“Cross-Sell”
Tuesday’s concept #7
Misuse, benefits minimization … Reverse the trend !
themes : e-commerce, customer behavior
Cross-selling, even if it as old as the hills, keeps attracting e-merchants crowd. At the very beginning, it was simply selling a knife to anyone buying butter, and socks to someone buying shoes. Then it became a concept first for new product development, then for product line extension, eventually everyone got lost and started using cross-selling to promote all their brand extensions. And this is when we end up with this kind of offer :
Showing me this :
When I am actually into this :
Weirdly, credibility goes low when this happens.
What Cross Sell really is about today
– Compatible and complementary products or services
– Additional products that other people bought
– Special offers and product bundles
Why Cross Selling ?
– Because it is ergonomic
Our experience is that similar or complementary products displayed on the product page generate almost 20% of the overall number of clicks. Therefore this little recommandation column, including 4 products, on the right hand side of the screen is seen as an opportunity by customers, and it comes as a replacement for the “previous page” button of your browser.
Have you ever heard about this basic ergonomic principles saying, in short, that easing navigation between product pages will allow you to make more business ?
Cross-sold products are an opportunity to leave a page, just to end up on a new one, to incite you to buy more. At least it is supposed to be.
– Because you get a chance to display all of your inventory
In the case where you have a huge inventory (I give you the freedom of defining “huge”), or even if you don’t, showing more than one product on the same page will always increase visibility of your collection. Displaying products available in the same environment as the product shown on the page leads additional value, more attention and clicks.
– Because it increases your sales !
What we measured is an impact of displaying similar or complementary products on 40% of the sales, and an increase in average basket size of almost 25%.
How do I make it efficient – Methods
– By hand
You can link one product to another by hand in your page’s code because you think they go well together or because last year results showed that they were bought together.
Time : ++++ Price : + Efficiency : +
– With a stylist
You can ask a specialist to tell you what goes well with what according to his professional tastes.
Time : +++ Price : ++++ Efficiency : ++
– Automated
You can link your analytics to your inventory and program a monthly update of “best sellers” and “bought together”, same for every visitors.
Time : ++ Price : ++ Efficiency : +++
<3 Automated and targeted
You can consider each and every person as an individual and adapt the cross selling algorithm not only to the product but to the client’s tastes, with a real time automated and targeted updating.
Time : + Price : ++ Efficiency : +++++
(Interested in trying out ? Check the big, extremely pretty, orange button on the top of the right column !)
Give strength to your inventory, ease navigation, show interesting products to every person online … These are all steps toward a great customer experience and an interface personalization. Once consumers’ behavior and attitude are well understood, you can focus on prospect and customer !
Do not hesitate to share your opinions or questions with us, we are interested!
See you next Tuesday !
You would like us to write about something? Send us a mail: commerce.ezako.com or contact us via our facebook page EZAKO, or twitter account @BigDataEzako #tuesdayconcept