Cross selling

• A customer is far likelier to respond to your cross-sells if you provide a thoughtful selection of items that the customer might actually want or need.
• For example, if you’re an online store selling sports equipment and a customer is viewing an item of swimwear then it makes sense to display items such as a nose clip, swimming cap and goggles amongst your other product suggestions. In other words, you’re simply suggesting the obvious.
• By contrast, if you throw in any old product on the list, such as football boots, golf clubs or tennis balls, then your visitor will either ignore them or, even worse, actually be annoyed by them.
• Your cross-sells will be far more successful if you come to the help of the customer rather than attempt to push your more profitable items. So make sure your suggestions are relevant to the visitor and complement the item they’re purchasing.

You will also need to consider at what point in the buying process to display your additional product suggestions. Your eCommerce web design solution should allow you to choose from one or more of the following:

• Product details page
• Shopping Basket
• Checkout area
• Order confirmation page
• Order confirmation email

• Although your primary concern is to recommend products that have a natural affinity with the item the customer is buying, you will also need to think about the price relationship between them.
• For example, if you’re selling a laptop then there’s a reasonable chance that the customer wants a carry case to go with it. If, on the other hand, the customer were buying the actual laptop bag, then it would be highly unlikely they’d be looking for a laptop to go with it.
• Cross-sells naturally work best for complementary items and accessories that are of relatively low cost in relation to the main product. However, even though those supplementary items cost somewhat less, the customer will nevertheless be very conscious of the price. So, if you can, try to suggest a mix of cross-sells that offer the consumer a choice of price points.

There is no definitive answer as to where the best place is to put your cross-sells. It entirely depends on the products you sell and your online retail set-up.

The order confirmation page and order confirmation email are undoubtedly a good place to remind customers that you have other items that might interest them. However, it is far easier to maintain the customer’s interest while they’re still in the process of shopping at your store. This is the reason why the product details page tends to be the primary place to promote cross-sells.

Many eCommerce stores also like to use the checkout area. But this has the potential to distract the customer just as they’re about to hand over their money, thereby running the risk of losing the purchase altogether.

Try to experiment with your own cross-sells in order to find out what works best for you.

Rapid Web Services keeps everything simple by giving you a set of basic cross-selling functions, while allowing you to add more sophisticated product suggestion features as your online retail operation grows and matures.

And with all of our packages you can let our system do the job of cross-selling for you by automatically generating a list of related items in your product details pages, based upon the type of product that the visitor is buying.

The following are typical bespoke cross-selling features that our clients use to encourage higher order values:

• Cross-sells at different stages of the buying process: such as in the checkout and in your order confirmation page or order confirmation email
• Intelligent system-generated cross-sells: based on keywords, tags, categories, product grouping and items in your basket
• Facility to show the visitor their recently viewed items: works in a similar way to cross-selling by keeping the visitor’s recently viewed items at the forefront of their mind

Most online retailers focus only on bolstering their revenue by increasing the number of transactions.

But remember that cross-sells also offer the opportunity to boost your income simply by increasing the average order value of your existing sales.