We are in the Shopify upsell business for quite some time and realized one of our biggest assets are not our apps Candy Rack (pre-purchase upsells) or Last Upsell (post-purchase upsells) but rather our experience in upselling and cross-selling area. There are many great upselling apps on the Shopify App Store but if you really don’t know how to and what to upsell, you won’t be able to take full advantage out of them.

And that’s exactly why we are publishing this article. To help merchants with upselling/cross-selling strategy based on our experience and best practices. We have a track record of 4.000+ active merchants and over $50 million in upsells. Here’s what we recommend as a perfect upsell pop-up including the order of the offers.

1. Relevant Upsell (Upgrade)

By far the most effective upsell in terms of business impact is the relevant upsell or so-called true upgrade. It is typically a higher/better version of a product which customer has in the cart. And obviously also a more expensive one.

For example, when a customer buys iPhone 128GB you can offer an upsell to 256GB version. This is quite easy to come up with when the product has technical specifications but you can be creative.

The reason why this is called true upsell or upgrade is when a customer takes the upsell, it should replace the original product in the cart. If this is not happening this may easily lead to confusion as a customer will end up with two products in the cart.

➡️ You can see this upsell in action on our preview store (click on Add to Cart and Upgrade to Digital Alarm Clock).

2. Relevant Cross-sell or Auto-upsell

The second most effective offer is a relevant cross-sell. That’s a product that is somewhat relevant to the main product in the cart. For example, a cover case for phone or laces for shoes. Something which customers may need to use or improve the main product.

Challenge here is to set the relevant cross-sell offer manually if you have hundreds of products. Luckily, there is a solution to do it fully automatically. It’s called Smart Auto-upsell and it automatically returns the relevant product based on the Shopify AI algorithm.

3. Popular Cross-sell (optional)

This one is not a massive moneymaker but super easy to setup. It’s basically a small (cheap) cross-sell which you can offer to every customer. Think about stickers, accessories or keychain. Alternatively, this could be your most popular product.

The point here is this upsell may not have the highest take rate (conversion) but it will have a massive audience as it’s typically targeted on all products. So every customer will see it.

4. Premium Service Cross-sell

The last one is another cross-sell but this time, not any product. It’s a premium service. We often hear feedback that the merchant doesn’t have any premium service. But this is all down to creativity and a bit of innovation.

If you are fulfilling orders yourself it’s probably not rocket science to print a few dust bags and/or nice box. And here you go, here’s your Gift Packaging service for $5 – $10 extra. These are actually super popular and easy money.

Other good examples of premium services could be Order Priority Processing, First In Line Support or Extended Warranty.

Combine but try to keep it simple

When combining upsells on the one pop-up please remember to keep it simple. Too many upsell or cross-sells may in fact worsen your customer experience and overall conversion.

Based on our experience, we recommend offering up to 3 or 4 different upsells at one time. Only one is a missed opportunity and more than three is too overwhelming.

➡️ To further boost your upsell conversion you can tailor the pop-up design to match your storefront and provide a seamless customer experience.

➡️ Make sure to also read our ultimate guide to upselling on Shopify.

Bonus – List of best upsell apps on Shopify

Being an upsell app developer we can also recommend some other good apps which are worth testing.

• Candy Rack by Digismoothie (offers a free plan, paid ones start from $29.99) – Our flagship upsell app used by over 4,000 merchants. It offers both pre-purchase and post-purchase placements for upsell and cross-sell offers.
• Bold Upsell by Bold (from $9.99 per month) – Probably the most notorious upsell on the Shopify App Store. Allows you to offer upsells/cross-sells on the product page, cart page or post-purchase. Supports multiple offers, discounting, free gifts and other types.
• Voyager Upsell & Cross-Sell (ex SMAR7 Bundle Upsell) by Skup ($27 per month) – One of the most expensive upsell apps on the market, but totally worth it. It’s super slick and clean. Supports in-cart pop-up upsell, discounting and incentivizes customers to spend more
• Review the full list of the best upsell apps on Shopify.

There are dozens of others, but they are either looking awful from the UX point of view or they are difficult to set up. Our goal is to keep the list small and feature only the top-quality ones.

If you are looking for more ways how to drive more sales, make sure to check our ultimate guide to Shopify checkout customization.

Happy upselling!