MakeWebBetter – Top 10 Upselling Strategies to Shoot up Your Conversion RateEstimated Reading Time: just 9 min

Do you know that upselling can help you grow your revenue by 10-30%?

But achieving that number isn’t a child’s play. It requires a complete strategy to do that. And we’re exactly going to talk about the upselling strategies you can use to increase not only your revenue but also your conversions.

According to Forrester Research Analytics, 10 to 30% of sales happen through eCommerce platforms and upselling tips that stand more workable for buying products than going to the stores.

So, let’s keep both the small and big businesses on the same page and understand how important it is to use upselling strategies. And more than that, what strategies should you use to get the most optimum results?

Let’s lace-up!

What is Upsell?

Upsell is the process of offering a customer a better or upgraded version of a product they are looking to purchase. The goal behind upselling is to increase the spending of the customer which will give a hike to your revenue.

Being a marketing professional myself, I respect the complete concept of upselling and cross-selling and the value it incurs. And we’ve also stated the importance of upselling for your business growth in our previous blogs.

But to execute your upselling plans(and to get the results you desired), you need an infallible strategy to back them. So no more time waste now, let’s get to the point.

10 Positive Upselling Strategies to That Convert Most

1. Choose the Right Place for Upsell

Analyze your most prominent pages where you can convert your customer and implement upsell on that page. It might be the checkout page, home page, any landing page, product page, or even your blog pages. Based on your analysis, you can segment your sales strategy as well.

You can use tools like Hotjar to analyze which of your web pages are engaging users more and offer upsells there. It will show the impressions where all your customers have reacted to the elements provided.

Along with Hotjar, you can also check Google Analytics that will provide a click-through rate, conversions, and a precise report based upon a visitor’s geographic/demographic habitat of the pages.

Remember, it doesn’t always mean if a page is converting well, your upsell offers will also do good. So decide wisely whether a specific page is suitable to add upsell offers or not.

2. Offer Value with Relevance

If you ask me “what is the most important factor of an upsell product?” Relevancy is something I’d always keep on top. And so should you.

If your upsell products are not relevant to the initial product, you should seriously stop upselling right away. And this makes it one of the most critical upselling methods since it can make or break your intentions of converting users into customers.

I won’t waste your time by making you assume some kind of random example. Since an image speaks a thousand words, look at this picture for better understanding.

By looking at the image, tell me what would you purchase along with the your supplement. Obviously the sipper would be a better choice since it is more relevant to the initial product.

I hope now the relevancy factor is clear in your mind. So make sure whatever you sell as an upsell product is related to the initial product. Otherwise, the users won’t even consider your offer, let alone the conversions.

3. Get the Language Right

Communication is more vital when getting your content pitch ready for the brand. It should connect with your customers who can find a connection with your products/services you’re offering as upsells.

Here I want to use an example I personally experienced. I visit McDonald’s quite often, but generally, I refuse their offer of adding fries and coke(an upselling technique) to my order.

But once I visited and there was a boy on the counter who asked me the same question, “Would you like to add fries and coke to your order?” I refused the offer, but then he told me if I do so, I’ll get fries and two cokes extra by spending just a few bucks more.

As a result, I accepted the offer and enjoyed the whole meal. It was delicious.

What I’m saying is, when you’re offering upsell products, explain the benefits of the products. Like how it will help them if they buy it. Because as a seller, you know the features of your product, but how those features will help a common user, you need to tell them that.

And make sure you’re using the easiest way possible to explain that. If you’re familiar with the technical terms related to your product, doesn’t mean everyone will also be.

4. Offer Free Shipping

Free shipping can make 79% of U.S. consumers more likely to shop. On the other hand, high-shipping charges are the biggest reason for cart abandonment.

Your customers are smarter because they are spending money on you. They would prefer a well-budgeted product with free shipping more than picking up something of high cost plus shipping charges.

Thus, if your customers are purchasing both of your initial and upsell products, they’d definitely not like to pay anymore for the delivery. So make sure you charge nothing extra because it can make users bounce off and hurt your conversions.

Include this technique in your upselling strategies if you want to increase conversions and avoid last-moment exits.

5. Create Urgency with Upselling

Creating urgency can be a great help in instant conversion. And you may not believe it, but it can also help increase your revenue.

CXL in a survey found that adding urgency to the product pages can uplift revenue up to 27%.

This shows urgency is a factor that can give you what you crave as an eCommerce store owner. Adding urgency (through timers) creates a Fear Of Missing Out(FOMO) in the audience, which convinces them instantly to buy the product they were thinking of purchasing later.

You can also implement urgency in your upselling strategy. All you need to do is add a timer on your upsell products. You can add a timer of a special discount or as an out of stock reminder.

If your upsell products are helpful enough, I can assure you, in most cases, users will purchase them along with their initial purchase.

6. Track Performance of Your Upsell Funnels

Selling products without tracking your upsell funnel performances is like taking shots in the dark. You will never figure out which of your funnel needs improvement or which one is bothering customers.

Hence this becomes a crucial step for you to monitor how good or bad a specific funnel is performing. Many plugins come with an upsell reporting feature that lets you track and check the number of times a funnel was triggered, accepted, etc.

And since this feature is quite vital for merchants, we’ve also introduced it in our upsell plugin(free and paid both). As I said, it lets you track the performance of every single funnel. Moreover, it allows you to check the performance for a specific time period. And above all, it also lets you track your upsell performance through Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel.

So I would suggest you one thing, whichever app or plugin you use for upselling, make sure it offers you a reporting feature.

7. Take Care of the Price Difference

It’s suggested that the price of the upsell product should be at least over 30% than the initial product.

For example, a user has purchased a $40 bean bag. And you recommended her a better one priced at $80. She may even drop the idea of buying a bean bag(at least from your store) since the better one is 2x pricier than the initial one.

But if you offer her a better bean bag priced around 50-55 dollars, she’ll be more likely to purchase the better one since there isn’t an immense price difference.

So make sure to maintain a decent price ratio while offering upgrades on your store. This is one of the most common but often overlooked upselling strategies. Merchants try to offer an exorbitant upsell product to maximize the average order value. This results in a crumbled user experience, which is not at all good for your store’s reputation.

8. Offer Substitution

What if your upsell product goes out-of-stock? Or it is not available for a particular address? Would you replace the offer with an apology? You can but that will present you as an amateur in business.

People need solutions, they don’t care whether you have a product or not. So if you don’t have a Plan B, you may suffer at converting users at your store.

So in case of any crisis, your team should be ready with alternative/additional products for upsell. Like you can add multiple products as an upsell product which will be offered to the customers. So one product is not available for some reasons, the other offer will be there to make sure customers will pay more than they intended to.

Here’s an example of multiple upsell products:

9. Employ One-click Upsell, i.e, After Purchase

One-click Upsell is a more trendy way of upselling these days. It allows you to offer products after a purchase is done to increase the order value of the customers.

Brands are embracing this technique these days because it ensures conversions. Since you offer upsell products after the customer buys something, you get a better idea of what to offer that will persuade them to buy another product.

Along with that, one-click upsells are easy to buy. Customers only require a click to purchase the offer product and add it to their existing order, which enhances the buying experience too.

And the post-purchase upsells rarely require customers to re-enter their card details, another factor for improving the buying experience.

So those were some reasons one-click upsells are trending these days. You can also try them at your online store. There is an abundance of plugins that lets you add a one-click upsell feature at your store.

But if you have an online store built on WooCommerce, you don’t have to go anywhere or spend a dime. You can check our best-selling One Click Upsell plugin would be best suitable for post-checkout upsell. The best part is, IT’S FREE!!!

But there isn’t any compulsion, there is an abundance of one-click upsell plugins, you can explore what options are best for you and try them.

10. Pitch Upsells Through Email Marketing

With the advancement of email marketing as your effective marketing strategy and strategies to boost sales, you must have come across the email types like cart abandonment emails, new launches, partnership promotions, eventful emails, come back emails, and more.

But, have you ever wondered to push upsell oriented emails to your customers, who have just bought things from your store? Just a recommendation type of email or even a sober suggestion… just think about it.

You can use emails to offer them upsell products and to suggest products they can purchase to make most out of their previous purchases.

The average conversion rate for emails is still 15.11% in 2020.

So you can guess if a few users open your mails and transact through them, how better it will convert. So carry out this upselling strategy since it is proven to get significant results.

Over to You

According to a report from Predictive Intent’s eCommerce customer base, upselling drives an average of over 4% of sales.

And you’re probably thinking that 4% isn’t an adequate number or won’t have much effect. But just calculate these figures on paper and you’ll understand how efficient it can be for your store’s revenue.

So, I suggest you go for ‘Upselling’ and use all the above upselling strategies we discussed and lay down a robust plan that can maximize your conversions.

Do you already use upselling methods? Or there’s any I should’ve mentioned in this post. I’d love to know. Write them down in the comments.