WooCommerce upsell

Getting people to buy one product from your online store is great. However, in an ideal world, your customers would spend more money per visit. Implementing the WooCommerce upsell techniques in this post will help you to convince buyers to make bigger purchases and help you avoid losing out on a lot of money.

There are several ways to easily implement upselling on your WooCommerce site. With a few plugins, you can direct your customers to higher-value products they’ll love, and increase your short-term revenue. It’s a win-win situation for you and your buyers.

In this article, we’ll talk about the benefits of implementing WooCommerce upsells in your online store. Then we’ll share three upselling techniques you can try out. Let’s get right to it!

📚 Table of contents:

What upselling is (and how it can benefit you)

If you’ve ever bought some fries from a fast food place, you’ve probably had a cashier encourage you to upgrade to the next size. That’s a perfect example of an upsell [1], which involves convincing customers to buy a more expensive version of the product they want.

There are many advantages to upsells. For example, product recommendations drive 10-30% of revenue [2]. Plus, not only do you earn more money, but your customers also walk away with high- value products they like. The key to striking this balance is learning how to successfully implement WooCommerce upsells.

Three methods for upselling on your WooCommerce website

The key to WooCommerce upsells is to offer more value at an increased price. If you can convince users of the added value, then you might get an upsell. There are several ways to go about doing this.

  1. Create a WooCommerce upsell bundle
  2. Add a WooCommerce upsell to your store’s checkout process
  3. Use a post-purchase WooCommerce upsell

1. Create a WooCommerce upsell bundle

Let’s say you sell computers. A customer who’s been looking at your products for some time now finally decides on the perfect model, and they’re ready to pull the trigger. At this point you might ask yourself, “What else will this customer need to get the most out of this purchase?”

In this scenario, you could offer the customer a ‘fully-equipped PC bundle’, including a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and even headphones. These are all things the customer might need to purchase later, but if you offer them at the right moment, you have a chance at convincing the customer to spend more now.

What you’re really doing in this example is offering both an upsell and a cross-sell. That is to say, your fully-equipped PC bundle provides an upgrade, but also additional products to round out the purchase.

To create product bundles, you can use a tool such as the WPC Product Bundles plugin:

With this plugin, you can create bundles of existing products and offer them both together and separately.

To set up a new bundle, install and activate the plugin. Then go to Products > Add New in WordPress, just as if you were creating a new product. There you’ll see a new Smart Bundle tab within the Product data widget, where you can indicate products that are part of your bundle:

Creating new product bundles.

Keep in mind – for product bundles to work, you want to make sure you group items that go hand in hand. Likewise, it makes sense to offer several tiers of bundles, so customers have options when it comes to how much more they want to spend.

2. Add a WooCommerce upsell to your store’s checkout process

There are two locations that are perfect for placing upsells within your store. The first is within your product pages, where customers will see alternative products before moving on to the checkout phase:

A pre-checkout up-sell.

You can easily add WooCommerce upsells to your product pages with a plugin such as Booster for WooCommerce. This plugin also adds several other useful features to your store, such as cross-sells and product add-ons:

With the second approach, you place upsells within your checkout page. Many websites include offers for additional or alternative products within the first few steps of the checkout process. They sometimes even include special discounts for these other products, which are only available to customers who select them during checkout:

Adding up-sells during the checkout process.

To add WooCommerce upsells to your checkout process, you might consider using the Upsell Order Bump Offer for WooCommerce plugin. This one offers a variety of additional ways to incentivize your customers to make more purchases:

A notable feature is the “Special Offer On the Checkout Page,” which presents a well-timed offer as a checkout bump, potentially at a one-time exclusive well-valued price. Customers can easily accept the upsell offer with just a single click, adding the offer to their existing order effortlessly.

Moreover, with features like “WooCommerce Upsell Popup,” you can display a sales pop-up screen at the checkout page, further enticing customers to add more to their orders. This plugin also provides flexibility in triggering upsell offers based on product categories, scheduling offers for specific weekdays, and even customizing the design and location of your upsell offers on the checkout page.

3. Use a post-purchase WooCommerce upsell

So far, we’ve only explored WooCommerce upsell methods that come before and during the checkout process. However, you can also hit users with upsell offers after they make a purchase.

To do this, you’ll need customer email addresses. That means you’ll want to ask them if they’re open to receiving product offers at some point – either when they sign up for an account to your store, or during the checkout process:

Saving your email within the checkout process.

If the customer agrees, then you can add them to your email list and send them the occasional marketing newsletter to encourage them to make more purchases. However, upsell emails tend to work best if you strike while the iron is still hot. That means emailing buyers soon after their purchase to let them know about other products, time-sensitive offers, and more:

An example of a product follow-up email.

The great thing about this approach is that it’s a bit more subtle than implementing upsells during the checkout phase. With post-purchase upsells, you give people time to think about whether they need any add-ons or want to upgrade, so there’s less pressure.

For implementing this WooCommerce upsell, you’ll need to use an email marketing platform that can connect with your ecommerce site. Mailchimp, for example, enables you to create ‘product follow-up’ emails. These can include upsells:

MailChimp's product follow-up emails.

Another benefit of this approach is that besides upsells, you can use these follow-up emails to gather reviews, thank customers for their business, offer them coupons for future purchases, and more. Overall, the more value you provide with upsells, the more likely it is that people will take you up on them.

Implement a WooCommerce upsell today!

There are several approaches to WooCommerce upsells that are easy to implement with the right tools. Upselling in your online store is a fast way to increase your revenue, while also helping customers find high-value products they’ll enjoy.

In this article, we covered three strategies for including WooCommerce upsells on your site:

  1. Create WooCommerce upsell bundles.
  2. Add WooCommerce upsells to your store’s checkout process.
  3. Use post-purchase WooCommerce upsells.

Do you have any questions about WooCommerce upsells and how to implement them? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

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