How many of you have not heard the phrase:”don’t you want a dessert for your dinner?” or something like that? If you did not know until now, the process in question is called cross-selling, an online selling process that can definitely provide a sales boost. Cross-selling is quite close with up-selling, however one big difference can be noticed: first one offers supplementary products strictly related to the principal product like accessories or updates while up-selling offers similar products but with higher costs.
There are many places on your website where you can implement these 2 instruments however most popular ones are the product’s page and the shopping cart page, but what can an instrument like cross-selling offer to your ecommerce site?
– It increases the average value of your order
– It increases the conversion rate: let’s say the product searched by the prospect is unavailable; by displaying products with similar properties at similar costs customer can turn to something else and make the purchase
– It increases awareness – additional exposure of your products notifies the user about your business’ dimensions
– Increases customer satisfaction if the cross-selling displays related accessories that might concern the visitor
Tips for good cross-selling:
1. Always display relevant products, don’t ever go with random products.
2. Use personalisation like “You might be interested in…”
3. Use emotional words like “You might need…”, “Other people needed” and so on
4. Promote your special offers through cross-selling
5. When necessary, use emergency words like “very limited offer”
6. Provide sufficient details about your cross-selling products
What not to do in cross-selling:
1. Do not display random products
2. Do not overcrowd the product’s page with multiple products
3. Do not suggest competitive products like HP vs Asus
4. Never display products that are not in your stock
Cross-selling, if used correctly works, however it mostly depends on the niche your online store is in, but the best thing a store owner can do is to try and see whether this works or not for his business.