Running your own business is not an easy feat. For one, you need to create a good product mix at a competitive price. Another is to make sure that a wide audience actually knows about your business. The traditional way of doing this is by going door to door to hand out flyers to your neighbors. However, with modern technology, you can extend your reach to nationwide and even international clients. How? This can be done by building a fully functional and customizable website that can ensure that your customers can access your business wherever they may be in the world. You might think that building a website is a daunting task, but nowadays you don’t even need to have a formal education and technical know-how to make one.
As a business owner, you would also need to constantly adapt to the business landscape and make sure that you keep your business profitable. Even if money is not your primary goal of building a business, it is still an important aspect or else you run the risk of the business shutting down and not being able to provide the goods and services that are helpful to the consumer. Not only that, but building a good business also helps stimulate the economy and provide livelihood to your employees.
So to ensure that your business is profitable and reaches as many people as possible, pick a great product to sell and think about how to market and get more sales for your product as well. There are many strategies to do this, and a few of them are called upselling, cross selling, and downselling. Whether or not you have already heard these terms before, it’s no doubt that you’ve already encountered one, two, or even three of these processes while doing some shopping. They may sound like foreign concepts for some of you but don’t you worry, because today we will be diving deep into what these are and how to use it to your advantage.
What Is Upselling?
According to Merriam-Webster, upselling is defined as the act of trying to convince a customer to purchase something additional or at a higher cost. Simply put, it’s the process of selling to your customer a more expensive product than the one he is interested in right now. What is important with upselling is that the more expensive product is answering the same need as the cheaper one. If you’re a customer yourself you might have fallen prey to this already but you might have not noticed it.
What Is Cross Selling?
Cross selling, on the other hand, is the practice of selling additional products to an existing customer. Basically, it’s the selling of a complementary product with the primary product. The important thing to consider when cross selling is to ensure that product you cross sell goes really well with the original one.
What Is Downselling?
Another term that is used in sales is downselling. In downselling, you basically give the customer the option to buy the same product at a discount or to buy a cheaper variation of the original product. This might seem counterintuitive at first, but there are some cases when a customer doesn’t have the money to pay for the more expensive product. In cases like these, it is smart to upsell so that you won’t lose the sale and still make money.
Now that we’ve defined the three terms, let us expound on what cross selling and upselling are all about.
What Is the Difference Between Cross Selling and Upselling?
Cross selling and upselling are both used with one primary goal: to generate more sales. While cross selling involves the use of different but complementary products to the one your customer wants, upselling involves the product of the same variety but is more expensive. To better understand these two, let’s look at the illustration below.
Imagine yourself entering a cafe with the thought of getting your daily dose of caffeine. As you get to the front of the cashier you tell her that you want to order a regular-sized latte. The cashier then repeats your order and asks you whether you want to get a large latte instead since the difference is only fifty cents. You notice that the price to pay is significantly less than if you were to buy two regular lattes and you proceed to tell her that yes, you would like to upsize your drink. What the cashier did is a classic example of upselling, where by suggesting what seems like a good deal, you ended up paying more than what you originally intended to spend than when you first came in through the door.
Now imagine yourself again entering the cafe wanting to order a regular-sized latte. You proceed to tell the cashier what you want and she starts to punch your order in. While you wait for the total bill, you take a look at the snacks rack and notice the donuts and fries that were displayed. The cashier, noticing what you did, then proceeds to tell you ask you whether you’d like some fries with your order. You think to yourself why not and reply with a yes. She then tells you that the donuts are freshly made and they go well with the fries and latte. You pause to think for a moment when she asks you if you would like to add a donut as well. You say why not and proceed to pay for the order.
That, on the other hand, is an example of cross selling. You originally only wanted to buy a latte, but the cashier suggested additional products that complements the one you just ordered. In both instances, you paid more than what you originally intended, and the shop makes more sales.
3-Step Upselling Tactic:
- Pre-purchase: Take advantage of the shop’s display and make your merchandise visually appealing. If you’re an online stop, make sure to capture your target market’s interest at first sight by using a beautiful template and a user-friendly interface. A cohesive look goes a long way in web designing so you want to make sure that recommendations for each product can be seen in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page.
- During purchase: During purchase your staff should be trained to recommend additions to the customer’s purchase. In online websites, you should also display recommendations in the form of pop-ups , in the customer’s cart, or on the checkout page.
- After purchase: After your customers made a purchase, don’t forget to have a stellar after sales service by thanking them. Use warm follow-up emails to make them want to make a repurchase.
Website Upselling Pro Tip:
As mentioned, a good product offering isn’t only what matters, but it pays to ensure that shoppers have a great time browsing your catalog. To do this, you should think about investing in making your website a blast to navigate. When choosing a great web builder, make sure that they have features to make upselling easier as well. Strikingly offers features such as crossed-out price, add sale price feature including show sale price, and custom checkout form features. These all allow clients to have a more enjoyable shopping experience and it will leave them wanting to come back for more.
Additional Tips for Upselling:
- Reward customers for buying more by opting to offer discount coupons and freebies on their next purchase. If you’re selling beauty products, for example, you can include free samples so that customers can try new products. If they like it, they will most likely purchase them next time and this, in turn, will generate more sales for your company.
- Offer a loyalty card to customers such that they will earn points to redeem prizes every time they buy from your shop.
- You can opt to make side-by-side comparisons of the expensive and cheaper option so that site visitors will see what the difference will be like if they choose the pricier one.
- Don’t overprice your product. If you overprice for one product, there will be a tendency that customers will think that your other offerings will be pricier than other shops as well.
- Decorate your website accordingly. Make sure that your font is readable and that you choose a great color palette for your site. You can also add instructional, inspirational, or demonstrative videos as well. Adding games is another tactic if you want your customers to spend as much time on your website so that they will be more convinced to buy from your shop.
- Don’t be forceful in your offerings. Make sure to add lots of options for your customers so that they know that you want them to purchase what is best for them and not just what is the most expensive.
- Create limited time offers that evoke a sense of urgency for your customers. This would make them want to buy your product as soon as possible
- Keep your website fresh by regularly updating it with new products.
- Make adding to cart and checking out purchases easy, always.
