Gate2Shop - Sell more.

Unless you are constantly innovating and upgrading your products, it is difficult to sell the same products to the same customer several times. Besides, the more a client buys from a vendor, the higher the switching cost is.

The goal for every merchant is to sell more, and we know this is a difficult task. In order to improve your online conversion and client loyalty rates, you must implement many different promotional strategies. Recently we discussed How to Structure an Online Coupon Profitably, and today we will focus on cross-selling techniques.

Cross selling is a merchandising tool consisting of offering similar or complementary products to what the shopper is looking at. Cross selling allows vendors to bundle products, or offer any combinable accessory enhancing the value of the purchase. It gives the vendor the ability to suggest to the buyer more products at the right time. While in the offline world this could sounds rather obvious, this technique can really make a difference for online merchants because cross selling will allow them to imitate a sales person or a personal shopper assistant.

The main objectives of cross-selling are to enhance order completion as well as increase average sale spend due to customers adding accessories or extra products to their original selection. Moreover, many merchants use cross selling capabilities to promote popular items, target high margin products, show to the customers a wider range of goods and as a result trigger impulse purchases.

The benefits of putting in practice cross-selling techniques are clear:

1. You can substantially increase your revenue by selling complimentary products in addition to the initial purchase,
2. You can increase the lifetime value as well as the average order size,
3. You can guide customers throughout your e-store adding value to their purchase,
4. You increase your customers’ purchase experience

Suggest to the buyer the right product at the right time.

There are many places in your website to displays cross-selling options: home page, product page, shopping cart view, checkout page or even after the order is done. There are also many different forms to do it: under the product page, in a side banner, as a pop-up, in an extra page before/after the check-out. The best placement will depend on your website design the length of the product page and your customers’ behavior.

Some customers really enjoy cross-selling options because they feel a personal shopper is helping them. However, these techniques –above all the use of pop-ups or forcing your customers to view the cross selling suggestions- can be perceived as an obstacle to finalize the buying process.

Make your add-ons valuable for the customer by:

-          Showing relevant products

-          Providing enough information (picture, price and description)

-          Keeping customers in the shopping path

-          Using direct and emotional language

-          Not cluttering the page

See an example here:

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Yuval Ziv (Gate2Shop) – “Payment Processing vs Affiliate Marketing! Which one really matters?” from Flash GAMM.

Coupons are widely used in the offline world, but they also are a great ecommerce promotional tool that can boost conversions in your online store.

There are many good reasons to use online coupons. You can use them to:

• Capture or maintain clients
• Clear stagnant inventory
• Seduce customers with accessories or complimentary products
• Introduce a new product
• Open a new territorial e-store or
• Target a new segment or boost sales in a specific period.

However, be careful to avoid common coupon pitfalls…

Shopping cart abandonment is a challenge that all digital ecommerce merchants face. In many cases, the problem stems from the checkout page itself. A coupon code box in the checkout page often invites the customer to search for a better deal. When this happens, in the best scenario, the customer will come back with the discount code – so he/she won’t pay full-price, but you still make the sale. Additionally, if the customer found the coupon through one of your affiliates, you will have to share your profit. In the worst case, the customer you invited to abandon your e-store will never be back.

There are, however, good solutions to avoid this problem and create an effective coupon campaign. First, consider removing the coupon code box from your ecommerce site. Instead, create a specific landing page for each coupon where the offer is automatically applied. This way, you will boost the natural flow from coupon to checkout page instead of vice versa. Landing pages also offer great options for customization of message and call to action, as well as targeted conversion tracking.

Coupon Code Box

If you still want to keep the coupon code field on the checkout page, but want to prevent the off-page hunt for the coupon, consider including a “How can I get this?” link that leads to a voucher page on your site. Such a page can provide the essential coupon code info and quickly send the shopper back to the checkout page. This will reduce transactional friction for your visitor, keep them on your site, and let you avoid affiliate fees.

Time to plan your campaign:

The final purpose of the coupon has to be to generate traffic to your ecommerce store and convert, convert, convert. As with any other marketing tool, you need do some homework first:

• Does the coupon campaign fit your general marketing strategy? Coupons can be associated with low-quality products. Discount hunters have a low brand loyalty. Remember, a coupon campaign is a short-term tactic! If you train your customers to always expect discounts, it is very hard to untrain them. Your full price could be gone forever.

• Define your clients profile based on accurate data. Do not make assumptions and conduct tests to understand your consumers’ behavior to make sure whether they will respond to a coupon campaign. For example, we were very surprised when we read this survey and found out that coupon lovers are more likely to be high household incomes and college-educated. If you know what your customers want, you can match it up! Specify an objective: increasing sales, getting customers to spend more than the average, building an email list, attract followers to your Facebook page, boost the sale of a software product before launching the next version. Goals set upfront will help you determine the campaign’s success post mortem.

• Decide on your target. You have basically three options: private, public and group coupons. If your aim is to get new customers or build an email list, you’d rather target a massive public through public or group coupons. But if you want to gratify the customer, get followers or improve affiliates’ loyalty, private promo codes –-distributed directly — is the smartest choice.

• Do the math. Set your budget (and stay there!). A coupon campaign will cost you some money (designing the coupons + landing pages, distribution and promotional costs, human resources, discount offered, etc.) The goal is to earn money so if you don’t carefully calculate costs, the campaign will quickly eat your profits.

• Measure the results of the campaign. It is essential to confirm the success or failure of your campaign and learn to improve future ones. Some indicators of success are: ROI, conversion rates, number of new consumers, web and social media traffic and interaction, emails collected, etc.

“Ok, I’ve prepared the strategy, I’ve checkout the things-to-do-before-launching-a-coupon list above, but what can I offer?” Of course, you want to offer those deals that convert best, for example:

• Money or percentage off coupons (Discount must be tied to a minimum number of items acquired or to the minimum amount spent which should be higher than the average).

• “New customers save X$ on any order over Y$ if you place your order now” or “Save X$ if you buy now” (evoke a sense of urgency).

• “Deal of the Day Promo” (Must be a real bargain to be effective).

• “Exclusive Coupons to Selected Affiliates” (exclusivity will attract your affiliates and motivate them to distribute your coupon).It is important that you set some redemption requirements, like ensuring that the customer spends more money than the average.

However, the holy grail of your coupon campaign will be returning customers. Craft a customer retention strategy integrated to your coupon campaign by following-up and having more products worthy to return for.

By the way, don´t forget to test your coupons and make sure that the links work and the promise is applied!