4 Cross-Selling Guidelines

desmond — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:03:17 +0000

Ecommerce Success Checklist

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All well and good … but what’s next?

You’ve done everything right so far — you’ve signed up with a top web site ecommerce hosting shopping cart and you’ve made sure it’s a secure web hosting shopping cart at that. You done all your keyword and SEO homework, so now it’s time to tweak the page marketing aspects of your store.

If you take all your cross-selling cues from Amazon, you might not get the same results as them. Amazon bases their cross-selling decisions on a LOT of constantly updated data which is processed by experts – constantly learning and constantly tuning their recommendations. Most web shopping cart merchants do not have the resources to try to replicate this. For the rest of us, it’s better to play by a few simple guidelines when it comes to cross-selling.

Below are 4 basic guidelines to help you make the most out of your cross-selling efforts:

Keep To A Limit

The idea of cross-selling is to suggest products that a customer may be interested in or may not have realized that they need. Suggesting too many products may annoy some customers as well as confuse others. The ideal number of recommended products should be between 3 and 5. Remember, make it easy for the customer to make a decision. Remove all other unnecessary factors that might hinder this.

Keep Them Related

Blindly recommending products might relay a sense of desperation or seem unprofessional. As mentioned earlier, most merchants are not privy to the latest information on buying trends that the big players have so it would be a risk to suggest products that are unrelated. The closer the products are linked the easier it is to sell the “need to have” angle.

Product Credibility

Displaying product ratings by customers and experts can go a long way towards building product credibility. People like to be assured that they are spending money on something that is worthwhile. Assurances by other people who have already purchased the product can help here.

Provide Enough Useful Information

People research before they buy nowadays — not just to see if they can get a good bargain but also to find out if the item is suitable for them. Many merchants provide product information in abundance but most of the information is useless. Always bear in mind that any information that you put up must be geared to help you close a sale. The information that you present should be answers to questions you anticipate your customers would ask.

For example, a customer looking for a pair of sports trainers would probably want to know the type of shoe (running, tennis, basketball), what type of gait it suits (neutral, overpronator, supinator), the weight of the shoe, and the expected mileage it offers before it is retired. Be sure to tailor your product information to cater to what you expect your potential customers will want to know.Recent Posts:

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4 Cross-Selling Guidelines