Upsell and Cross Sell in Magento: 4 Suggestions for Boosting Profits

Author: Michael Scorcia Category: E-commerce & Retail Date: December 18, 2020

As soon as you start making money, it’s time to start making more money. But before you spend those hard-earned dollars trying to hook new customers, you can – and should – use your Magento website to upsell and cross sell to your existing customers first. Although it doesn’t necessarily cost you anything to upsell and cross sell in Magento, it is one of the most valuable sales tactics you can employ on your site.

Upselling

Upselling happens when you persuade a customer to purchase a more expensive or better-quality item than the one they had intended to buy in the first place.

So, what is an example of upselling? Consider smartphones. Perhaps a customer walks into a store planning to purchase a phone with 64 gigabytes of memory. The sales associate offers up two additional options: one with 128 GB, and the other with 256 GB. While the phone with the most amount of memory is out of budget for the customer, she does end up walking out of the store with the 128 GB phone and spending more than she had originally planned.

Cross Selling

When you’ve hooked a customer, and you successfully convince them to purchase additional items that complement the original item they’d already planned to buy, that’s cross selling.

Revisiting the smartphone example, the sales associate will attempt to cross sell to the proud new owner of a 128 GB phone by encouraging her to also purchase a protective case, an extra charging cable, and maybe even a pair of wireless headphones.

Upsell and Cross Sell in Magento

Now that we’ve covered the basics, the next question becomes: How do you upsell and cross sell in Magento specifically?

Technically speaking, to upsell and cross sell in Magento, you’ll need to visit the “Related Products, Up-Sells and Cross-Sells” section of your admin settings and add your upsell and cross sell items in the back end. Then each time a shopper views or adds to their cart one of the trigger items, they’ll be shown the appropriate alternative purchasing options – whether upsells or cross sells.

Meanwhile, from a marketing perspective, we’ve got four suggestions for how to optimize your strategies to upsell and cross sell in Magento.

1. Know your pairings. Which of your products are most often purchased together? Which ones complement each other best, or are meant to be used in tandem? Be cognizant of these pairings, and update your Magento cross sell items to reflect these pairings.
2. Make it relevant. You can spend all the time in the world trying to upsell and cross sell in Magento, but if your product suggestions aren’t relevant to the primary product and/or the interests of the customer, you may risk losing the sale altogether.
3. Showcase items. Try to envision your e-commerce site as if it were a brick-and-mortar store. Make an effort to display hot items prominently across the site, and – perhaps more importantly – be sure to photograph frequently-paired items together. It makes it much easier to cross sell to a customer when they can see how the pairings work together.
4. Be reasonable. If a customer comes to your site to view a $50 item, the chances of upselling them to a $500 item are pretty slim. To upsell in Magento (or elsewhere) most successfully, it’s suggested that you cap the cost of your suggested item at 25% over the cost of the original.

Generally speaking, it requires much less effort to get someone who’s already spending to spend more, than it is to close a sale with a brand new customer. For more tips on how to upsell and cross sell in Magento, or for help getting started, contact Paradigm today, and one of our e-commerce marketing experts will be in touch.