Every sale you make is crucial, but each one could be worth a whole lot more. All you need are the right strategies in place. Cross-selling strategies are your ticket to making that happen. So this post covers the subject in full – including nine specific strategies, why it’s different from upselling, and apps and tools you can use to put your cross-selling on autopilot. In this article, we will show you some innovative ideas for BigCommerce merchants to cross sell products.
Recommend related items
This is probably the most commonly used cross-selling strategy out there, so let’s get it out the way first. We’ve all seen websites recommend similar or related products when we’re browsing. This might be a basic strategy, but it can actually be really effective – especially if you sell a range of complementary products. It works in two ways:
- Helping customers find more products to add to cart.
- Helping browsers find a better suited product for them, and thus saving an abandonment.
Plus, it’s really simple to put into action on most eCommerce platforms too (which we go into a little later), thanks to BigCommerce Product Recommendation App. This is an application that creates & manages multiple rules. They can analyze customer behavior and choose specific conditions to show recommendations: pages, cart items or values, and customer behaviors. In conclusion, this is a simple and flexible solution for upselling and cross-selling products.
Refer to Atom8 for example, this is an automation app that helps to automate some websites tasks. This can also act as a product recommendation to suggest products for your consumer within marketing emails.
Recommend recently viewed items
This works in pretty much the same way as the previous strategy. Except this time, you’re recommending items the user recently viewed (not just any related item). This strategy would be particularly effective if your store tends to get a high percentage of returning visitors. Perhaps you have a particularly good loyalty program, have a highly engaged email list, or just have a ‘sticky’ brand that people like to come back to.
Whatever the reason, if you have a good number of returning visitors then a ‘recently viewed’ cross selling strategy could be particularly useful. Read more: Bigcommerce upsell
Offer discounts on product bundles
Another effective cross selling strategy is to combine specific products into bundles. You’d usually then offer a discount when all the products are bought together. Let’s say a customer wants to buy the latest games console and checks out a major retailer like Amazon.
Amazon sells the console individually or as part of several bundles. This is ideal for any customer who intends to buy the included games in the future anyway, as they’ll be able to make a saving in the long term. On the other hand, maintaining correct inventory levels when bundling products together can be tricky. You need to make sure overall stock levels stay aligned, regardless of whether an item is purchased via a bundle or as an individual product.
Push products directly after purchase
The cart isn’t your last chance at cross selling though. You can very easily push your other products post-purchase. This can be a crazy effective strategy for cross selling further products. Especially if you offer a time-sensitive discount available only right there and then – close the page and they lose the discount. You can even set this up so the customer won’t have to enter payment details again. Just click ‘Add to Order’ and the product gets added!
Conclusion
Take advantage of these cross selling strategies and apps to drive sales more effectively. Get this right and you stand to increase average order value and revenue in general, as well as deliver a stronger customer experience.
