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How to Upsell on Your Shopify Online Store

How to Drive Upsells on Your Shopify Online Store

With the costs of digital advertising steeply increasing, you’re likely spending more money advertising to new customers than ever before.

To offset these increased advertising costs, you’ll need creative ways to get your new and existing customers to add more items to their cart—or “basket building” as we like to refer to it.

Cross-selling and upselling can occur throughout many stages of the shopping process, but in this article, we’ll be focused on driving post-purchase upsells for your Shopify store.

We’ll cover why post-purchase upselling is vital for increasing average order value, how they can offset customer acquisition costs, and give our best tips on how to drive more Shopify upsells and cross-sells for your online store.

What is upselling and cross-selling?

Cross sell and upsell campaigns are sales tactics for online stores to your customers to increase their average order value. 

This can be achieved by having them upgrade their selected products for more expensive, premium versions (upsells), or by getting them to add complementary products to their cart (cross-sells). 

Another term we like to use is “basket-building” which refers to cross-selling and adding more items to your customer’s cart. 

This is the primary focus for increasing customer order value, finding creative ways to get customers to add just one or two more items to their cart. And overall, this improves the customer experience. 

Why upselling offsets rising customer acquisition costs

Because customer acquisition costs have increased 60% in the past five years, most Shopify merchants lose about $29 for each new customer acquired. 

How could this be? Well, changes in iOS updates and improved user online privacy have eliminated many third-party cookies that make it easier to advertise digitally online, increasing digital advertising costs significantly. This has negatively affected customer acquisition costs.

How upselling increases order values and boosts revenue easily

Today, Shopify merchants are looking for any tactics and strategies that can help them offset acquisition costs, and upselling is the answer.

Upselling and cross sell offers, especially when done after your customer has placed their order (a post-purchase offer) can easily increase their cart value by 10%, which can go a long way to reduce acquisition costs.

One-click Shopify upsell pages: The solution to increasing order value (AOV)

The highest converting upselling option is the one-click upsell page, which is a type of post-purchase offer. 

Using this post-purchase funnel, merchants can show product recommendations to their customers immediately after they have already placed their order, but right before they get their final “thank you” order confirmation page.

By offering a one-click offer after checkout of their initial purchase, there’s zero risk of your customer abandoning their cart.

Their order has been completed, but they can choose to add one to two additional products with just one click of a button. 

If they choose to add the product, their cart will automatically be updated, and then they’ll reach the final “thank you” page.

Learn about how CartHook was able to get 30% of 310 Nutrition’s customers to say yes to their one-click post-purchase offer.

Why upselling is better after your customer has placed their order

Upselling can occur during many stages of the customer journey. 

From the pre-purchase stage of comparing products on your store’s site, to upselling product upgrades on the checkout page, to showing last-minute product recommendations after checkout.

At CartHook, we focus on post-purchase upselling funnels, one-click offers that are displayed immediately after your customer has placed their order, because they have the highest conversion rates. 

Think about it, your customer has just placed their purchase and they’re feeling excited. They are more likely to accept last-minute one-click offers while they’re still basking in their post-purchase glow. 

And if you’re able to recommend a moderately priced or even discounted version of a product that corresponds to their purchase, they’re even more likely to press the one-click “Add to cart” button to increase their cart order.

How to upsell more products on Shopify using one-click upsell funnels

Using CartHook, Shopify merchants are able to set up a one-click upsell page to automatically recommends products based on their existing customer’s order.

By showing your post-purchase offer immediately after checkout, it’s impossible to divert your customer’s attention away from completing their checkout, creating zero risk of cart abandonment.

To do this, Shopify merchants can create several individual funnels, or one-click offers, in their Shopify dashboard.

For example, if you want to reward customers who have spent more than $100 on your website, you can show them a special “Spend $100, get half off socks.” Incentivize your customer to add one more product to their cart.

Or if you have a best-selling item, you can recommend that product to customers who haven’t yet purchased that item. This can be achieved by setting up different criteria and triggers in your Shopify dashboard to show that particular product to customers who haven’t purchased that item. 

With CartHook, there is no limit to the amount of one-click funnels you can create. 

This means you can set up endless deals and one-click offers depending on which season you’re in, which products you’re trying to get rid of, and offer different discounts depending on how much your customers are spending.

And with its built-in monitoring and analytics, you’ll be able to see which products and one-click offers convert, and which don’t. This will allow you to continue fine-tuning your post-purchase upsells to gradually increase your average order amount over time.

5 Tips on how to upsell and cross-sell more products on the one-click offer page

Setting up your individual post-purchase funnels will take a bit of planning, depending on your inventory and your sales goals.

As you familiarize yourself with one-click offers, you’ll collect more data that will help you find the perfect price points and discounts to drive more one-click upsells.

Here are a few helpful tips and guidelines to follow when setting up your one-click Shopify upsells.

1. Adjust offer settings based on pricing

Don’t recommend products that cost 25% or more of the customer’s existing shopping cart amount, as your customer is more likely to decline the offer.

However, if you can recommend a lesser-priced item or accessory, your customer will be more likely to accept the offer. 

Of course, you should experiment with different pricing and discounts to find the perfect price point where you’re making more revenue without getting too many declined offers.

2. A/B test your funnel pages often for conversion optimization

Try A/B split testing the same product, but with different page designs and different product images to see if a particular design or picture works better.

3. Use fear of missing out (FOMO) and create a sense of urgency

Create a sense of urgency by adding a countdown timer. 

Experiment with different countdown times, such as one minute or five minutes to see if one converts better than the other.

4. Set up different variants and criteria for showing product recommendations

When setting up each of your one-click funnels, you can select which products are recommended based on variants of products that have or haven’t been added to your customer’s cart.

For example, any time a set of shoes are sold, a pair of socks can be shown as the recommended product to increase conversions.

Try CartHook today: One-click Shopify upsell page after checkout

CartHook is a Shopify app that lets Shopify merchants build post-purchase upsell pages. 

Your customers can easily accept these post-purchase offers with just one-click to instantly boost your AOV. No coding required!

Download your free 14-day trial of CartHook today and watch your overall order value average increase by 10%.

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