Web Podcast - Episode 34: Up-Sell & Up Your Profit

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Hey guys, Episode 34 today and it's a lovely winter's day here in New Zealand.

Anyway, I was sitting down and thinking about it and I haven't really done an episode on it but I want to talk to you guys about upselling, so if you're an online retailer or even if you're a retail shop and you don't have a website but you've just got a store in your local town, it's important that you give people the ability to buy additional products with the main purchase they're making and that's generally called upselling. Upselling's been around for many years and basically the purpose of upselling is to get people to buy something usually low price in addition to what they've already got because it complements or it's just sort-of a widely used or needed product that someone might need and they can pick it up for a couple of dollars or ten dollars or whatever it might be. So a good example of upselling is (you may already know) when you go to a grocery shop and you're in the checkout line and there's products either side of you; that is chocolates and gum and drinks and bits and pieces that are really low price in the grand scheme of things but they're just things you can go "Yeah, I want one of those", "I'll buy it, grab it, chuck it in the purchase." those supermarkets, if they've just got 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 of their customers buying a pack of gum they'd have thousand of customers a week, imagine how much money they'd be making a year just on those little upsells so it all snowballs.

So it's important you do upselling on your website aswell. Now there's really only two types of upsell products. There's mass market products, as I said gum and drinks and stuff that generally anyone's gonna buy, and there's also products that complement what you're selling. So most of you guys probably stick to things that complement that products you're selling so unless you're a grocery store and you've got a massive range of products, and you've got products to upsell at a low cost (and pretty much anyone can use it) then you would do that otherwise if you're selling a specific product you'll sell things that match and go with the product that are also low price. It's no use being a - let's say a tyre shop, you sell tyres online, you're not gonna have chocolate bars or gum at the checkout; it doesn't make sense, but you might have for example little valve caps that go on the top when you fill your tyres with air or you might have a little puncher or a repair kit that people can buy so complementing products is basically what I'm referring there.

Let's say I sell smart phones, I'm selling iPhones and I'm selling Samsungs, blah, blah, blah, someone comes onto the store, they add a new phone onto their cart (it's $500) they go to the checkout and then before the see that checkout bar button, above that; there is 'Have you also considered...' or 'Don't forget to buy...' and there's screen protectors and phone covers and headphones and things like that, all quickly there, labeled with a price, perhaps they're generally on special. At the end of the day what we're trying to do guys is to get people to buy those products so we generally want to have them low price, possibly on special if you can, I like to say generally under $10 but even like $10-$20 depending on what it is. If people are buying a big purchase then $20 isn't too bad but if they're buying a $20 purchase then you only wanna upsell them another couple of dollars with the product.

So there's two places you can put upsell items. So alot of websites will have related products so you click on the phone and below it you'll see related products and it might be a carry case for that phone, it might be a screen protector for that phone and you can click through and view the product and add it to your cart. That's on the product page - that's product page upsell. Then you've got the basket upsell, so someone goes to their shopping basket and there's the checkout button, there's upsells on that page there and those upsells will generally be linked to what is ever in there basket so if you're on a clothing store site and you've bought some woman's clothing - I've bought some men's clothing for example, then I want to see men's upsellable items which might be a belt or it might be some socks or some briefs or whatever it might be. I don't want to see woman's upsells in my basket in there, obviously because I'm not interested in that product. So make sure your upsells are relevant to what's in your customers basket.

Now the third place you can generally put upsells is once users pay for their product, the customers paid for their product or for their order and they're on the page where it saids 'Thanks for your order, it's been placed...' then you can put - like in a highlighted red box 'Limited time five minute special deal for new customers' and it might be 50% off maybe a clearance product you wanna get rid of and it's perhaps something that complements what they've purchased and it's relevant to them. It's sort of like a - you want to make it a limited time, limited quantity so it really makes them go "oooo, i'll by that quickly" rather than just saying 'You can buy this if you want, but you don't have to'. So try to think of something you can put on there and upsell them at the last minute and it can be a product that - it can actually even be a more valuable product, it can be something more special like a nice perfume or cologne if you're selling men's products or men's clothing. Put the upsell on there and basically make it a single button saying 'Yes please', 'I want this' - they click it and since your site's already got their payment details, it pretty much, Bang! Charges them for that straight away and the orders done, they don't have to go through the checkout again - it's just the simple one-click upsell. There's some implications around that and some things you got to do to make sure it works probably it's obviously *** but you can do that, you can upsell people that have placed their order because once they've placed their order there's that sort of subconscious thing of "Okay, I've just bought from this company; Cool! I'm excited for my order coming". "Oh, there's this product I can buy, oh it's half price and it's $10", "Oh yeah, what the heck I'll push this button and buy it". Rather than trying to sell to someone that hasn't actually bought from you yet during that actually faze where they're just on the product page and trying to upsell them there; it might not work just as easy. When people have bought from you it's easier to sell to them. So pretty much in that moment they've paid for their order - it sort of switches that mindset that they're already a customer and they'll repurchase from you.

So guys that's upselling, you really should make sure you've got it integrated onto you're website where you have some sort of offline upselling in your retail store or your market store, even just saying to people "Hey! I've got this here - it complements it - do you want it?" It can be a great way to increase your revenue. I was thinking about it before - I think if I was correct, Let's say If you have 10 sales a week (which is a pretty low number) on your website, if you just got one of those ten orders to buy an upsell product - that's 52 orders a year with an upsell product purchase. Now Let's say you're upsell's worth $10 (10 x 52) that's another $520 a year that you can make without really any extra effort and that's being quite conservative. Now Let's say 2 - 10 sales, that's over $1000 a year extra revenue. Let's say it was one in every 2 sales, that's nearly $2,500 grand a year - if i'm correct with my on-the-fly maths.

So you get the drift, it's all about little things to help upsell and increase your bottom line. Anyways guys, that's Matt from the RAZOR Web Design Wire Podcast and join us again next time. Cheers.