Tip#13 – Cross-selling with a mission

Cross-selling is a technique designed by marketers to increase sales by suggesting products that the consumer might be interested in, typically because they are complementary or closely related to what they are viewing. Most online businesses understand this, and use cross-selling tactics throughout their website, but in many cases the message is inconsistent which can, in fact, lead to fewer sales. Effective cross-selling requires a clear set of criteria and a consistent implementation: what are we basing our recommendations on? Are we suggesting products based on past customer behaviour, or are we using intelligent recommendation algorithms that may suggest product pairings even if they haven’t actually been sold together? Do we always want to suggest a product that is priced lower that the product selected by the user or do we want to up-sell? Are we creating a false sense of urgency that might feel uncomfortable? Is our recommendation to the user creating greater indecisiveness and hurting sales? All of these are questions that must be asked, and answered, before implementing an effective cross-selling program. You might want to try out different strategies, and decide which is most effective based on actual results.

Tip#10 – Unique product descriptions

If you are an online retailer, more likely than not you are using standard texts provided by suppliers or manufacturers to describe your products. This is really not the optimal way to go, for several reasons. First, there are probably hundreds of other websites out there – including the manufacturer – using the same texts. This duplication of content is unlikely to help your search engine rankings. Second, from the user's perspective, it is really best to craft unique product descriptions tailored to your user base. Standard manufacturer product specs are probably useful, and surely a number of your customers will want to read them, but it is also likely that these standard texts will be rather meaningless to the average customer. Try to find different ways to describe your products, using different keywords variations that they might search for and answering questions rather than creating new ones. In other words, it is fine to mention that a given laptop runs on a 2.66hz processor, with 4 threads, and a 3MB cache, but it would be way cooler to explain why this is worth an extra 200$.

Tip#5 – Users will be shoppers

The first question asked by most online business owners is “how can I attract customers to my website? This is a valid inquiry, but it should be complemented by “how can I attract users to my website, even if they are not planning to buy at that particular moment”. Quality content is not only critical to achieve strong search engine rankings, but it is also pivotal in attracting users to your website even if they are not yet contemplating a purchase. Three excellent examples of companies that place a strong emphasis on providing value added content are Amazon.com, Threadless.com and Barrabes.com in Spain. Millions of users visit Amazon.com to read book reviews or browse lists created by other users, even if they are not specifically looking to buy anything at that particular moment. Users flock to Threadless.com in droves seeking inspiring t-shirt designs, arguably an art form in itself, even if they are not specifically looking to purchase a t-shirt at that particular moment. Barrabes.com is a point of reference for mountaineers, climbers, skiers and trekkers searching not only for products, but also for quality content relating to their hobby. Notice that the key phrase in each of these cases is that visitors might not be looking to shop “at that particular moment”. However, once your website becomes a preferred destination for a given subject, sales are likely to ensue.