This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
A great way to make more money is to increase the average price per order for your online store. If you're selling something online, you could always go out and try to get more customers, but that might have a cost to it. You might have to pay for marketing or advertising, and of course you can't just magically snap your fingers and acquire more customers. That would be nice if you could. But another way you can be more profitable is to increase the average price per order.
And that way, even if you have the same number of customers, you're making a lot more money. So a listener in Phoenix is wondering about what's the best way to do that. So we'll talk about upselling, cross-selling, a couple other techniques to increase sales and therefore your average price per order in a way that feels natural and customer friendly. I hope that sounds good to you. I'll bring you her question and my answer after this quick thank you to our sponsor.
Hi Chris, this is Angela from Phoenix. I've been running an online store for about a year now, and I'm looking for ways to increase my average order value. What are your suggestions and how can I implement them in a way that feels natural to my customers? I'd love to hear your thoughts on upselling, cross-selling, or any other tips you might have. All right, I love it, Angela.
I think this is going to help you. I think it's going to help a lot of business owners out there and side hustlers boost their revenue without needing to attract new customers. And again, people are always like, how can I attract new customers? What if you could serve your existing customers better? What if you could sell them more and they're still happy about it?
In fact, they're happier. Well, that's a great way to do it. So some effective strategies, some very common but effective strategies. For one, upselling, that basically is encouraging customers to buy a higher-end version of the product they're already considering. One tip for upselling is to present the upgrade as a value-driven option, highlight the benefits they'll get from choosing the premium version, all right?
For just $10 more, you're going to get the deluxe version with additional features and a longer warranty, common upselling language. Cross-selling, that is, complementary products that enhance the customer's main purchase. If the customer is buying a yoga mat from your online store, sell them a matching yoga block or a resistance band. You know, you include a little message like complete your setup with these essential accessories. I mean, this is what Amazon does.
I mean, every smart e-commerce reseller is cross-selling. You may also want to bundle discounts whenever you're cross-selling, offer a discount when customers buy multiple items together. Wouldn't it be great if you also got this other thing and it's going to help you and you're going to save when you do that? That kind of takes away the whole hard sell because it's like you're helping them and you are helping them, but you're also selling more and that's good too. What else can you do?
Free shipping thresholds. If you're an e-commerce business, you want to do free shipping, everybody kind of expects that these days, but maybe you could increase the minimum. So if your average order is $40, offer free shipping on orders over $50. That kind of gives you a little bit of a bump. Customers are also often willing to add more items to their cart to avoid paying for shipping.
Then how to do all these things, e-commerce tools like Shopify and pretty much any other platform or plugin is going to have some tools. If you're using one, it doesn't have one, then you should probably change because as I said, this is going to make a big difference in your bottom line. Choose an e-commerce partner that will make it really easy and you're going to make more money. So Angela, everybody else out there, always wishing you the best. Thank you for listening to Side Hustle School, thanks for being out there and let me know how we can continue to serve you.
That's all for today though. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. From The Onward Project. From The Onward Project.
