Cross-sell Your Products To Better Sales

Cross-selling is an awesome way to improve sales without much effort. Amazon has been credited as the innovator in Internet cross-selling and because of their (heavy) investment in this sales technique, the rest of the ecommerce world has found a winning way to improve sales.

It’s obviously worked for them, so why shouldn’t it work for you?

Sales facts:

  • Repeat customers spend 30% more on average than new ones.
  • Merchants report that referrals among repeat customers are in excess of 100% more than non-customers.
  • Studies have shown that it can cost up to 6-10 times more to sell something to a prospect than to sell that same thing to an existing customer.
  • Up to 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers.

That’s great, but how do you go about taking advantage of the power of cross-selling? Read on to find out…

Most secure ecommerce shopping cart solutions offer cross-selling features. At InstanteStore, this feature can be activated at the Feature Activation page (it’s under the Manage Your Store heading on the Admin Control Panel). There you can decide to either manually or automatically select products to cross-sell.

The manual selection process involves selecting specific products to cross-sell, allowing you to customize the products that will be shown as cross-sell products. For example, you can cross-sell specific bicycle helmets that would go best with particular bicycles.

The automatic selection process will automatically group products that are purchased together by customers at your store as cross-sell items. This is especially useful if your store features products or services that customers tend to buy in bundles.

Cross-sell items are prominently displayed at the product page as well as on the shopping cart. This gives customers the opportunity to easily add products that they may find interesting to their shopping carts.

Cross-selling tips:

  • Cross-sell products that are naturally related. For instance, if your customer just bought a bicycle, you could suggest mobile pumps, carriers and lamps.
  • Timing is key. The InstanteStore shopping cart application features a cross-sell on final payment page option that will show cross-sell items at exclusive prices on the final payment/thank you page after a customer has just completed an order. Research shows that customers who’ve just bought something are probably in the mood to purchase even more, so offering customers who’ve just bought something related products at a discount is a great way to fully capitalize on their buying momentum.
  • Try offering a mix of product prices. You don’t necessarily have to always cross-sell only low-priced products. Low-priced products are good for impulse buys but products that meet customers’ needs head-on can go for higher prices.

If you are using a top web site ecommerce hosting shopping cart like InstanteStore, then you should make good use of the tools that are offered. The cross-selling feature has proved extremely useful for many merchants over the years. If you already have a good customer base and want to increase your sales figures, this feature is certainly something you should try.

Recent Posts:

Similar Posts: