Improve Website Sales

UP/Down/Cross Selling Improves Website Ticket Sales and Captures Sales You Might Otherwise Lose

Techniques to Fill Your Customer’s Online Shopping Cart

Most of the time, Internet marketers try to maximize sales using content marketing, SEO, mobile search and the list goes on. Internet marketers who are highly successful, don’t focus on a single product to make for a higher ticket, they use three techniques that boost sales. These techniques are up-selling, cross-selling, and down-selling.

Improve Website Sales

Let’s look at each of these three techniques to learn how to use them on our website stores and improve website sales.

Up-Sell

The idea that powers up-selling is to offer customers great deals that increase their purchase of a base product.

Say you own a computer store. You run a paid ad for a 64-bit computer with 10 gigabytes of storage for $300. It runs the latest OS and includes a keyboard and a mouse. As the seller, you make a few dollars selling this item. But, once the item is looked at, your own pop-up comes up with a better deal. The same computer, with a mouse, a keyboard, and a 19-inch monitor can be yours for $360. It is from the same manufacturer as the computer and its accessories and is perfectly matched to the computer system. Since the customer is buying a new computer, she or he may also need a monitor. So, adding the monitor increases the ticket price and since monitors are a profitable add-on, your computer store has more profit.

Alternatively, your up-sale deal could be more memory and a faster processor.

Up-selling is a powerful tool when used correctly. Online that means making the offer but not nagging the customer to buy the higher priced product. Perhaps a pop-up on the item description page, and a banner ad on the cart page. There is no limit to the number of pop-ups you can have so you can program your sales page to show ads specifically matched to your main product offering.

Cross-Selling

Cross-selling is similar to up-selling. But instead of upgrading a product, your customer buys related products. Using the example above, the product page might include accessories such as:

  • A computer cleaning kit
  • A monitor cover
  • A camera and microphone system
  • An external hard drive or some thumb drives
  • A power strip
  • Or a special deal combining some of the most popular products that are often bought with a new computer.

One technique many online retailers use for cross-selling is called “Also Bought.” Also bought usually appears after an item is placed in the cart. Its introduction is short and goes something like Customers who bought this product, also bought…then shows thumbnails of several related products. In the case of a new computer, the Also Bought list might contain all the accessories listed. It does increase total ticket price, has one shipping fee to the seller, and improves the profitability of the product.

Down-Selling

Say a customer lands on your online computer store site wanting to buy a dual quad, fast computer, with a large screen. You are running a sale on the exact item the customer wants, but he or she still can’t afford it. He or she is a researcher and spends a lot of time on the Internet. The person works from home and other than research, is an occasional user for email, bill-paying, and some online shopping.

You will lose this sale unless you can down-sell the customer. Down-selling is the ability to offer the customer a computer with the important features wanted/needed but without all the bells and whistles that have no impact on the customer’s need.

Think of using live chat, or a twist on the cross-selling technique of Also Bought. We can call it, also looked at. Introducing the concept is easy, “Customers who looked at this computer, also looked at/or bought these.

Setting up your site for up-selling, cross-selling and down-selling is not a job for amateurs. Custom code is often needed and design elements must match the rest of your site. This is a job that should be done by your Internet site builder.

We at Webociti in Atlanta, Georgia work with clients across the United States to improve conversion rates. From our own experiences with clients, we know these techniques work. For more information, call me at 678-892-7157 or visit Webociti online.

Till Next Time,

Joe