Every small business wants to sell more - more sales means more revenue, after all. But it’s not as easy as sitting back and waiting for the customers to roll in.
When we say that cart abandon rates are high, we mean they’re really high. In fact, the average abandonment rate is 69.57%, which means the majority of store visitors don’t buy.
As a result, ecommerce owners are tasked with increasing the average order spend of customers that do buy. This strategy means they don’t have to fork out an arm and a leg to persuade new customers to make a purchase. Instead, they can up the amount existing buyers spend in store.
One of the most effective ways to do this is by upselling products.
Okay, tell me more.
We may receive compensation from the tools featured in this guide. However, we do not recommend any tools or services that we do not use in our businesses, have not fully evaluated, or that are not successful for our clients.
What is Upselling?
There’s a chance you’ve been targeted with an upsell before; if you’ve ever gone to checkout and been greeted with a pop up asking “do you want some X to go with your Y” and you clicked yes, you’ve been on the receiving end of an upsell.
It’s basically the art of offering another product on top of the item a customer has already bought. Usually, upsell products are similar to the original product, a needed extra, or they complement the original purchase in some way, like socks to go with a new pair of shoes, a teapot to go with a tin of tea bags, or batteries to go with a camera.
The Benefits of Upselling on Shopify
More upsells means more money. It’s as simple as that. But, more specifically, upselling on Shopify can…
Increase Your Average Order Value (AOV)
With so few store visitors actually hitting the “buy” button, it’s important to squeeze as much as possible out of customers that do make a purchase.
By encouraging shoppers to buy additional products with each purchase, you automatically increase the AOV without having to attract new customers. Which is a good thing, really, when you consider that this costs more than serving existing customers and is far less effective. In fact, Marketing Metrics shows the success rate of selling to existing customers is 60-70% but only 5-20% for new customers.
Improve Your Profits
It’s a no-brainer: the more you increase your AOV, the more profit you’ll generate. If you can boost each customer from a $20 order to a $35 order through upsells, you’re going to dramatically boost your revenue pretty quickly.
Additionally, you’re shipping more products in a single box with a single shipping label which is more economical (and eco-friendly) than shipping two separate orders. For example, a $20 order for a single item might cost $5 to ship. So if you were to generate two single-item orders, you’d pay $10 in total shipping cost.
However, if you upsell a customer and sell two items in a single order that’s being shipped in a single box, your shipping cost might only be $7 total, saving you $3 in shipping costs, and your cost for a single box might only be $1 instead of $2 for two boxes.
Lastly, you’re only paying to acquire a single customer instead of two. Which, depending on your customer acquisition costs, could be even greater than the savings you're generating from shipping and packaging.
Create Happy Customers
Have you ever ordered an electronic item and not bought batteries to go with it? It’s frustrating. It delays the joy you get from using the product.
Cue upselling (or a reminder to buy batteries with your new gadget). This improves the shopping experience for buyers because they’re given the chance to purchase complementary products they need but might have forgotten about. If you really think about it, it shows you care.
How to Upsell on Shopify: Key Strategies
Let’s get down to it. You now know the what and why behind upselling, so how do you put it into action?
Here is a collection of powerful strategies that some of the best brands are using right now.
1. Personalized Product Recommendations
Recommend products based on a customer’s past purchases or their past browsing behavior. For example, if a customer recently bought a wooly winter scarf, they might be interested in another scarf or a pair of matching gloves to go with it.
MVMT has a stylish “You May Also Like” section at the bottom of each product page.
2. Supplemental Product Recommendations
Supplemental product recommendations complement the buyer’s original purchase. This might be batteries for an electronic gadget in their cart, or a couple of sample packs of organic Costa Rican coffee to go with the cafetiere they’ve just added to their basket.
Seed & Sprout Co serves a popup to customers who click “Add to Cart” with additional extras to add to their order.
3. Post-Purchase Upsells
Post-purchase upsells target customers who have already bought something from you. It’s actually easier to sell to customers who have already bought from you, with studies showing a customer has a 27% chance of coming back to buy after they purchase a recommended product. This percentage increases with every purchase they make.
Post-purchase emails are the perfect place to promote a buyer’s next purchase.
Dollar Shave Club sends buyers an order confirmation email with a selection of cherry picked upsells.
4. Cart Abandonment Emails
The customers that filled their cart and disappeared aren’t lost causes. In fact, they’re ready and primed to buy, they just need a nudge in the right direction.
Send a cart abandonment email to remind them of all the wonderful items in their basket, or retarget shoppers with social ads. You can use this opportunity to upsell by sharing other products they might like based on what’s in their cart.
BirchBox sends out cart reminder emails to shoppers who have abandoned ship with additional upsells and cross-sells.
5. Stock Out Text Notifications
Product out of stock? No worries! While it might be disappointing for the customer, it can be a great chance to nurture a relationship with them and upsell additional products.
You can recommend other related products or you can make like NotPot and ask for a customer’s number to update them when the product is back in stock (and if you’re feeling particularly noble, you can recommend similar products via text).
The Best Upsell Apps for Shopify
If all these strategies have put your head in a spin, we’ve got you.
Luckily, there are some fabulous Shopify apps geared specifically towards implementing upsell strategies. Yay for technology.
Here are some of the best.
We may receive compensation from the tools featured in this guide. However, we do not recommend any tools or services that we do not use in our businesses, have not fully evaluated, or that are not successful for our clients.
1. Bold Commerce
What it does: Bold Commerce’s Bold Upsell app provides a simple but powerful way to encourage shoppers to buy more with one-click offers and dynamic upsell funnels that update based on a person’s past browsing history.
The price: try it free for 14 days.
What you can use it for:
- Give shoppers the chance to buy an upgrade of the products in their cart
- Share complementary products
- Create upsell funnels based on previous browsing habits
- Choose what type of offer to show every step of the way
Bold Commerce in Action
2. CartHook
What it does: CartHook is the queen of post-purchase upselling. Through the app, sellers can share one-click upsell offers right after a shopper has made a purchase. The best part is, customers don’t have to re-enter their payment details so they can get their hands on the offer ASAP.
The price: the Growth Plan is $50 per month
What you can use it for:
- Create one-click post-purchase upsells to immediately increase the order value of each customer
- Upsell highly relevant products at checkout based on previous browsing history
- Design on-brand upsell pages to strengthen shopper trust
Carthook in Action
3. Zipify OneClick Upsell
What it does: Zipify’s OneClick Upsell app is also a master of post-purchase upsells. It redirects shoppers to an upsell page after they’ve made a purchase where they can add products to their original order without any extra hassle.
The Price: prices start from $56 per month
What you can use it for:
- Create a high-converting post-purchase offer page
- Split test products and pages to see which ones perform best
- Build entire upsell funnels based on past purchase behavior
- Tap into tried and tested upsell email sequences
Zipify OneClick Upsell in Action
4. OrderBump
What it does: OrderBump allows Shopify Plus merchants to upsell products at checkout. The simple widget spotlights dynamic offers based on the price, category, style, and type of product in a customer’s cart.
The Price: after a free 10-day trial it’s $99 per month
What you can use it for:
- Create an eye-catching widget at checkout to promote supplemental products
- Cross-sell products
- Serve highly-targeted recommendations based on a shopper’s browsing history and the items already in their cart
OrderBump in Action
5. Frequently Bought Together
What it does: Frequently Bought Together lets sellers create product bundles and showcase them on product pages - it’s reminiscent of Amazon’s “people often buy…” addition to listings.
The Price: after a 30-day free trial it’s $7.99 per month
What you can use it for:
- Create product bundles and display them on your product pages
- Provide personalized product recommendations
- Add one-click upsells to checkout
- Apply an automatic discount to product bundles
Frequently Bought Together in Action
6. ReConvert
What it does: ReConvert helps sellers create beautiful thank you pages embedded with upsells and cross-sells. Non-techies can use the drag-and-drop interface to build branded widgets and pages that convert.
The Price: there is a free plan available
What you can use it for:
- Design stunning thank you pages
- Embed personalized upsell offers based on previous browsing history
- Collect customer data to optimize product offers
- Create discount popups and countdown timers
Reconvert in Action
7. Upsell Recommendations
What it does: Upsell Recommendations does pretty much as it says on the tin. It serves automated, personalized upsell offers to customers based on their past browsing and buying activities.
The Price: free to use
What you can use it for:
- Offer personalized product recommendations
- Create and place upsell widgets around your store
- Customize and brand widgets and offers
Upsell Recommendations in Action
8. AlsoBought
What it does: AlsoBought recommends products that like-minded customers have already bought, a bit like the “People Also Bought” section on Amazon’s product pages. The app uses advanced AI to trawl shopping behavior and generate highly personalized recommendations.
The Price: there is a free plan available
What you can use it for:
- Recommend products that other customers bought alongside the original item
- Analyze a shopper’s full sales history to promote the popular products
- Cross-sell and upsell products at the pre-purchase stage
AlsoBought in Action
9. Smart Bundle Upsell
What it does: Smart Bundle Upsell tracks items a user has in their cart as well as the device they’re using to shop on and serves them targeted upsells based on those attributes. You can also “gamify” the upsell process to encourage more sales.
The Price: after a 7-day free trial it’s $27 per month
What you can use it for:
- Provide smart upsells based on the products already in a shopper’s cart
- Choose which products you want to bundle up
- Reward customers that continue to make the most of upsells
Smart Bundle Upsell in Action
10. Ultimate Special Offers
What it does: Ultimate Special Offers lets you run multiple discounts on products, send shoppers a gift with their purchase, and upsell products based on their previous browsing behavior.
The Price: after a 14-day trial prices start at $19 per month
What you can use it for:
- Run discounts on groups of products
- Bundle items and sell them at a discounted price
- Create pricing tiers that provide discounts the more a customer buys
- Add gifts to certain orders
- Upsell and cross-sell products at checkout
Ultimate Special Offers in Action
11. Personalizer
What it does: the Personalizer app from LimeSpot creates personalized product recommendations based on a customer’s interests and previous shopping activities. It’s AI-powered capabilities let you upsell and cross-sell products on your store, via email, and on other ad channels.
The Price: free to use
What you can use it for:
- Deliver real-time personalized product recommendations
- Customize and brand recommendation boxes and place them where you want around your store
- Run split tests to see which pages and products perform best
- Share product recommendations in email campaigns
Personalizer in Action
12. JustUno
What it does: JustUno is a comprehensive app that allows sellers to not only create popups for upsells, but to also generate lead capture forms, landing pages, and exit offers geared towards conversions.
The Price: free plan available
What you can use it for:
- Create AI-powered popups to generate leads
- Design and implement exit offers
- Incorporate countdown timers into offers
- Trigger abandoned cart offers, upsells, and cross-sells
JustUno in Action
If you’re not already leveraging the power of upselling, now’s the time to do so.
Let’s face it, your customers will thank you for it when they don’t have that forehead-slapping moment of forgetting to buy batteries for their new gadget.
If it sounds overwhelming, don’t let it phase you. These Shopify upsell apps are on hand to help you create high-converting upsell promotions, product bundles, and personalized recommendations.
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