5 simple tips for fuller shopping carts

Web & Digital

5 simple tips for fuller shopping carts

Author: Kurt Schauer

Online shops love their customers' shopping carts, since after all they represent the revenue that will be generated. But how can you encourage your customers to keep buying more and more? Five simple tips are meant to help achieve this goal.

How full are customers‘ shopping carts? – Time for the calculator

To check whether the following five tips bear fruit, it is first necessary to know how full the shopping carts have been so far. It is time to pull out the calculator. To get the average value, you divide the revenue in a certain period by the number of orders. In principle, it makes sense to do this for each month. Since there are seasonal fluctuations – for example, more is sold before Christmas than in January – quarterly, half-yearly, and full-yearly comparisons are also useful.

Tip one: Suitable accessories appeal to customers

You should automatically offer accessories for certain products. For example, someone who buys a smartphone is often also interested in a suitable display protection film. Someone who buys a bed may also need bed linen. The accessories are displayed directly below the selected product as well as below the shopping cart. For example, it can be labeled with the heading „Customers who bought X were also interested in Y“. Ideally, the accessories should trigger a „That’s right, I’d better buy that too“ response from the customer.

Tip two: Upselling – more expensive products mean more sales

Tip one introduced the technique of cross-selling. The sibling of this strategy is called upselling. You encourage your customer to buy a more expensive product because it promises much more performance than the cheaper variant. The customer should believe that they are getting a bargain, even though they are paying more. For example: Instead of the inkjet printer for 30 Euros, they buy the laser printer for 50 Euros because the latter works much faster and is cheaper to maintain.

Tip three: Those who buy in bulk can save

It is one of the oldest marketing techniques in the world, but it also applies to online shops: „Oldie but Goldie“. Consumables are offered in bulk, which reduces the unit price. The customer receives a discount but spends more than they originally intended at that moment. For example, someone who buys a bag of whole bean coffee for 15 Euros will think twice if they have the chance to buy three packages for 35 Euros. This technique works very well for bulk products where the unit price is perceived as high.

Tip four: Suitable packages find their fans

This tip is closely related to the first and third. It is not always necessary to recommend suitable accessories to the customer; you can put together a suitable package for them yourself. For example, someone who buys a game console also needs a suitable game. Someone who is interested in a „Star Wars“ movie, for example, might also buy the entire saga. The packages promise a discount compared to buying everything individually.

Tip five: Those who buy a lot receive discounts

This tip is the logical consequence of tips three and four. Customers who buy a lot receive discounts due to their high volume. It makes sense to communicate this discount threshold very visibly. For example: Those who buy three DVDs receive a fourth free. Or: The unit price for T-shirts decreases by X percent if you buy at least Y pieces.

Finally, a clear warning: The customer must not be distracted

However, all measures designed to convince the customer carry the risk of distraction. Especially with more expensive products such as a smartphone, a tablet, or shoes, customers often think intensely before deciding on a product. It is by no means always the case that the customer is convinced at the end of this mental deliberation that they have made the absolutely correct decision. The worst thing an online shop can do at such a moment is to show them a large selection of other products, thereby distracting them from their actual purchase decision.

As a shop, you can counteract this to a certain extent: With the right software, you can, for example, identify frequent shopping cart abandoners and know that you should not distract them with additional or alternative offers.

Web & Digital