Upsell Your Customers

Let's dissect the sales formula. Specifically, let's talk about manipulating the shopping cart you use to acquire orders online. If you analyze some of the more reputable online businesses, you will see that you have to go through a series of questions throughout the checkout process. You just want to complete your order. They'll transfer you through a multitude of pre-purchasing questions where you answer "no" to the merchandise they are attempting to advertise to you. At last, you get to complete your order.

These businesses put plenty of time, energy and extra money into trying what works and what doesn't. As a vendor, you should be trying this as well. This is called upselling, and you can apply it to your business as well. Perhaps you can offer a digital version of your product at a cheaper rate and upsell the same product but in hard copy format. You can program your shopping cart to list the goods you sell so your customers will want to upgrade their package, they can do so immediately. Keep in mind that many people prefer hard copy goods as opposed to digital goods.

Once the order is complete and your customers come to your "Thank You" page, take the liberty to advertise to them as well. The majority of small businesses tend to put up a simple "Thank You" page. Don't do that! This is another wonderful opportunity for you to upsell and advertise to your customers. To accomplish an effective upsell, you should offer products that are of interest to them and relates to your product. Why do this? This is the perfect opportunity to upsell because they have already entered in their credit card information into your shopping cart. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to purchase product from you. Try to program your shopping cart so their information is already filled out if they decide to purchase your upsell product. This is the upsell idea in its most primary form.

Another thing I have found that works well is to have Joint Venture Partners that will actually pay you per lead for each opt-ins you give. Another upsell technique is doing a "By the way" upsell. This basically comes at the end of the "Thank You" page where you try to upsell them one last time by offering a special negotiated deal to your joint venture partner. It makes no difference what product you are trying to upsell. It could be anything from a software program to a printed magazine. There are joint venture partnerships out there that will pay you a decent sum because half the work is already done for them. They are looking for people that are already in their particular market. I have tested this and I can tell you that it works. Add this to your task list and you will be able to take extra orders. It would be unwise not to take advantage of this tactic. Don't let this one go down the drain.

Segovia Smith is well known for is accelerated learning and teaching style. When he's not designing new software, split testing his web site traffic or working on developing new business ventures he can be found answering questions and helping people with their web site conversion through various forums and discussion groups online. For further information visit: www.SegoviaSmith.com