As eCommerce store owners, the biggest challenge faced is to carve out new ways to increase revenue.
Well, upselling is one such eCommerce best practice that helps you to increase the amount a customer spends with your business.
In this article I’ll be covering the following:
Upselling is a sales technique, in which the seller induces the customer to spend more by upgrading the current product or buying the premium version of the current product.
Why do we have to do that?
The reason behind this is actually very simple. As per a statistic for customer loyalty, the probability of selling a product to an existing customer is 60-70%, whereas for a new prospect it stands as low as 5-20%.
This means with the help of upselling, retailers get a chance to generate more revenue for the same product, just by selling its higher-end version.
Here’s an example from SEMRush’s pricing section:
As an eCommerce store owner, the main focus is to grow our revenues. This forces marketers to charter new marketing routes in order to procure more customers.
But did you know acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than selling to a current one?
This is where upselling comes as a handy technique for making more money more out of your current customers.
Here are some reasons why upselling is so important for your business:
It is no secret that a person buying more from your store will bring you huge profits to your business. Once you’re able to build customer trust, upselling can bring you an untapped opportunity of growing your customer allocation for the current buyers.
This might sound astonishing to some of the people in the eCommerce fraternity. For many business owners, upselling is a greasy approach of selling a service to buyers. But in reality, upselling is a perfect way of creating a win-win situation for both the seller and the buyer. Just by offering them a premium version of your product or an upgrade that adds more value and makes them feel that they got a better deal from your store, leads to a happy and loyal customer.
Customer Lifetime Value or CLV is the net profit contribution made by a customer to your brand over time. Upselling is a perfect way that can help you in increasing your CLV and thus, increasing the net profit contribution per customer, and bringing you more profits.
Now we know how important is upselling for your business for boosting revenues. Thus, it is very necessary that you implement your upselling strategies very carefully.
Upselling your products in a wrong way can backfire. Presenting wrong options to customers, alienating customers’ needs, not valuing customers’ decisions, are some common mistakes that marketers make while doing upsell.
So here are some best practices that you can use while building your upselling strategies:
Relevancy plays a very important role when you’re implementing your upselling strategies. Your main focus should be on giving relevant products and services instead of distracting your customers with unnecessary suggestions.
Choose the right form of upselling, that best matches with your product. Upselling can be one of the following types:
You can suggest your customers for buying a bigger, faster, and more efficient version instead of the current product in purchase.
For example, a person buying an iPhone 32Gb can be suggested to upgrade to 128Gb or 256Gb variant.
Another variant of upselling that often works is giving product protection. In such offers, you can sell customers an extended warranty for a fair amount and assure their product will be replaced in the case of mishappening.
Have you seen statements made by many organizations saying “customize your product”?
This is a series of upsells because every change made to the original product increases the price of the product.
Bundling is one such category that uses upselling and cross-selling together for optimizing the revenues. Here you have to create a package of relevant products and show that it’s better value for a few more bucks spent.
Try grabbing every opportunity you get to upsell your products on your store. So place your upsell offers wherever and whenever it is relevant to your store. Here are some opportunities where you can use upselling without any problem:
1.You can show your upselling offers in the form of version upgrades on your product page itself. This is known as pre-checkout upsell.
2.The next place where you can add your upselling offers is during purchase when the buyer has added the product in the cart.
3.You can also upsell your customers in a personalised manner by using a follow-up mail or entice your loyal customers with some reward points.
Give an ambiguous comparison between the product being purchased and the upgraded product so that the customer can clearly understand the value he will get on spending a few more bucks.
Create a sense of urgency by giving your customers a real-time update of your inventory. Reminding your customers that the offer will last for a limited period of time increases the chances of customers pressing the “buy now” button.
One of the worst things to do is doing forced upselling. One should always abstain from regressively showing your customers with product suggestions again and again.
Also, the store owners refrain themselves from showing too many options to the customers. The more suggestions you give, the more the buyer gets confused, and his attention gets diluted from buying the product of interest.
Upselling is all about optimizing your revenues but also providing a valuable deal to the buyers. Thus, it is very important to educate your customers on what they will be getting by spending a few extra bucks.
Your customers should be well-informed about what they are going to buy and what benefit will it add to their lives.
Until now we have discussed what is upselling and some best practices that can help you in implementing a successful upselling strategy to optimize your revenues.
Now let’s see some killer examples who used upselling as a perfect technique for optimizing their revenues.
So let’s get started:
Dollar Shave Club created some legendary strategies for upselling that redefined the way people can optimize their revenues.
Amazon has mastered the art of upselling to entice its customers to spend more on every purchase.
Amazon has a perfect balance of pre-checkout, post-checkout, and during checkout upselling.
Have you seen the famous line by Amazon, “frequently bought together?” This one is very simple yet smart strategy that brought Amazon 35% of its revenue
Amazon plays the upselling game very smartly by:
1. Not missing a single opportunity to upsell.
2. Showing relevant products to the user.
3. Creating a sense of urgency.
Amazon is able to optimize it’s revenues.
Spotify is another brand that implements upselling efficiently. It gives the user a clear comparison of its plans for making a well-informed purchase.
Giving a side by side comparison makes it easy for the user to decide which plan will best suit their needs and requirements. With the premium plans having so many features, it persuades the user to shred their pockets to stream some ad free music.
Now let’s come to the most awaited part of this article.
At MakeWebBetter, we understand how difficult it is to optimize revenues for the eCommerce store owners. Upselling is one strategy that focuses on retaining your current customers with the ability to spend them more for a product on your store.
A perfect upselling strategy lies between “what you want to say” and “what your customers are interested in”.
Once you are able to find this common point of relevance, you can definitely optimize your revenues using upselling.
Our team at MakeWebBetter understood this and came up with a solution that is perfectly crafted for your stores. Yes, One Click Upsell Funnel Pro is one such solution that focuses on untapped growth of your store.
Upselling is an important sales strategy that can significantly help you in optimizing eCommerce revenues. At MakeWebBetter, we perfectly understand this. If you’re interested to know more, contact us and connect with our experts right now.
Abdul’s interest in digital marketing & changing Google algorithms helped him shape up his career as an SEO specialist at MakeWebBetter. His helpful inclination towards the marketers is clearly reflected through his regular updates on the latest news and technical stuff with an aim to provide solutions with ease.