Upsells and Cross-sells are a very effective sales strategy that has been used long since these terms were incepted. Brick and mortar retailers use it all the time and the strategy is even more effective in online stores. Why? Because of all the data and analytics, you can generate about a visitor with robust algorithms that tracks user activities as soon as a visitor lands on your e-Commerce website.

However, what many merchants seldom forget is the fact that these strategies are as good as how well these are implemented.

Read this post until the end to find out the best Upsell and Cross-sell extension available for top 5 E-commerce CMS solutions.

Let's begin by understanding the basics

What are Upsells and Cross-sells?

Upselling is the instance when a seller encourages the buyer to purchase a better version of a product being reviewed or shortlisted by the buyer, whereas in cross-selling, the seller invites the buyer to look at additional products in association to the intended product purchase – attempting to do a bundled purchase, in turn increasing the cart value of the customer.

Why Upselling and Cross-selling important for E-commerce business

The blunt answer is to increase sales.

What one really needs to understand here is that these strategies are not meant to clear up your stocks and get countless orders. These are most effective when used to help customers win by helping them make the most value for money purchase.

If done correctly, it can:

1. Increase customer retention.
2. Increase average order and customer value over time.
3. Increase repeat buyers.
4. Increase word of mouth marketing.
5. And most importantly, increase sales

According to Marketing Metrics, it is 50% easier to sell to existing customers than new ones.

It's all about impressing your existing customers, retaining them and selling them while new customers get converted into this loop.

5 Tips To Do It Correctly
Whether you decide to Upsell, Cross-sell or both, what is important is to do it the right way. Do not use it as a tool that can generate sales, instead use it to deliver superior customer experiences.

Customers will only get frustrated if you increase the number of steps that take them to purchase a product by unnecessarily pitching countless alternatives or combinations. Whereas, they will be really impressed if you analyze their purchase patterns / interests and recommend something that they might have missed.

Graham Norton "Editor in Chief for Econsultancy" effectively summarized in his blog post how Godaddy and VistaPrint spoiled their checkouts with Upsells and Cross-sells by introducing 10 steps of Upselling and Cross-selling before a customer actually checks out.

Follow these 5 thumb rules before setting up Upsells or Cross-sells:

1. Offer upsells or cross-sells that are genuine and makes sense when they show up. For example, if a customer is looking to purchase a new mobile phone, cross-selling a screen guard / phone case might be a good idea. On the other hand, if a customer searched for mobile phones in the price range of $ 500 and has added in the cart a phone that has outdated hardware configuration, then you can upsell a better phone. The idea should be to provide better customer experience rather than cheap recommendations which a customer can see through.
2. Setup customer personas to make relevant suggestions. This allows you to categorize your audience in different persona categories and then push suggestions based on that. Upselling and Cross-selling without pre-analyzed facts will never work.
3. Always add some context while Upselling or Cross-selling by adding a short 1-2 line description of the reason for your suggestion. This establishes a sense of acknowledgment in the customer that you have done your website understands what the customer wants and is helping him make better purchases.
4. Utilize cross-sell techniques mostly on the check-out page for recommending bundled purchases. This lets take advantage of the impulse purchase. On the other hand, suggest upsells before a customer picks a product as this will not spoil the customer experience of removing the product from the cart and then adding a new one again.
5. Always keep the final price below 25% of customer's original cart value. Studies suggest that if the final cart value including upselling or cross-sell product goes beyond 25% of the original cart value then the customer will either ignore the suggestions or will simply abandon his cart.

Utilize these extensions for top 4 E-commerce CMS solutions:

1. Magento – Automatic Related Products from MagePlaza ($ 199-lifetime license)

While Magento (one of the best E-commerce CMS in the market), already has the option to manually setup Upsells and Cross-sells, Mageplaza's Automatic related products extension take it a step further by using pre-set rules to establish relations between displayed products and related items. The ability to setup unlimited rules for each product makes this a must-have extension for your store if you are looking for a self-evolving product recommendation engine.

2. Shopify – Product Upsell from BOLD APPS ($ 9.99- $ 59.99 / month)

Product Upsell is one of the most successful Shopify apps for setting up Upsells in a Shopify website. With over 500 reviews, this app is loaded with features and allows you to setup relevant upsell offers and add-on products based on customer's shopping cart content, total cart value or even a combination.

3. WooCommerce – Beeketing Automated Marketing Suit (Free)

With 3000+ active downloads and over 238 positive ratings, Beekting is a complete marketing automation suite that lets you set up relevant upsells and cross-sells items for each product. In addition to this, the plugin allows you to setup sales gamification, the last step upsell and smart auto recommendation functionality to deliver a superior customer experience.

4. BigCommerce – Unlimited Upsell by Unlimited Upsell (Free – $ 59.95)

8Upsells is a team that dedicatedly works to deliver upsell and cross-sell solutions. Their BigCommerce addon is a gem for merchants. It is easier to setup, provides unlimited upsells including different promotions based on different conditions. With over 60+ positive reviews, no doubt this extension is a great hit among the BigCommerce community.

Conclusion

An E-commerce store is always driven with the aim to increase sales and orders. With personalized recommendations that keeps the customer's requirements in perspective, you can increase your revenue and generate more customers and deliver a better experience. Setup a strong technological backend alongside it to manage your customers and sales effectively with the assistance of best e-Commerce website developers in India.