In this fierce competition in ecommerce market e-retailers have to be flexible enough to stay afloat. Up-selling and cross-selling are one of the most powerful marketing techniques that can help boost your sales volume. Of course, it will not help you see your sales sky-rocket incredibly but at least it will help you market your e-shop’s products in a more effective way.

Up-selling is the marketing technique when you recommend adding features or warranties that relate to the product or buying a more expensive model of the same type of a product. Cross-selling is a marketing method to make a customer spend more money by adding the products from other categories than the initial product. Actually, when a customer approves your initial offer, it means he/she trusts you and your offers and they are open to the further interaction. So it’s the right time to offer something interesting for a customer and obtain additional revenue from a single product.       

The top benefits of smart cross-selling and upselling for your online store include:

- Average order value increase
- Conversion rate increase
- Improvement of relationships between online business-holder and customers
- Increase of the awareness of your brand and depth of your offerings

The more upselling and cross-selling are related to the original purchase, the more likely a customer will be interested in adding more items to the order and contributing to your upselling and cross-selling conversion rates. If you provide your customers with smooth buying experience and recommend something really useful for them you will have great possibilities to upsell and cross-sell to them.

As a rule, Internet Marketers implement two basic approaches when upselling/cross-selling: to offer an upsell/cross-sell on the order page and to offer the upsell/cross-sell after the customer has already submitted the order information but before they submit payment information. Here I would like to outline just some simple tips for successful upselling/cross-selling.

1. Let your Upsell or cross-selling make sense to the buyer. If you’re offering the items that are not related to the initial purchase this is hardly possible you will make sales from them.

2. Implement sales incentives. Incentives are a crucial part of your marketing strategy as they encourage customers to purchase extra items at once. For instance, offer a discount on the second item, provide your customers with free shipping on all orders that total in a certain amount of money. Use the words like “one time only” or “limited time offer” that point out the limited number of a product and this will induce the customer to make the purchase now instead of in the future.  Also use the words like “Special offers” and “Great deals”. Then, it will not do harm if you submit top rated offers list on your page – this will help build up the credibility and bolster your customers’ confidence.

There’s also a list of some common label recommendations used as incentives:

- “Recommended products”
- “Our Best Sellers”
- “Related products”
- “Frequently bought together”
- “You may also like”
- “Stuff you may want”
- “More from this category”
- “People like you liked this”

3. Introduce upselling and cross-selling information in “by-the-way” assumptive style. Don’t be too obtrusive with your offers which can actually turn into the obstacles on the customers’ way to your online shopping cart. Very often many ecommerce websites hijack customers off the page they are looking when showing upsells or cross-sells. Don’t clutter your pages with all the offers you have.  In this case you risk not only missing revenue from your suggestive selling but also the entire initial purchase.

4. Make it as easy as possible for customers to return to the product page after your showing a suggested item. Don’t let your customers become confused and lost. Frustrated customers are more likely to turn to your competitors. 

One’s looking forward to running his/her own online business must have two imperatives for successful start-up: extensive knowledge about online business and reliable and comprehensive ecommerce solution. With our CORE Framework Ecommerce solution you obtain a fully customizable and almost automated online shopping cart solution already enhanced with multiple built-in and easy-to-manage features. With CORE Ecommerce you’re bale to sell directly to your customers and stay in complete control over your online store. Moreover, your customers will feel absolutely secure of their payments as our product is integrated only with the latest and most reliable payment technologies.