a number of apps to automate upsell and cross-sell opportunities. These can display recommendations on any page on your store, including when customers click checkout, and even in receipt emails.

Do you have product combinations on your store that upsell or cross-sell really well? Tell us about your experience in the comments.

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