Tips and Tutorials
August 15, 2021

How Upselling Can Double the Sales of Your Shopify Store

It's challenging to generate more sales in a competitive market. Upselling is a strategy to make your store stand out from the crowd. Our article discusses the advantages of upselling and some techniques for effective upselling on Shopify.

What is upselling?

Upselling is showing an upgraded version of the product that your customers bought or just added to their cart. When done correctly, upselling can help you sell more products and increase the order values. Upselling is not only to make a profit but also to improve the customer buying experience. By suggesting the right products, you show your customers that you understand their needs and do your best to satisfy them. In the next part, we’ll explore in detail why upselling is important to your Shopify store.

Advantages of doing effective upselling on your Shopify store

Boost the average order value (AOV) of your store

Average Order Value (AOV) is the average monetary value customers spend each time when they place an order on your website. Knowing the AOV helps you understand whether your online store is doing well. By showing upselling products at the right place on your Shopify store, you can persuade customers to add more products to their shopping cart. This will help you boost the AOV of your store. As upselling can be personalized and targeted, you can get more sales, and increase customer satisfaction at the same time.

Build stronger customer relationships 

To build a good relationship with your customers, you need to meet their expectations or exceed their expectations. Fortunately, upselling can help you achieve that goal. By showing upselling products, you satisfy the needs that customers may not even know they are having! Once your customers are satisfied with your upselling, they will surely come back next time and become your loyal customers.

Increase customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the total revenues you gain from a customer during the whole period of your relationship with them. Upselling has a significant impact on the customer lifetime value because upselling with existing customers is more effective than with new customers. Your existing customers have already tried your products and have some trust in you. So when you present them with more related products or an upgraded version of the products they purchased, they are more likely to get it. 

To show upsells on your store, you can do it manually or use any Shopify apps like iCart Cart Drawer Cart Upsell. iCart offers amazing upselling and cross-selling options to optimize your shopping cart (both cart drawer and full cart page). Learn more about how to upsell with the iCart Shopify app.

Best upselling techniques for Shopify store

Buy One Get One Free (BOGO)

BOGO is one of the best techniques to attract more customers in less time. These deals help you clear your dead stocks or slow-moving products, thus saving them from running in loss. Additionally, you can build a loyal customer base by offering BOGO offers.

Gifts

Gifts are always being exciting offers for all types of customers. Many online stores offer a free product to customers on their first purchase or a specific cart value. The gift increases your Average Order Value (AOV) by motivating customers to spend more on their purchases.

Product Bundles or Combo Offers

People like saving more. Therefore, they don’t give a second thought to buying more items at once. Therefore, creating a few product combinations at a discounted price can help you boost sales. iCart can help you create combo offers for your customers. You can create product bundles either for the same products or alternative products based on your store requirements.

Limited Time Offers

"This product is in demand! We have reserved it in your cart for 10 minutes! Hurry up!"

Customers find it more interesting when they see such upsells. If you are adding any offer to your cart page or cart drawer, don’t miss attaching a simple ticking countdown timer. 

Tips for effective upselling

Identify the best place for upselling

When you are going to launch your upselling deals, make sure to place them in the right place. Wondering which is the best place to show upsell offers? Well, it works differently based on the upsell types. But generally, most upselling techniques are found to be effective on the cart page or cart drawer. Here you can show frequently bought together products or related items so customers can add them to the cart immediately.

Upsell the right products to the right customers

Before making any upselling, you need to define which customer segments you should upsell, and which upselling products are relevant to them. You can rely on the products that your customers have just added to their shopping cart, or what they purchased in their previous orders. And upselling products need to be products from the same category with a higher value, or upgraded functionalities (which is different from cross-selling). 

Product recommendation under the shopping cart

Offer discounts

Offering discounts in upselling products is one of the best ways to boost sales for your online store, especially if you place these discounts at the last steps of the buying journey. Seeing the discounts, customers are more likely to grab your upselling products, even if they have no intention to buy. 

Time-limited offers under the shopping cart

Build trust in your customers

To attract more customers to your upselling products, the key is to make your offers relevant and trustworthy. You can do that by showing testimonials or customer reviews. iCart is integrated with Judge.me, so you can add social proof to your upsells, cross-sells, product bundles by showing Judge.me star ratings. Another way to make your upselling more trustworthy is to display a list of upselling items “viewed by other customers". Seeing other people also buy your products, customers are more inclined to get these products as well. 

Star ratings displayed in the upselling items


Lily Vuong

Lily is the Marketing Writer at Judge.me. She is a tech-savvy content enthusiast who takes ownership of writing promotional and instructional content for Judge.me's Knowledge Base and Blog to help accelerate our growth. Lily holds a Bachelor's Degree in Marketing and has 3 years of experience in Marketing for international tech companies. Before Judge.me, Lily was the Marketing Specialist at IT Consultis, a digital agency specialized in omnichannel projects for clients across APAC. She loves reading books, learning new technologies, traveling around and taking great pictures.