Increase average order value this Black Friday with Bold Upsell

Black Friday season is in the air! It might look a little different than in past years, but we've got you covered with the tools to help you make ever conversion count. 

Today we want to talk about an age-old sales tactic that you can add to your online Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) sale: the upsell. 

Have you ever been asked, “would you like fries with that?” If so, you’ve experienced upselling first hand. 

You probably didn’t have to think too hard about saying yes to warm, crispy fries. We typically don’t mind paying a little extra for something we want, and businesses are always looking for ways to increase average order value (AOV), so a well-placed upsell is a win for both the business and the customer!  

But upselling isn't just for burger joints — you can do it on your online store. It's never too late to start, and there's never a better time than the Superbowl of eCommerce: Black Friday and Cyber Monday, or BFCM for short.

2020 BFCM by the numbers: 

• Shoppers spent $9.03 billion on Black Friday (increase from $7.04 billion in 2019)
• They went on to spend $10.8 billion on Cyber Monday (increase from $9.4 billion in 2019)

There’s a reason businesses start planning months in advance to beat out their competition each November in the global ecommerce stadium. And for online merchants, this year is going to be bigger than ever! 

And according to Forrester research, product recommendations, like upselling, are responsible for an average of 10-30% of eCommerce site revenues. So, if you're not upselling this BFCM, you're missing out. But luckily, it's easier to do than ever with Bold Upsell!

Why you need to upsell and cross-sell this Black Friday

Brick and mortar stores in just about every industry have been doing it for decades, if not centuries, because it works!

When you buy a leather jacket they offer you a leather treatment kit, when you buy earrings they offer you a matching necklace, when you buy a camera they offer you a bigger SD card.

In fact, upsell offers work so well that some stores completely rely on them to make their bottom line. So if you're not offering upsells and cross-sells on your ecommerce store for BFCM 2021, you're going to miss out on extra sales you could be making on every single order. 

The difference between upselling and cross-selling

They're often used synonymously, but there is a difference.

Upsell: Selling something more expensive that replaces the original purchase.

Sometimes we call this a true upsell to differentiate it from cross-selling. Or to go back to fast food: "Would you like to supersize your order?"

Example: 

Let’s say you run a Shopify store that sells locally sourced coffee beans. When a customer adds a 1 lb. bag of coffee to their cart, they are automatically offered a 2 lb. bag instead at a more value-friendly price. If they accept it, the upgraded (and more expensive) item replaces the original product they selected. 

Cross-sell: Selling something in addition to the original product selected.

Basically selling an additional, complementary product. Going back to fast food again, the famous "would you like fries with that?" is technically a cross-sell. 

Example: 

You don’t only sell coffee beans on your Shopify store, you also carry a variety of java accessories. When a customer selects a 1 lb. bag of coffee beans, they are automatically offered a package of coffee filters they can add to their order. 

This video explains it in more detail:

How does Bold Upsell work?

We developed Bold Upsell because we saw the potential upselling and cross-selling had for eCommerce platforms like Shopify. Since then, thousands of merchants have used to it to increase their online sales. 

The app gives you the ability to offer upsells and cross-sells (or both!) when customers add products to their cart or when they check out. You can even set the offer to change dynamically based on the contents of customers' shopping carts.  

Check out the demo below for a quick preview of what it looks like.

Some stores using Bold Upsell have got conversion rates of 22%! Could you be making more on every sale this Black Friday weekend? You bet, and you can get started today! 

Drive sales by cross-selling products that are often purchased together

You can now automate your upsells, generating data-driven offers based on the information it collects from your store. In short, you can get your store to do all the thinking for you! 

You just download the Bold Brain, open it up, and your upsell offers will be waiting for you in just a few minutes. When you're ready, all you have to do is press "create upsell" and your offer will go live.

Bold Brain uses hundreds of data points like order history, trends, interest, and intent. From that, it creates the most relevant, highest-converting upsell offers possible. 

Start upselling today!

It’s never too early to start planning for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Now is the time to get your upselling and cross-selling strategy in place so that you can beat last year's sales and call BFCM a success. 

All you have to do is download Bold Upsell and start your free trial. 

If you are already an Upsell user and are looking to adjust the style of your upsell offer, check out our Bold Upsell CSS Styling Guide for examples and steps on how to apply custom templates into Bold Upsell. 

What kind of upsell strategies will you be using this Black Friday? Let us know in the comments below!