Cross-selling is a sales technique used to get a customer to spend more by purchasing a product that’s related to what’s being bought already.

- Shopify Business Encyclopedia.

Cross-selling is one of the most effective sales strategies in e-commerce. We all heard about cross-selling and up-sell and how it can benefit the e-commerce revenue.

If you have ever purchased or window shopped anything from Amazon (which you probably have), you should have already known about the “customers who bought this item also bought” and “frequently bought together” options on every product page. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once revealed that an incredible 35% of sales were a direct result of cross-sells! And that doesn't even include the extra revenue they’ve made from up and down-sells.

Amazon understands their customer's needs. They also have a very complex information systems in order to do that. However, to smaller businesses like us, with limited time and resources, how do we do that? In this blog post, you will find some simple ways to effectively apply cross-selling to your store to increase revenue.

1. Understand customers’ needs

One of the most important and also the most difficult things is to understand your customer, what they want and how your products can be attractive to them.

The biggest fail of cross-selling is providing completely irrelevant offers. Cross-selling the right product at the right time is key. For example, someone who is buying lipstick would want to get a lip liner in the same color; or someone who buys a camera may need a memory card. The right product means the item that is necessary or compatible with whatever customer is trying to buy or whatever is in their shopping cart.

2. Personalize everything

Do you ever wonder why it is much easier to call you by your name in a crowd than just a simple ‘Hey you!’? Or do you ever feel more engaged when someone says thank you with your name than just a normal ‘Thanks’? That is because we always pay more attention when someone uses our name.

You can really make your message much more powerful by personalizing the content. Using words like ‘you’, ‘your’ and ‘yours’ can create a sense of ownership. And it could be much better if you can use your customer’s name.

Moreover, not only the content but you can also personalize the offer. There is a research by the e-tailing group reported that 39% of U.S. customers buy more when retailers suggest products based on past browsing or buying behavior.

3. Aware of the sale funnel

It is very important to know what stage of the sale funnel your customers are at in order to cross-sell with suitable offer and products. You can not apply the same offers across multiple pages or stages.

For example, when customers are on the product page, you can cross-sell other products with the same price. However, if they are at the check out page, you should only offer them to buy more with products that have a low price. By this way, they won’t be distracted by similar products and abandon the cart.

With smart, tactful, and strategic product recommendations for your customers, you’ll be adding value to their purchases, and profits to your sales.

Let’s have your store ready for the coming BFCM. As always, goodluck!