According to Marketing Metrics, the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%.
When a customer is making a purchase, they are already in the mind set to buy. It is the best time to sell them other products. Increasing average sale this way is what successful online entrepreneurs often refer to as “making all the profits on the back-end.”
In 2006, Amazon reported that cross-selling and upselling contributed as much as 35% of their revenue. Both techniques are important to customer experience and maximising sales.
The difference between cross selling and up selling
Which is right for your business?
There is no reason not to use both.
McDonald’s ask “would you like fries with that?” as the cross sell, then “would you like to go large?” as the upsell. Predicting customers’ actual needs is the secret to successful cross and up sales.
Amazon have done particularly well with their cross selling, because they always keep it relevant. The phrase ‘customers who bought this also bought’ cleverly works social proof into the sell too.
Take your time to develop a range of problems and opportunities based on your customers’ priorities. If you’ve done enough analytics-based research, you should have a fairly good idea about what your customers want.
offers should make sense while providing a clear benefit to the customer. The goal is always to create a win-win situation, not to browbeat your customer into buying something they don’t necessarily want or have no interest in.
Linda’s stuff have used the right hand promotion box within the listing for this sweater to show other sweaters which are the same size and a similar colour. For a customer who is searching for a smalll, gray sweater this is improving their experience and increasing the chances of them buying from Linda’s stuff.
Customization is a huge part of upselling. The price of your product, its uses, and why people commonly buy them should all be factored into when and how you employ it in an upsell.
When cross selling goes wrong
Cross selling features in eBay designs can be dynamic, or hard coded. There is a very non technical reason why it matters which you use.
Dynamic cross promotion scans through your live listings, and automatically shows related products, based on the rules you set. The rules could be size, colour, any relevant feature. It will only connect listings which are relevant and live.
Hard coded cross promotion solutions need to be updated every time a product sells out. A seller would need to go through and update every listing, or they would be cross promoting to a dead listing.
Cross promoting to a dead listing is pointless, and will very likely lose you sales. Frooition have worked with eBay to develop dynamic cross promotion for eBay which is active content free. The above example of Linda’s stuff is one of our many active content free custom listing designs.
Although increased sales are the main focus and average order size, it’s equally important to also consider the customer experience. In fact, these two things are mutually dependant. Offering customers seemingly random products will just leave customers confused, and won’t sell anything. Carefully look at your store, and the range of products you offer and consider what makes the most sense to offer the customer. Improve their experience, and your revenues will follow.
For the most up to date information check-out our software page for Cross Selling on eBay
