Last Updated on by Dan S
Originally Published July 14, 2022.
Cross-selling is one of the best ways to increase your average order value (AOV) for your Shopify store.
It’s key to get as much out of your sales as possible, especially with advertising costs rising.
This is where you’ll find the best 5 effective cross-selling strategies to boost your business profits.
What is cross-selling?
Cross-selling invites customer to purchase complementary products to the product they were originally going to purchase. When complementary products are available, customers are more likely to buy them.
For example, a customer might purchase a phone case. As a merchant, you might choose to offer the same customer a screen protector as a cross-sell. Both these items complement each other.
Find out more about the difference between cross-selling and upselling here.
Many merchants can confuse cross-selling with upselling.
Upselling is when a merchant offers a customer a more expensive version of a product or service. For example, a customer might be purchasing a 43in television. An upsell would be to offer the same customer a 50in television instead.
Cross-selling is offering additional items that complement a customer’s purchase. Upselling is offering a more expensive version of the same item.
Benefits of cross-selling
Let’s take a look at three reasons you should be cross-selling.
1. It boosts your average order value
If you present additional products and add-ons to your consumers, a good majority of them will accept the offer.
Consumers that are browsing your website are in buying mode, so they can easily be persuaded to spend more.
The more consumers you can get to get your cross-sell offers to their cart, the higher your average order value (AOV) will increase. It’s an easy and great way to make more money without having to spend more.
2. Increase your customer satisfaction
Not only does cross-selling increase your revenue, it provides an opportunity to give more value to your customers.
By offering complementary products to the initial item your customers was going to purchase gives them a better overall experience on your store. You’re making their purchase even more worth while.
Some customers might not even know they may need the additional products you’re offering. You are helping them to discover products they need to reach their goals.
3. Maximise your profits for the long-term
With advertising and marketing costs rising year on year, it’s important to get the most out of your customers.
For example, if it costs you $30 in Google ads to acquire a new customer and your average order value is $40, you’re only making $10 per sale.
Now think you could spend the same $30 to acquire that customer but by using cross-selling offers you can boost your average order value up to $50. You’re immediately making more profit per sale.
This extra profit can be used to reinvest back into your business for further growth.
5 effective cross-selling strategies to boost your store’s profits
Now you’ve gained an understanding of what cross-selling is and how you can use it, let’s take a look at some effective strategies.
1. Key product suggestions
When consumers browse online, there is nobody there to help offer related items. That is where product suggestions come in. eCommerce lets you leverage browsing data, meaning you can offer personalized offers to your customers.
These product suggestions are one of the easiest cross-selling techniques. The example below from Mango, shows how they cross-sell to their customers by using ‘Complete your outfit’.
This encourages consumers to complete the outfit look. By doing this, they are more likely to add extra items to their cart. This in turn increases their order value, which means a higher average order value for you.
It’s a great method to use, because it’s not pushy to the consumer. You’re purely just suggesting the other outfit items.
2. Product page offers and add-ons
Although this method could also be thought of as product suggestions, it is different. Instead of offering cross-sell products below the product details, you display the offers just above or below the Add to Cart button.
The example below shows this method being used.
DIPSODA uses the product page add-ons to offer a screen protector alongside the main phone case product. Showcasing another complementary product near the Add to Cart button ensures that consumers notice it.
You could even go on to say that a screen protector is a necessary item with the phone case. Both these products go hand in hand and offer a device great all round protection.
Just ensure that you keep cross-sell options to a minimum, as you don’t want to overcrowd the page. This can put consumers off purchasing from your store.
3. Cross-sell popup
Another cross-sell method to use is a popup window offer. These convert well and require an action from the consumer.
SellUp is the perfect Shopify app for this cross-selling method. Again, the offer should be relevant to the original product the customer was looking at. The item that shows in the popup is relevant and improves the consumer’s experience.
Using popups in a timely manner is key. Customers don’t want to be bombarded with too many popups. Having it appear after the customer adds an item to their cart is a great way to use it.
Ensuring the popup matches your store’s branding is also a great way to get it to convert. If the product is eye-catching, the customer is more likely to add it to their cart.
4. Product bundles
Using product bundles is a great way to cross-sell to your customers. Bundles offer more value to your customers and normally for sets of items that are relevant to each other.
Cleancult offers great product bundles that are relevant to their customers.
When looking at the product bundle above, it’s clear to see the customer can save money when they purchase the bundle option.
Subscribe and save is a great option to give more to your customers for less. It also pushes them to convert more often, as they’re getting more value for money.
Grouping relevant products together in a bundle creates a higher average order value too.
5. Thank you page offers
You might be wondering why it’s a good idea to present another product to a customer after they’ve checkout on your store. But truthfully, consumers are still in shopping mode.
It never hurts to offer another relevant product or item that is relevant to one they have just purchased.
This last minute offer gives customers who have checked out an opportunity to purchase another product that is relevant to the one they just bought.
As consumers are still in buying mode, having an offer that they cannot resist will help them to convert.
Let’s conclude
The above five cross-selling strategies should help you to boost your store’s profits. Whilst we don’t recommend using all these strategies together, you can decide which ones would work best for you and go from there.
Having a power and effect cross-selling strategy will increase your average order value and in turn your overall revenue.
