Anyone who has ever shopped online before has been prompted to buy a related product to the one they’re looking at buying. When the product is more expensive than what is in your cart, it’s called “up-selling,” and when it’s a related but secondary product it’s called “cross-selling.”
Cross-selling and up-selling are to digitally native vertical businesses what salesmen tactics are to brick and mortar stores: the means by which they get customers to increase their purchases, thereby growing revenues exponentially.
In an online retail environment where nobody is physical with the customer to help them with their purchase or apply their finely honed sales tactics on, a company needs the right eCommerce platform to get the best analytics, as well as all else an online business needs to thrive.
Powerful Analytics
In business as in life, knowledge is power. The best eCommerce platforms can better sift and sort the sheer bulk of data, so you can better understand every process of your business along the value chain.
Cross-selling and up-selling online is driven by having insights into the right shopping behavior and data. The best platforms such as Limelightcrm.com have truly powerful analytics that can break down every facet of the economic health of your company and your customer lifecycle.
Choose a platform that will allow you to see 20 different dashboards focusing on everything from subscriptions, affiliate analysis, orders, P-&-L, and more. When a platform can probe so deep to the core of your business, you know that the products they are using to cross-sell and up-sell are truly relevant to the consumer — this is the core of online marketing and e-commerce in general.
Keep it Predictable
You can’t up-sell or cross-sell to consumers who have walked away from your business. The best eCommerce platforms don’t just permit subscription sales; they optimize every aspect of the subscription approach to business with important technology that helps retain customers.
One such example that the best platforms offer is an Account Updater feature, which updates a client’s credit card information before rebilling is set to occur. This is a major way that eCommerce businesses can convert hard declines into approvals, extend the lifetime of customer relationships, and reduce overall costs.
Getting predictable recurring revenue is one of the key benefits of running a subscription-based e-commerce business: automate what aspects of your business you can to keep your momentum moving constantly forward.
Real Security
Cross-selling and up-selling needs to be secure to work optimally, so pick a platform that has additional verification layers so your company knows who your consumer really is. This will mitigate chargeback risks, and shifts the liability from your business directly to the issuing bank.
Improving online transaction security with authenticated payment systems is a major part of the foundation on which all Ecommerce rests.
Having a platform capable of handling every aspect across the value chain of your e-commerce store is vital, and when you select the right platform, your algorithm will improve your company’s effectiveness in cross-selling and up-selling.
