Upselling and cross-selling is one of the common tools in e-commerce to drive AOV and therefore more total revenue.
You probably heard of the infamous "Amazon driving 35% of sales via upselling and cross-selling", but the number is from 2006 (!) and probably irrelevant today.
I think you should aim to achieve a 10–30% increase in sales when implementing the right upsell/cross-sell strategy. And that is when you don't have any at all.
The question is also what to include in the "incremental" – should it include things like product discovery or bundling? I don't think so, as those are different techniques.
In this article, I will strictly focus on upsell and cross-sell offers, revealing how we generate almost 20% of our total revenue using our ultimate monetization app – the Candy Rack.
All the data and screenshots are from the Krekry store which we operate fully in-house. Note the screenshots are in English via Google Translate.
Offer #1: Relevant add-ons at PDP
As a first offer, customers see relevant add-ons they can add to their order by simply checking the box on the product detail page.
The offer block is displayed above the add-to-cart button, so customers don't miss it.
We offer two products there:
- A spice that goes well with the selected crackers (note each cracker can have a different spice here)
- A strainer that is handy when preparing any crackers
The attachment rates for spices are between 2.5% and 4%, and around 2% for the strainer, since it's more expensive and some customers may already have it.
The key thing about this offer is that it's relevant and not intrusive.
Offer #2: Complementary products at PDP
Below the add-to-cart button, we offer an upsell to a family pack. The conversion rate of 0.25% may seem low, but the AOV lift is massive.
Besides the upsell, we also offer more spice options with an attach rate of 2%.
The main difference compared to the first offer is that these have their own "Add" button, and customers can add them independently of the core product.
These offers are still non-intrusive, but given their position, they are less visible.
Offer #3: The ultimate pop-up
This is our holy grail of upselling – a pop-up with offers displayed once customers click on the add-to-cart button with four line items:
- Upsell (an actual upgrade) to a discounted family pack
- Cross-sell offering a spice bundle at a discounted price
- Cross-sell offering additional spice (different flavour)
- Cross-sell offering additional spice (different flavour)
Overall, the attach rate is over 12%. The reason why it's so high compared to other offers is that customers need to make a decision and either accept or decline the offers to continue.
I recommend offering 3 – 4 products at most, anything more may be confusing for the customer.
Does the pop-up impact overall conversion?
You can argue that the pop-up is intrusive and may deter some customers from completing their checkout – that's a valid point. So we ran a simple A/B test thanks to our Intelligems integration and tested two variants: one with the pop-up and one without the pop-up.
As you can see from the results above the variant without the pop-up even converted worse, so we safely concluded the test with the learning that the pop-up doesn't negatively impact an overall store conversion.
Offer #4: Drawer cart (TBD)
Another natural and very popular estate for upsells is the drawer cart (in-cart upsells). This is something we are working on right now, and soon, merchants will be able to offer Candy Rack upsells via a beautiful drawer cart. Stay tuned!
Offer #5: Discounted add-ons in the checkout (Shopify Plus only)
If you are using Shopify Plus, you can take advantage of the Checkout UI Extensions to display various types of content on the 1st step of the checkout process.
In terms of offers, you can offer checkout upsells and display the offer block at the first step of the checkout process (works for both one-page and multi-page checkout).
We recommend offering relevant add-ons, but with a discount. Customers in mind have already finished the "cart", so you need to offer a really good deal to change their minds and add more products. The discount should be in the range of 10% to 20%, depending on your margins.
Offer #6: "Last chance" interstitial in the checkout
This offer is presented during checkout, after the customer submits the order, right before the thank-you page. It is using the post-purchase checkout extension, which has been in "beta" for 2+ years. :)
The main advantage is that if the customer accepts it, he doesn't need to re-enter the shipping and payment details. The upsell product(s) are added to the original order. It's the only real "one-click upsell" in the Shopify ecosystem.
This is practically your last chance to increase the AOV, so present your best deals here. Don't be afraid to go aggressive with a discount (like 20% and more), because only customers can see the offer and the discount code can't leak.
We offer a strainer and spice with a higher discount, but only in case they aren't already in the cart, so the customers are not upset because they paid a higher price for the same product.
If you aren't sure what to offer, in this case, the good old "Add one extra for your friends/family with a discount" always works.
The disadvantage is that technically, this offer works only for credit/debit card payments in a store's default currency. I am not sure why, but I guess it has something to do with the placement being in beta for such a long time, which is a shame because it could be a great offer estate.
Offer #7: Post-purchase block
Now the customer has already finished the order and is on the thank-you page. Technically, you can offer upsells there (so-called post-purchase upsells), but their performance would be pretty low.
In this case, if the customer clicks on the "Add", he would need to enter the payment details again, so he really needs to be motivated to finish the checkout again.
We use a thank-you page to display discounted products relevant to the customer's order. It won't generate much, but still, it's "free money" for you.
Bonus: Free gift with purchase
Last but not least, we are using a free gift with purchase technique to motivate customers to increase their order size. It works great in connection with upsells because you basically "say" – "here's what you can get if you spend more, and here's what you can add to achieve it".
We offer a free spice slightly above our AOV, then free shipping at 2 × the AOV, and a free pack of crackers at 2.4 × the AOV. To technically add the free product to cart, we use our other app called Gift Box.
Check out my other article to get more ideas for the free gift with purchase strategy.
Conclusion: Upsell at every stage
To have a solid upsell strategy, you need to have relevant offers at every stage of the customer's purchase journey. Keep in mind that they also serve as a product discovery element, so even if the customer won't add the upsell right away, they may explore the offered product and add it from its PDP.
I also recommend testing your approach from time to time – test different offers and offer placements to see if there is any space for optimization.
I hope this text helps you to create an effective upsell strategy that isn't overly aggressive or intrusive, but still brings a lot of upside.
All our offers are set up using Candy Rack. You can also look for alternative upsell app, but I don't think any other will be able to cover the whole purchase journey like Candy Rack. If you need any help with your upsell strategy, just book a demo call, and we'll be happy to help and give you a few hints.
