A Surprisingly Underutilized Tactic for Getting 20% plus More Ecommerce Sales
Would you like fries with that?
Today I’d like to talk about a tactic that is so underutilized in ecommerce/online sales that it boggles the mind! While obvious in physical retail contexts, I am not sure why more people don’t do it in the online world.
This tactic is known as the 1-click upsell. It is the retail clerk asking if you’d like a belt to go with the suit you just bought. Or McDonalds asking if you’d like fries and a drink with that burger you ordered.
It is easier to sell more product to someone who has said yes to your first offer than it is to acquire a new customer.
Apparently, there is even a biological basis for this, known as ‘buyer heat’-- controlled by a gene being studied by scientists at MIT using the new CRISPR-cas9 technology! (only kidding about this last fact)
And if you think this is mercenary (‘monetizing customers more’) as we sometimes hear, I encourage you to think of it as ‘satisfying more of your customers needs’.
Surely, what could be wrong with that? ðÂÂÂÂ?ÂÂÂÂ?ÂÂÂÂ? When you do it, your customers value you more and your business enjoys greater success!
For a true ‘1 click upsell’, you present additional offers after the first purchase and do not require customers to re-enter their credit card information.
This is different from ‘people who bought this also bought that’ type of offers that are usually presented before the first purchase.
Most of the time, these are a distraction, introduce friction, and lower the conversion rate on the initial purchase.
The diagrams below contrast the two approaches:
a. Amazon Style ‘Those Who Bought This Bought That’
Usually a source of friction and lower conversion rate on the initial offer.
b. True 1-Click-Upsell
Having 'bagged' the first sale, customers are in 'buyer heat' and more receptive to additional offers.
For example, Protalus got 21% more sales by using true 1-Click upsells. It took two A/B tests to get this conversion rate, as shown below.
When we promoted a fitness offer with the legendary body builder Larry Scott (The first Mr. Olympia) we got a 24% conversion rate on upsells, which nearly doubled the business revenue.
While the core offer was a $39 fitness program, the upsell was a $197 supplement bundle, with a down-sell option for split payments.
With some testing you should be able to get 15% to 25% overall conversion rate on your 1-click upsells.
From extensive testing, there are two kinds of 1-click upsells that perform well. Those that offer speed or some kind of automation (‘done for you’) in getting the desired result.
The thing that really got a spike for Protalus was offering ‘FREE expedited shipping.
And for the supplements it was the promise of losing belly fat faster—supplements let you get the same amount of nutrition in fewer calories.
Two scoops of protein powder have 50g of protein and little else. On the other hand, a steak with the same amount of protein also has lots of fat!
1-Click upsells can also help you sell many more subscriptions that you could sell directly. Sports Illustrated football phone offer is one of the more famous examples. It sold one million subscriptions when direct offers stopped working.
What if you are a single product company with nothing to upsell? No worries. Partner with someone who sells a complementary product, create an offer in your funnel and let the partner fulfill it. Few businesses will say not to this type of proposal. For the fitness offer described above we sold someone else's crunch machine.
A word of caution on upsells: Don’t take something that should be part of the core offer and then make it an upsell. You will annoy customers and hurt your business.
A contrived and extreme example: Don't sell a car and then offer the steering wheel as a 1-click upsell!
Implementing 1-click upsell is one of the things that contributes to the 2x more saleswe believe most businesses can attain.
The reason we believe this is only ~20% of businesses do any consistent long-term A/B testing [1].
Most do a few tests, get lackluster results and then stop. And the lackluster results are usually caused by testing the wrong things.
We explain a better approach in our free cheat sheet which you can get when the next batch is available.
Per last week’s video, to get 2x more sales you just need to get a 19% lift at four points in your customer acquisition funnel. The figure is 19% (and NOT 25% because the gains are multiplicative).
1.19 x 1.19 x 1.19 x 1.19 = 2.01 (a 2x or 100% gain).
See? For instance you could get
- 19% through 1-click upsells
- 19% lift on your main landing page
- 19% increase on the click through rate of your paid ad (easy to do!)
- 19% on your pricing page.
And this is before doing anything with email! An optimized email sequence alone can contribute 2x more sales on its own. You have many more opportunities to tell your story and educate your prospects.
In fact, one of our consultants has developed an a highly effective email technique known as the ‘customer service voice’ that has even got 3x more sales! We’ll cover it in our upcoming CRO training (please let us know if you'd like to be part of our initial cohort).
In closing, I encourage you to start using 1-click upsells if you are not doing so. If you already are, additional A/B testing can help you do even better.
A 1-click-upsell is the easiest sale you will ever make and besides the obvious benefit of more sales, it can help you build a powerful acquisition flywheel.
By getting 20% more sales, you can bid 20% more on paid traffic and get disproportionately more traffic, effectively stealing clicks from your competitors.
Do you run a WooCommerce store? (28% off all stores). We now offer the best 1-Click Upsell plugin and would be happy to help you set it up and start making more sales in less than a day. Please get in touch. jasper@capitalandgrowth.org
