SC Product Options, powered by Shop Circle, lets you completely customize your store with the options you need to offer an elevated shopping experience. 

Though you can create many types of customizations with the SC Product Options app, one popular use case for Shopify merchants involves building upsell offers into the customer journey. 

What is an upsell? It’s a type of offer that attempts to get the customer to add another item, spend a little more, or unlock some incentive to increase their order value. In return, the customer receives a discount, a free gift or service, or a helpful recommendation. 

There’s a reason upselling is so popular. Between 10%–30% of e-commerce revenue is generated from upsell offers, with some merchants attributing as much as 40% of their revenue to upselling. 

At the same time, 37% of marketing professionals still shy away from upselling and cross-selling. 

This means a substantial amount of the competition are missing out on this tried-and-true e-commerce tactic. All the more reason to get in on it now. 

If you’ve already installed SC Product Options, let this be your playbook for setting up upsells. If you’re still considering, visit our app page to start your free trial. 

1. Upsell gift wrapping

In the e-commerce world, the holiday season kicks off in November with Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) and goes strong until after the new year. During holiday gifting seasons, just about any product can be sold with a gift wrap option. For products like jewelry, cufflinks, spirits, or anything that is typically gifted, offering a gift-wrap option can make sense year-round. 

Levenger offers gift wrapping for a surcharge along with the option to add a free gift message. Use Product Options to set up conditional logic that only displays these options to customers who have selected they are purchasing a gift. 

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‍2. Cross-sell complimentary items 

Cross-Selling is one of the most popular upsells and involves offering complimentary items to a customer based on their initial purchase. Cross-selling is most effective during the “cart” or “checkout” phase of the purchase journey, as this is where the customer is showing the strongest purchase intent. 

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In the beauty and fashion world, there’s no such thing as too many cosmetics. DIME Beauty recommends complimentary add-ons they know their customers will be interested in based on their purchase. 

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3. Cross-sell layers or sets

Another clever way to cross-sell is using recommendations to encourage the customer to think of their product as the base of a bigger purchase. 

For example, after adding a Nintendo Switch to the cart on Amazon, the customer begins to see recommendations for accessories they need to get the full experience. 

Different upgrades, accessories and options are displayed on the product page, as well as in the cart. 

Another use case from the fashion world comes from Pink Lily, which shows customers several options of “how to wear it,” with layers of additional products that help build a complete look. If the customer chooses to add even one or two of the recommended items, the order value goes up significantly. 

4. Offer a cross-sell with discount 

Lets face it, when a customer comes to your store to make a purchase, they aren’t automatically going to jump on every suggested add-on. This is why one of the most popular types of cross-sells involves offering a complimentary item for a discounted price too good to refuse. 

In Shopify’s Ultimate Guide to Cross-Selling merchants are reminded that: “In the world of e-commerce, a popular cross-selling technique is to have a pop-up appear after the completion of an order, usually offering an additional relevant item at a bit of a discount. Again, cross-selling efforts don’t need to feel sleezy or over the top. You don’t want to negatively affect the customer journey at the cost of cross-selling.”

Rather than just tacking on cheaper items you want to sell, put yourself in the customer' shoes and ask: “what kind of discount or incentive would really add value?” 

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‍5. Upsell a spend threshold for incentives  

Rather than cross-selling a specific product for a discount, another approach is to offer the customer different incentives if they reach a certain spend threshold. 
Some popular types of spend threshold incentives include:

• Save a certain amount or percentage when you spend $X amount.
• Unlock free shipping when you spend $X amount.
• Get a free gift with purchase or when you $X amount. 

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Alpha Paw gives customers the ability to unlock 20% off, free shipping, and a free gift with purchase as they reach different stages of the spend threshold. Purchase incentives are a great way to reward customers with added value in exchange for an upsell that increases the order’s value. 

6. Collect donations 

A different kind of upsell that might not get as much attention as it deserves is collecting a charitable donation with purchase. Here are a few different approaches to this sort of upsell: 

• Give customers the option to donate to a charity you have selected to support. When taking this approach, be sure to choose a charity that fits your brand vision and mission.  
• Give customers the option to donate to a charity of their choosing. This may require an additional app like Givz, which enables merchants to give customers a donation to a charity of their choice with purchase. 
• Offer a donation matching incentive where you will offer to match the customer's donation amount up to a certain threshold.

Though donation incentives aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about upselling, they are, in essence, a different way to ask the customer to spend a little bit extra. What they get in return isn’t a discount or complimentary item, but the feel-good sentiment of having supported an important cause. 

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7. Upsell a mystery gift

Last on our list is a creative idea sure to excite both fun-loving customers and deal-hunters alike. Instead of offering customers add-ons, discounts, or incentives with purchase, offer them an additional “mystery” version of the product they are purchasing for a reduced price. 

This works well with items like video game cartridges, sunglasses, or any product with many versions of a core offering. The incentive for customers is to win an item they like as much as their original purchase, but for a reduced price. For merchants it is a chance to clear out items that either aren’t selling, or they have excess inventory of. 

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Custom sunglass store Shady Rays offers the optional add-on of a heavily-discounted mystery pair of shades with purchase. Shoppers who love rolling dice for a deal won’t be able to resist this kind of upsell.

Ready to customize your Shopify store? 

When it comes to inventing ways to upsell with SC Product Options, the only limit is your imagination. We encourage you to get creative nd think outside the box, and customize your store for an unforgettable shopping experience. 

If you’re already using the SC Product Options app or are on a free trial, hopefully, this got you excited to put some of these tactics to the test. If you’d like to try Product Options for free, you can here.

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Here's how 22 of Shopify's most successful brands are using SC Product Options to fully personalize their product offering and power sales. Read more.

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