6 Successful Upselling Tactics You Can Learn From Amazon
In this article, we will walk through the six most successful tactics Amazon has implemented to excel in the ecommerce industry. These tactics will help you learn the smart upselling ideas for your business.
Amazon ecommerce is the world's largest online marketplace rising from 346 billion USD in 2019 to 468.78 billion USD in 2021. It is because of its many successful upselling tactics that have proved to sell more to customers. Hence learning them will help to hire ecommerce developers to develop businesses.
According to the Marketing Metrics authors, there is only a 5 to 20% probability of selling to a new prospect while 60 to 70% sell to existing customers. That’s the reason that upselling tactics are beneficial to become the best ecommerce development company.
Any ecommerce company without upselling offers is missing a lot of customers and revenue. It is one of the zero-cost and straight forward ways to increase the AOV or average order value and overall revenue. Along with that, it increases customer lifetime value, which is vital for all businesses.
Why is Amazon Using Upselling Tactics?
Without a doubt, Amazon is the master in the art of upselling to be the largest ecommerce store in the world. Though they may use back-end coding and AI algorithms, their upselling tactics are still simple for anyone to learn and increase sales.
Product recommendations is one such tactic that played a vital role in ecommerce development. Product recommendations by putting the right upsell offer to increase the revenue by up to 30%. It is because it helps sales by selling expensive products and relevant and upgraded products.
Amazon introduced upsell in 2006 by using the phrase "customers who bought this item also bought" to increase their sales by 35%. Ecommerce development is now using many upselling tactics to increase sales, but it has to improve more to reach the Amazon levels.
Six Successful Upselling Tactics to Learn From Amazon
Ecommerce development companies should learn the following successful upselling tactics from Amazon for rapid ecommerce development.
1. Recommend relevant products with the right messages
Check out how Amazon recommends relevant products with the right messages under the caption "frequently bought together." Not only will the phrase grab the attention of buyers, but with suitable by-products, there are more chances for them to buy it.
For example, a buyer purchases a product for 100 USD, and the buyers will sure buy relevant services to the product at 5 USD. According to content marketing, relevance brings together what the marketers say and what the target audience wants to buy.
Amazon doesn't implement a hard sell but presents a closely related product to make the buyer purchase it and other products. And with relevance and value being the focal points of the content marketing messages, it is easy for Amazon to do it.
Following Amazon, that uses human behaviour, the best Shopify ecommerce development company should also offer the relevant product and messages with little manipulation. It will enable the buyers to buy both to increase sales with little need for hard selling.
2. Create scarcity to increase demand
In most Amazon products, there will be a mention of how many items are remaining to sell. It is the best upsell tactic to create a sense of scarcity to increase the demand for the products. It triggers the FOMO or fear of missing out among consumers to buy the product or service immediately.
Human behaviour is to buy slow and sell fast. Amazon's strategy is to reverse this tendency and make buying fast by creating scarcity when the consumer sees only limited availability of products and prefers to buy immediately.
To create scarcity, you need to find what the target audience wants through surveys, emails, and other forms. Also, using catchy phrases like "selling fast, "limited stock available," and more, along with a call to action, creates powerful persuasion on the buyer to not resist.
After knowing the demand for the product or service, promoting the product within consumers' wants will make them buy it instantly. For example, the limited offers for a discount on personal training or rooms in a hotel among others will sell fast.
3. Grab attention with surprise offers like free shipping
Amazon grabs the attention of consumers with surprise offers, discounts, free shipping, and others. And these offers are initiated when consumers expect it least. This triggers a call for action to add the product to the cart, that increases the chances of them adding the products.
It is also one of Amazon's upselling tactics to exaggerate consumers' want to make them buy the product or services. Offering a 10% or 10 dollar discount out of the blue will promote the consumer to purchase the product and recommend it to others.
The significant difference between online and retail buying is shipping costs. While the retail buyers do not have to pay for the shipping, it is natural for the online buyer to expect the same. Amazon exploits this behaviour to offer free shipping to increase sales.
Hence reminding people of how much more they have to spend, buying more free shipping products could be the best tactic to increase sales. It is because the concerns of more than 9o% of online consumers is only about shipping costs.
4. Tailor upsell offers for matching the consumers' intent
Tailor upselling to match the consumers' search intent is another important Amazon tactic to increase sales. It eliminates the consumers' assumptions to find out what their real purpose is and tailors the upsell content to make the consumers buy more products.
It is essential to research keywords for tailoring the upsell to discover what the potential consumer is searching for. The writing of the right content that matches the intent of the search by the consumers will make them buy the product immediately.
The rule of three is common among marketers, as three is a magic number. Again, it uses the human behaviour of choosing the moderate middle option among the three upsell options. Also known as price anchoring, it helps to increase sales.
Hence, using tailored upselling offers like the rule of three will help ecommerce development companies boost sales.
5. Show the upsell message at the right time
Amazon does not show upsell messages to irritate consumers. Apart from using only relevant upsell products and persuasive messages, it shows it in the right way for the consumers to conclude the deal by adding it to the cart.
Showing the upsell messages at the wrong time, like as soon as the consumers land on the site will annoy them to ignore it. Using tools to find out the customer journey on the site and what interests them will help to show the upsell message at the right time.
Hence the right time to show the upselling message is after the consumer decides on the product to upgrade the version with additional features and costs. It will enable them to compare the two versions to select the best to increase the sales value and satisfy the customer.
It is best to hire ecommerce developers that show the right upselling messages for the relevant products at the right time will help companies' development.
6. Develop trust to establish rapport with customers
Amazon capitalizes the IEC finding of customers buying products from people whom they trust. They trust more of the existing users than the retailers, which is social proof. It is the reason that Amazon uses star ratings and posts honest customer reviews to build trust.
Trust can improve consumers' loyalty towards the brand to continue buying it and recommend it to others. Hence, Amazon confirms customers' trust from reviews and ratings by providing a pleasant user experience in real-time to increase sales.
As per behavioural economics, once the trust builds up, the consumers will buy more. It is because they believe in getting value for the products and services as confidence increases with proper user engagement. The rapport created with the consumers will increase for future development.
That’s the reason Amazon has a Prime membership program to build rapport by making customers as members of the special club. And it also offers the members with discounts and other benefits to create a longstanding relationship with customers. Hence it is time to learn to build trust and establish rapport with customers.
Final Thoughts
Learning the above six successful upsell tactics from Amazon is advisable to hire ecommerce developers. It will not only boost sales, but also help ecommerce development companies reach additional levels in the future.
Ecommerce development companies should put themselves in the consumer's shoes to find what makes them buy more. It will enhance their upselling skills like Amazon to give the consumers the maximum value for their hard-earned money.
Amazon, by tapping into the minds of consumers, sells various products to the same customers using upsell offers. It is the reason that its 2019 revenue was 141.2 Billion USD from Ecommerce sales only. Ecommerce development companies following the Amazon upsell tactics will help many companies to have such spectacular gains.