How to cross-sell products on Shopify

Nina De la Cruz Nina De la Cruz 5 min read

According to Baymard, more than half of websites fail to cross-sell successfully because their recommendations lack the essential information about the recommended products.

As a result, buyers can’t fully understand the value of recommendations and often ignore them.

So if you’re here because you’re looking for a more efficient way to cross-sell, consider popups:


They come in handy if you want to recommend complementary, supplementary, or related products to your customers before they checkout.

Popups provide enough space to fit a high-quality image of a recommended product along with the description and important details.

In this post, we’ll show you how to create cross-sell popups using Getsitecontrol popup builder for Shopify. We’ll also include a few templates you can add to your store within minutes.

Here is how to create cross-sell popups in Getsitecontrol

First, you need to add the Getsitecontrol app to your Shopify store. Just install the official plugin and it will handle the integration. The installation process is quite straightforward, and there’s no need to deal with the code. If you stumble at any point, feel free to consult with the instructions.

Step 1. Select a template

The fastest way to get started is to select one of the templates from this post or the gallery on the right-hand side 👉

Scroll through and click on the templates to see them in action. For this tutorial, we’ll be using the template below, but feel free to pick any other popup based on your needs.

Once you find the template you like, follow the prompts to add it to your Getsitecontrol dashboard where you can change the copy and the image.

Step 2. Adjust the copy

To adjust the copy, click on the corresponding fields on the right-hand side and type the new text.

How to create a cross-sell popup in Getsitecontrol

For best results, try to include the product title, price, and key characteristics to provide customers with the information they need to understand the value of your recommendation.

💡 It’s a good practice to add customer reviews or average product rating to the copy.

Step 3. Upload your product image

Including a high-quality product image is essential for cross-selling. To replace the image on the template, click on it and proceed to Change image. Then start typing the name of the product in your store you want to promote and select the correct variant from the gallery.

If you don’t want to use product images from your store, switch to the Pictures tab and search among high-quality stock images available there.

Step 4. Allow customers to add items to cart upon button click

Cross-selling is only efficient when it minimizes the decision-making process for the customer. To streamline the journey, we recommend adding the product directly to the cart when customers hit the ADD TO CART button.

Here is how to do that.

Click on the action button and proceed to + Add action; from the list of actions, select ‘Add to cart.’ Start typing the name of the product you’re cross-selling and select its correct variant from the dropdown menu.

Keep in mind that if you’re cross-selling a bundle, you can add more than one item to the cart upon click: just apply this action preset for each item included in the promo.

Step 5. Select conditions to trigger cross-sell popups

The last step is to set up the conditions for the cross-sell popup to appear. If you’re cross-selling related or complementary items, you probably want the recommendations to pop up when a customer adds particular products to their cart.

You also want to make sure the recommended item isn’t already in your customer’s cart.

To set up these rules, open Targeting settings. Scroll down to ‘Show widget to visitors if’ and add a new filter: ‘Cart variant is’. In the search field, select the item that is supposed to be in the cart to trigger the cross-sell promo.

Use the operator AND to add another filter: ‘Cart variant is not.’ This time, select the item you’re planning to cross-sell.

How to set conditions for the cross-sell popup to appear

If one recommendation is related to multiple products, use the OR operator to include all of them – as illustrated above ☝️ In this case, if a customer adds any of these products to the cart, the cross-sell popup will be triggered.

Using targeting settings, you can also indicate where you want to display the cross-selling offer. For instance, you can display the offer on a product page, in the shopping cart, or on a Thank you page 👇

Notice that if you choose to cross-sell on product pages, you can also use the following trigger: Start displaying the widget after the product has been added to the cart. In this case, the offer will pop up as soon as a customer adds the corresponding item to the cart.

How to cross-sell products without annoying your customers

You can find plenty of guides to cross-selling and upselling products on Shopify, but the key is to keep your recommendations timely and genuinely helpful. Here are three tips to make use of.

Keep it relevant

As much as you might be tempted to recommend your best-selling product to everyone, only do that if it’s truly related to the items selected by the customer. The more to-the-point your recommendations are, the higher the chances that customers will accept them.

Provide enough details

Make it easy for customers to make an informed decision just by briefly looking at the popup. Include a high-quality photo of a product you’re recommending, its key characteristics and the price. If you’re recommending a product that has size or color variations, make sure to feature that information in the copy or image.

Pick the right moment

As a rule of thumb, you don’t want to cross-sell related items to those who haven’t added anything to the cart. More often than not it’s inefficient and annoying. That’s why the best triggers for a cross-sell popup are concrete products or product categories added to the cart.

Now, whether you want to display a recommendation while a customer is still shopping or once they get to the cart, is up to you. However, for the sake of a positive user experience, make sure the checkout process remains uninterrupted.

It’s time to start cross-selling and increase your ecommerce revenue

Cross-selling is a proven tactic that helps you increase AOV and create additional value for your customers. The best part? It requires minimum effort and technical knowledge. Just grab one of the templates from the gallery and adjust it for your Shopify store.

Nina De la Cruz is a content strategist at Getsitecontrol. She is passionate about helping small and medium ecommerce brands achieve sustainable growth through email marketing.

You’re reading Getsitecontrol usecase collection where we talk about the best practices for using website popups. This usecase is a part of Grow on Shopify section.

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