Upselling and cross-selling products have no doubt been one of the most proven marketing strategies for eCommerce merchants in the last decade. However, it is also common to see people use these words interchangeably either while writing or speaking.

But what is really the difference?

What is Cross-selling?

The right cross-selling definition is the tactic of encouraging customers to purchase related or complementary items, perhaps for a lesser fee than the original price tag.

For instance, Alice visits a fashion store to buy a $100 dress but ended up buying the dress plus a fashionable shoe, because the latter was sold as a complementary product and for a lesser price.

What is Up-selling?

The right Up-selling definition is the practice of subtly encouraging a shopper to buy a higher-priced product that matches their primary item but offers more benefits.

A perfect example will be if Alice, with an original budget of $100, ends up buying a $200 dress because it was advertised to her in a manner that swayed.

In both cases, we notice that the merchant generates more revenue than was initially possible, a benefit that makes upselling and cross-selling products a hot strategy for salespersons.

If you regularly shop online, there’s a significant chance that you’ve purchased an item because it was displayed as one of the many cross-selling or upselling techniques that exist. Also, if you sell online, then there’s an even higher chance that you’ve tried to increase sales by adopting any of the strategies.

Bundling too is another slightly different method to increase eCommerce sales whereby customers are presented with similar or complementary products with the option to get the listed items at a discounted price if they buy all the items.

Having discussed so far what is upselling and what is cross-selling, we will from this point consider why upselling and cross-selling products are important ways to boost eCommerce revenue.

Why are Cross-selling and Up-selling Techniques Really Important for your business?

1. Improve Customer Retention

Up-selling and Cross-selling is undoubtedly an excellent way to reduce the number of customers that you lose to competitors. It gives you a chance to present to customers a product or service that they may not know you have but could meet their needs.

Using the cross-selling example we mentioned earlier, we notice that Alice could have ended up buying shoes from another fashion store if she did not receive an offer that she could afford. For the upsell, she may as well have spent the extra $150 at another store, perhaps for another dress that the first merchant had in stock.

Interestingly too, upselling and cross-selling products also represent a cost-effective customer retention strategy when compared to other tactics such as loyalty rewards, discounted offers, and any offline campaign you can come up with.

In the end, you’ll save some money from your marketing budget to invest in other core areas of your eCommerce business.

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