We often encounter cross and up selling in everyday life. With small additional offers and precisely fitting additions to the respective purchase wishes, many sellers achieve a considerable increase in sales. However, cross and up-selling strategies can not only be successfully implemented in brick-and-mortar shops. Many online retailers have been taking advantage of this lucrative business for a long time and regularly generate more sales per purchase.
In this article you can read how cross and up selling can help you to increase the value of the shopping baskets in your online shop and how you can successfully implement corresponding strategies.
Table of Contents
What does cross selling look like?
Cross-selling offers customers a service that, when purchasing a specific product, suggests other items that optimally complement the desired product. This can be a suitable mobile phone case for the smartphone or the right belt for jeans. It is important that the range of proposed products is not too large and that it suits the needs of each customer as well as possible.
However, it does not always have to be products from the same division. Articles from a different area can certainly appeal to the targeted clientele and encourage them to buy them as well. In most cases, cross selling aims to reach customers who have already bought something before. This is because they are more willing to buy more items. It is therefore primarily used to reactivate existing customers. Cross selling is therefore a special type of customer care and is part of successful customer relationship management. In addition to existing customers, you can also reach new customers with the help of a professional cross-selling strategy.
Advantages for online retailers
Probably the biggest advantage is the lower acquisition costs for dealers. Products that can be sold through cross-selling do not require any additional effort to attract the attention of customers. These are already on the website of the online shop and are showing interest in the products. Existing customers in particular are usually more willing to invest more money. Price sensitivity decreases primarily because they already know the quality of the products.
With the help of cross-selling, retailers can advertise their products across all assortments, which improves customer relationships and can thus contribute to increasing sales. In addition, cross-selling strategies offer the opportunity to promote the sale of older goods and thus facilitate the introduction of new products in your own range.
Also Read: Top Tips For Selling Electronics Online
Cross Selling vs Up Selling?
Unlike cross-selling, where complementary items are suggested, the strategy of up-selling is to offer customers a similar but higher quality product. Customers are often willing to spend more money for a better product if it gives them an advantage. For example, a camera with a better resolution or a laptop with more power.
But here, too, it is particularly important to pay attention to the wishes of your customers. For example, it makes little sense to suggest a product to them that is many times more expensive than the product they have chosen. Although up-selling products must deliver clear added value, they should still be within the requirements of the interested party. If the shopping cart contains a relatively inexpensive refrigerator with few additional functions, you can offer a refrigerator that is a bit larger and more modern, but does not cost twice as much. Customers looking for something simple and inexpensive are unlikely to buy the most modern, high-tech ice-cube freezer.
As an approximate guideline for the price of the upsell product, an increase of 30 percent of the actual price of the product that is already in the shopping cart can be used.
All advantages at a glance:
Conversion rate
Cross and up selling helps to sell more products and can therefore also increase the shop’s conversion rate.
Increase in sales
Selling more products allows for an increase in sales for the entire company.
Customer service
The recommendations of the products present a customer service that promotes the care of existing customers in particular.
Acquisition costs
Products sold via cross and up selling hardly require any acquisition costs, since customers are already interested.
Sale of older goods
Cross and up-selling strategies promote the sale of older goods that still fit the needs of the customer.
Introduction of new goods
The recommendation of further products makes it easier to introduce new items in the range.
Use cross and up selling in the online shop
Cross- and up-selling strategies are particularly promising in online shops, since a spontaneous purchase can be decided on within seconds. This miracle weapon can be implemented in the online shop with automated tools based on weak artificial intelligence. In most cases, these tools are already integrated in the respective shop system and can supplement the online shop as an additional service.
Basically, they offer the operator two technical options that depend individually on the system used:
- The online shop operator defines keywords in advance that are related to the article. The article database can be searched using these keywords, after which those articles that are linked to the corresponding words can be displayed.
- The second variant requires that the operator independently enters a master record of an article of specific products that are to be displayed as part of the cross-selling strategy.
In addition, the algorithms of the software calculate which products they are most likely to be interested in based on purchases that customers have already made. In addition, the program can also access collected data on the products sold by all customers who have also purchased the selected item. In this way, an offer with other interesting products can be put together for customers.
Also Read: Social Selling: 11 Best Practices To Apply
