Convert Upsells and Impulse Buys in Ecommerce
Seeing is selling. Brick-and-mortar locations have impulse buying and upselling down to a science. Americans spend $182.98 per month on impulse buys. From shelf placement to endcaps and checkout displays, in-person shopping is an impulse buying minefield. Strategically placing products drives huge revenue for retailers with minimal effort. DTC brands can also implement upselling in eCommerce environments and get an extra bottom-line boost.
Online products can be filtered or hidden deep within an eCommerce store. This means customers may never see and purchase a product they were not initially shopping for like they do in a physical store. But, for digital commerce merchants, cross-selling and online impulse buys are natural ways to use data you’re already collecting. Converting your rich customer and shopping data into actionable insights makes impulse buying simple for customers.
Shelley Kohan, retail consultant and professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, shares “The goal is not to recommend the same styles and colors to all customers but to better understand future potential purchases and include trending products that may align with the customer’s individual preferences. Product recommendations based on past purchases and using predictive analytics to best put forth products that may appeal to customers based on similar purchases of other customers.”
Design eCommerce sites for upselling and impulse purchases with the help of user experience, analytics, personalization, AI and dynamic content. Here’s how to leverage an eCommerce platform to put the products your customers want to buy right where they’ll see them before checkout.
Analytics and Personalization Drive eCommerce Impulse Buys
When cross-selling and upselling in eCommerce you need to know who your customers are and what they want. This seems simple, but it can be tricky to get the data you need to truly understand your customers. Many eCommerce platforms can create events for major actions on your website like visiting a product, adding it to the cart and checking out.
Kohan believes, “Chatbots, machine learning and virtual stylist assistance are all ways to not only encourage purchasing and upselling but can also be used to make sure the correct clothing sizes are selected which ultimately reduces returns.”
But, just like customers browsing in a brick-and-mortar store, a lot of activity happens between visiting a listing and checking out. Platforms that can capture every action on the site provide large amounts of data that can be sliced and diced for analysis. For instance, Air360 tracks every user action and turns it into easy-to-read information that anyone can put together to make meaningful decisions.
Once you have this data, you can build your upsells strategically and pick the products most likely to trigger an online impulse buy. Limiting your selection prevents customers from getting overwhelmed, and the data can allow you to test and optimize your selections over time.
Leverage Dynamic Upsells and Cross-Sells
Identifying products as natural upsells or cross-sells is a good place to start, but it’s not enough. Consumers are becoming more intentional about their online purchases so retailers need better, more meaningful suggestions for customers. A few ways to level up your upsell strategy include:
- Create dynamic product bundles that can appear in several locations during the buying process.
- Automatically convert out-of-stock items to disappear or prompt to add to a wishlist.
- Build segments and deeply personalize product offerings to these segments. Online retailers face unique challenges when implementing upselling in eCommerce. Website listings only have a few seconds to grab a customer’s attention before shoppers scroll on to something else. But impulse buys can be just as lucrative online as they are in-store. In 2018, 44% of online shoppers over 18 made an impulse purchase in the past three months.
Keep guesswork out of your upsell equation by tracking and analyzing meaningful data. As you build your product bundles, test and segment to find the right options for each customer personally. And finally, prioritize user experience to serve impulse buys to customers in an enjoyable and frictionless way.
To learn more about how Air360 can help you get creative with your impulse selling strategy, request a demo today.
