8 ways for successful cross-selling in E-bussiness [Infographic]

The market today is becoming more and more intense than ever due to the participation of many potential competitors in all business fields. Keeping loyal customers and their shopping habits is a very challenging task for every company, and there’s no doubt that merchants always find the best ways to encourage customers to make good repeat purchases.

What is cross-selling?

Cross-selling is one of the advantageous marketing methods seen as an art of getting a customer make more buying decisions of other products related to the product they’ve already chosen. This marketing tactic creates the effect of increasing revenue.

Nevertheless, any marketing method has some restrictions and effective ways to be successfully implemented in practice. Below you will find 8 tips, which can make you’re cross-sells even more efficient.

1. Get well-prepared before offering customers to buy more

Make sure that you’ve done research and built a range of complementing products that are associated with each product you are selling online. For example, if you sell flight tickets, get some good service of hotel booking or travel insurance to show in the cross-selling offer for customers. Let’s be masters on understanding consumer shopping habits.

2. Offer a product which has a cheaper price

 The price of cross-sell items should be lower than the initial product price which can attract a quick buying decision of the customers. It is obvious that customers are no longer ready to pay high money amount twice. So, offer them only the related products which don’t cost more than 75% of the already-purchased product price. The higher complimented product price is, the more difficult your cross-sell will be.

3. Offer only valuable add-ons rather than clear out the stock

The add-ons to original products should have their high values, which are suitable and useful for your customers. This enhances the credibility of your store and makes customers trust your suggestions. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing your customers.

4. Understand the importance of displaying position

There’s always a reason why supermarkets and newsagents all over the world still have gum, chocolate bars, magazines and so on by the check-out. In this case for any e-business, we display the cross-selling in the same way. You can display associated products anywhere on your website, but don’t ever forget that the most effective place for cross-selling is the shopping cart and product page. This is pretty true for so-called “impulse” products, which are purchased just before the checkout as it is in brick-and-mortar stores.

One more effective way is when customers check out for their payment; smart shop-owners always know how to optimize sale opportunities by using Thank you page to place cross-selling products.

Besides, make sure that the display of cross-selling products does not annoy customers or interrupt natural purchasing and checkout processes. Therefore, you should create convenient gates of easy navigation for customers back to the shopping cart or product page from the additional items.

5. Make your offers sound natural

Nowadays, the valuable advice is always higher evaluated by customers than urging calls. This happens in the same way with how the shop owners promote their cross-selling products. We can find the reason for this confirmation by look through the Amazon report in 2006 which said that  35% of year’s sales came from their cross-sell efforts by an elementary introduction of “Customer who bought this item also bought” and “Frequently bought together.” By this way, it plays on customers’ trust in they have the trendy taste that most people have the taste same as.

You can automatically recommend your related products as Amazon usually does, or you can manually upload items on your site under the ‘Also bought’ heading. Besides using “bought together” rules, if you want to make the offers sound a little different, you also can use appeals with urgency notifications “only two items left” or  cross-sell by a more personal way – “ You might also like these”

6. Incentivize customer

Some offers such as “free shipping for every order more than $50” incentivize customers to buy that little bit more. You might also give the customer a discount voucher, a small gift or using loyalty points for orders over a certain amount. The techniques above and below should be used in conjunction to give customers that extra little push needed.

7. Bundle up

Bundling products is a common way to convince customers to purchase the whole set of complementary products. The consumers feel like they’re making good savings on stuff they possibly buy. By finding the golden price for bundle products that make customers feel like it’s an excellent price to place an order immediately, this tactic works great and allows you to sell even stuck items, which would possibly be never bought in other circumstances.

8. On-product copy

If you have ever spent time reading all the information of a shampoo bottle, you may find the best example for this tips; the manufacturers usually offer to use their hair shampoo combined with hair balsams of the same brand for better results. So if you’ve got your own-branded product line, this is a straightforward cross-selling way to do.

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