How to upsell products on Shopify

Given that you have full control over when and where a popup is displayed, you can use multiple upselling tactics in your store. For instance, you can:

• Promote product upgrades
• Suggest complementary goods
• Offer gift wrapping

Or, if you aren’t ready to start with any of these options, you can incentivize customers to spend a certain amount of money during their visit:

In this article, we’ll show you how to create custom upsell popups using Getsitecontrol popup builder for Shopify.

5 Popup templates to help you upsell products in your Shopify store

Before you get started, we recommend adding the Getsitecontrol app to your Shopify website. It comes with a free 14-day trial – that’s plenty of time to get your first results and make a decision about upgrading.

Next, you’ll need to decide which products you want to upsell – and which tactics you want to use.

Below, you’ll find 5 customizable popup templates designed to help you make that decision. Feel free to grab any template and follow the prompts to tailor them for your store.

1. Upsell products by offering upgrades

Upgrades are one of the easiest ways to upsell products. Essentially, if your store has a bigger/better version of a product selected by a customer, you can offer it as an upgrade.

Of course, your offer will be more incentivizing if you include a discount or a gift with the purchase — as illustrated above.

Now, let’s see how to add a popup like this one in your store, step by step.

Step 1. Add the template to your Getsitecontrol dashboard

To get started, click on the template above and follow the prompts to add it to your dashboard. From there, you’ll be able to edit the color theme, copy, and illustration.

To change the default text, just click on it and type your offer instead. To change the font and color theme, use the Theme menu at the top.

If you want to display the image of the product you’re promoting, click on the image, proceed to change it and start typing the name of the product in the search field – the app will fetch product images from your store, and you can select the correct variant.

Step 2. Let customers add the suggested product to cart upon button click

In this scenario, the product upgrade is supposed to be added to the cart automatically upon click. To implement that, you need to assign the discount code to the button.

Hit the button right on the popup, proceed to + Add action, and select Add to cart. Then choose ‘Add custom product variants’ and start typing the name of the product in the search field to select the variant you’re offering as an upgrade.

Keep in mind that the second button – Maybe next time – is set to close the popup.

Step 3. Decide when and where to display the popup

The last set of controls you need to go through is Targeting. This is where you specify the conditions for when to display the popup.

As a rule, you want to display an upsell offer only if a customer has added a product to the cart.

Here is how to go about it. First, find ‘Show widget to visitors if,’ proceed to add a new filter, and select ‘Cart variant.’ From the dropdown menu, find the product variant that should trigger the offer. In our example, that would be the small candle.

☝️ Notice that another condition you need to apply is the absence of the upgrade product in the shopping cart.

In other words, the upsell popup will only be displayed if a customer has added the selected product to the cart BUT hasn’t yet added the better version you’re about to offer.

Now that we’ve figured out the main condition, let’s decide when exactly you should upsell your customers. Some of the most common practices are:

• on the same page, right after customers add the item to the cart
• later, when they are in the shopping cart, about to checkout
• after checkout, on the ‘Thank you’ page or ‘Order status’ page

Use the remaining controls in the Targeting tab to recreate these conditions.

Once you finish, go to Stop to display the widget and set the rule that makes sense in your scenario. In our example, the popup won’t be displayed to the same customer upon submission because that will mean they have applied the upgrade. You can also stop displaying the offer upon a view for a selected period – dates, days, or hours.

If you’re running a promo, you can create a schedule. In that case, the popup will only be displayed during the appointed days and hours.

And that’s it! Hit Save & close in the top right corner and follow the prompts to activate the popup. The offer will instantly go live.

Step 4. Track your upsell popup performance

To see how many times the upsell offer has been displayed – and how many times customers actually used it – check the statistics report accessible right in the Getsitecontrol dashboard.

As you scroll down through the report, you’ll get a clear idea of whether your offer is performing well, and if there is a particular audience segment that responds to it better than the rest.

Now that you understand how the Getsitecontrol popup builder works, let’s briefly overview 4 other templates designed to help you upsell products in a Shopify store.

2. Upsell products by offering complementary goods

Whether you’re selling products or services, you can upsell by offering complementary goods. These items can be anything that is meant to improve customer experience with the product they’ve selected.

For example, if you’re selling flowers, you can offer a vase. If you’re selling gadgets, you can offer device protection. If you’re selling shoes, you can offer a shoe-shine sponge. If you’re selling tea, you can offer an infuser to those who select loose leaf tea.

In the way it works, this template is similar to the previous one. It is designed to appear when a customer adds a certain product (in this case, loose tea) to the cart. Upon the primary button click, the promoted product (in this case, the infuser) gets added to the cart. The secondary button closes the popup.

To set up targeting correctly, follow these steps:

1. Find Show widget to visitors if and proceed with the Shopify filter.
2. Select Cart product type and find the product type that should trigger the popup.
3. Add the AND operator and apply another rule: Cart product variant is not – and select the complementary good.
4. Scroll down to Start to display the widget and select the following trigger: After product has been added to cart.
5. Find Stop to display the widget if and select the desired condition. In this case, it makes sense to stop displaying the popup forever after a single view.

In other words, the popup will only appear if a customer’s cart contains the type of product you want to offer a complementary good for (in our case, it’s loose leaf tea) BUT doesn’t contain the complementary product itself (in our case, the infuser).

3. Upsell by offering gift wrapping

Gift wrapping is one of the oldest upselling tactics used by online stores. You’ve surely seen Amazon and other retail giants leveraging gift wrapping options. So why not offer it to your customers, too?

While a traditional “Add gift wrapping” checkbox can be an option, a slide-in that is actually showing how the gift will be wrapped will look more enticing.

Similar to the previous examples, this template suggests that the gift wrapping option gets added to the cart upon the primary button click.

For when to display this popup, you have a few scenarios to consider:

• When there is at least one item in the cart
• When there is an item of a particular vendor in the cart
• When there is a particular product in the cart
• Or any other condition of your choice

💡 Bonus idea: you can offer free gift wrapping with orders of a certain amount and above.

4. Upsell by offering a gift with orders of certain amount

Another common upselling technique is offering a gift, a discount, a product sample, or even free shipping with orders of a certain amount. To announce this promo, you may want to use a sticky bar like this one 👇

Some stores are even more proactive with sticky bars. They gently nudge customers by displaying how much they have left to spend to get free shipping.

To implement this tactic, you need to use dynamic text in the copy of the popup. Assuming that $50 is the minimum required amount for free shipping, here is what you need to type:

Spend ${{= 50-$cartTotalPrice}} more to get free shipping.

As a result, the number on the bar will be changing every time the current amount in the cart changes 👇

Whether you choose to offer free shipping, a discount, or a gift, remember that you’ll need to set the promo conditions up in your Shopify store. The Getsitecontrol bar merely serves as a notification encouraging customers to reach the minimum order amount.

5. Upsell products during checkout

In practice, you can upsell or cross-sell before, during, and after the checkout. In fact, some of the templates above will work in either scenario.

For example, the popup below will be relevant at any step of the buyer’s journey. However, for the sake of this use case, let’s suppose it’s an upsell during checkout.

To implement this tactic, all you need to do is adjust the Targeting settings differently.

First, in the ‘Include’ field, select your shopping cart from the URL presets at the top. Then, scroll down to ‘Show widget to visitors if’ and select a Cart product, Cart product type, or Cart variant that is supposed to trigger the popup.

Then, following the same logic, set the condition that the cart doesn’t contain the product you’re offering on the popup.

Time to start upselling products in your Shopify store

As you can see, there are many tactics to help you increase your average order value. Now, go ahead and create your first upsell popup using one of the Getsitecontrol templates.