In the course of 2022, our upselling app Candy Rack helped Shopify merchants generate over $64 million in revenue. We want to share some of the insights from Candy Rack usage for you to start successful upselling campaigns or improve your existing ones.

1. Don’t hesitate to offer multiple deals at once

In Candy Rack, you can create a pop-up for pre-purchase upsells and cross-sells on product pages or add offers at the post-purchase stage, on a standalone page after the checkout or on the thank-you page. With either of these placements, you can create a combination of multiple offers.

Based on our 2022 data, the average number of upsells offered in one pop-up is 3.5. And it turns out that 4 offers constitute the best-performing pop-ups: while a single cross-selled product got a conversion rate of 4% on average, a combination of 4 deals got 6.6%. Plus, 4-offer pop-ups resulted in 2.6 times higher revenue per impression than single-offer pop-ups.

Combinations of 2 and 3 deals also worked well, converting at 5.6% and 6% respectively. Interestingly enough, pop-ups with 4-10 different offers still performed well; however, they have been used much less actively and their conversion didn’t increase anymore with adding more offers beyond 4.

Note that you can control the order of offers in a pop-up by choosing the upsell position in Additional settings in each upsell configuration. 

Takeaway: Experiment with multiple upsell and cross-sell offers triggered under the same conditions. For example, you can add a complementary product that suits the chosen product, the same product with a discount, and an additional service (product customization, gift wrapping, etc.).

2. Configure specific products that will trigger the upsell offer

Almost half of the merchants that are using Candy Rack specify the product(s) that will trigger the upsell instead of showing their offers for all products. And they are right to do so, since such precisely targeted offers bring 1.5 higher extra revenue. 

What it ultimately means is that relevance is still your number one priority. When you tailor each upsell and cross-sell to a particular product or group of products, you’re taking into account their usage specifics, care instructions, and other details. These details can define the types of services or complementary items that perfectly fit the chosen products. 

In your upsell configuration in Candy Rack, you can choose any number of products that will trigger each created offer. You can also set the offer to be shown for all products in a given collection. On top of that, you have additional conditions where you can select the trigger by product type, price, weight, vendor, etc. 

For example, a store that has cleaning tablets for coffee mugs and water bottles can set the trigger either by manually adding each relevant item (which makes sense only if the catalog is small) or by configuring the condition where a product name contains “mug” and “bottle.”

Takeaway: Choose which products will trigger your upsells and cross-sells. This way, you’ll have the biggest chances to provide value to customers and win them over. 

❗ The offers shown for all products in the catalog also brought substantial earnings to Candy Rack merchants. It definitely makes sense to use them as well. For example, you can recommend the best-selling products or new arrivals—they might be interesting for a big share of your audience. Just don’t forget to set the rule that doesn’t show the same product that is being added to the cart.

3. Consider offering more expensive products as cross-sells

It seems logical to cross-sell cheap products, as it will be easier for customers to accept the deal. A lot of merchants go down this road: as many as 60% of offers created with Candy Rack are items priced below $15. 

However, we’re seeing that offers with products priced at $30+ were twice as profitable compared to those with $15-worth products. While these findings can’t be universal for all stores, they suggest that it might pay out to cross-sell higher-priced items. 

Overall, the exact pricing strategy for an additional product should be based on the niche, nature of the product, target audience, and other factors. It’s also dependent on the original product a customer is interested in (if you set product-based offer targeting). As we’ve mentioned in our guide to the best upselling practices, e-commerce experts generally agree that a cross-selled product shouldn’t cost more than 25% of the originally purchased product. But there are no guaranteed best practices that would fit all, so don’t be afraid to experiment.

Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to cross-sell more expensive products but do it with regard to your store’s specifics. Ideally, mix more expensive and cheaper products in the offer.

4. Adopt smart auto-upsells

Candy Rack includes the AI-powered cross-selling template where you don’t need to set a product to offer—it will be automatically selected based on Shopify’s recommendation algorithm. What you have to do is set the conditions under which the offer will be triggered and customize the copy and other elements. 

These Smart Auto-Upsells are used 3.5 times less frequently by Candy Rack merchants, but they tend to be accepted by customers more than twice as often as regular upsells.

With that said, automated cross-sell templates can not only save time on choosing the most relevant product to offer but can also make a better choice than otherwise would have been done manually. It doesn’t necessarily mean that upsells recommended by the AI will perform better, but the data suggests that it’s very often the case.

Takeaway: Try out Smart Auto-Upsells (if you haven’t already). Review the Analytics section in the app to compare the number of views and conversions of all your offers and, based on that, confirm or refute the success theory of AI recommendations. 

5. Customize the style of your offers

Candy Rack provides you with an array of basic customization options right out of the box. You can adjust the colors, button names, product image size, titles and subtitles, etc. Some merchants go further and customize CSS to blend the offers with the store’s design and branding—and this appears to be a good idea, as such upsells perform 22% better on average. 

💡 You can reach out to our team via the in-app chat to request free CSS customizations of your offers. 

Takeaway: It pays to take some extra steps in making your offers look like they really belong on your store. Customize the copy and colors, and also think if you need a heavier CSS adjustment. But first apply tips 1-4!

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We hope these insights will help you create the perfect upsells and cross-sells that you’re aiming for. For more tips and tricks, check out our post about the best upselling strategies. 

Happy upselling!