For many Shopify merchants, the customer experience ends at the moment of purchase. After a customer has completed the transaction, there’s no reason to continue marketing to them — right? 

In reality, the post-purchase experience is one of the most important opportunities for customer retention, higher sales, and long-term growth. The customer journey can be broken down into five essential stages (reach, acquire, nurture, retention, and advocacy), with the post-purchase experience encompassing the nurture, retention, and advocacy phases. 

The post-purchase experience (PPX) matters more than you may think. One report found that 56% of respondents were disappointed with the PPX they received from retailers and online stores. Additionally, Accenture found that just 17% of customers feel that modern businesses care about the post-purchase experience. 

Post-purchase is also a prime opportunity to upsell to customers who are already in the purchase mindset. Upselling is a vital part of both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores, but the development of online shopping has opened a new avenue in post-purchase upselling.

Upselling, or the practice of suggesting upgrades to a customer’s purchase, helps companies to grow their average order value (AOV) and increase customer lifetime value (CLV). Upselling works well because it involves marketing to a customer who has demonstrated concrete interest in your brand, and is even committed to buying from you already. Upselling also extends customer loyalty: “First-time buyers are 27% likely to return, but after their second or third purchase, this grows to 54%,” reported Shopify.

Upselling can happen at various points of the customer journey, but upselling post-purchase is one of the best ways to both create a favorable post-purchase experience and boost revenue for your business. In this guide, we’ll demonstrate some of the advantages of the post-purchase upsell and suggest strategies for increasing sales with post-purchase upsells. 

What are Post-Purchase Upsells?

Upsells are offers that encourage an existing customer to buy more from your business. Through upselling, a merchant can motivate customers to buy more expensive products related to the ones they originally intended to buy. 

Upselling usually results in a higher average order value (AOV). This tactic increases potential revenue by exposing customers to higher-margin products or services. It’s a win-win for the customer and the business. Customers are more satisfied with their purchase, while the business sees an increased overall customer lifetime value and customer retention. 

Opportunities to upsell to new customers exist throughout the customer journey. Generally, most merchants upsell at three key moments during each order: before the first sale (e.g., on product pages), at checkout, and after the order confirmation page. 

Learn about the different upsell moments in our guide: Benefits Of Upselling On Your Shopify Checkout Page

Post-purchase upselling is an extremely valuable business practice that not many merchants take advantage of. What does it look like in practice? Take the example of weight-loss product 310 Nutrition. The brand implemented a post-purchase upsell app to build custom upsell offers for different products, starting with a link to their $9 acquisition offer with a selection of appealing upsells. Data gathered through the app helped implement a strategy that resulted in a 30% uptake of upsell offers and a 25% increase in AOV when customers buy 310 Nutrition’s starter kit.

As this example shows, post-purchase upselling is a great way to increase total revenue and increase customer retention. 

What are the Benefits of Post-Purchase Upsells?

Post-sale upselling gives shoppers a way to make the most of their orders, maximizing average order value for Shopify merchants in the process. Plus, your business benefits from that all-important initial purchase while gaining the opportunity for an immediate second purchase — without the need for a customer to go through the entire sale journey a second time. 

Post-purchase upsells share the same benefits as upselling strategies that take place earlier in the customer journey. But, a post-purchase upsell doesn’t risk the customer becoming overwhelmed and abandoning their cart altogether. 

Bottom line: post-purchase upsells increase retention and average order value in one seamless step. 

Higher Customer Retention

Upselling is an easy way to drive customer retention. When done correctly, upsell offers match the right customer to the relevant or complementary product, one that will provide genuine value for that person. 

“Slick web-site design and graphical interfaces with animation do not create loyalty; eliminating complexity from the customer's life does. Online shoppers want their lives to be made simpler, with the offline world as their benchmark,” wrote Bain & Co.

When you are able to match a post-purchase offer to a customer, there’s a higher likelihood that the customer will continue to patronize your business. This leads to more repeat customers who:

• Spend more 
• Generate larger transactions
• Refer more customers
• Buy other products from your brand

Ultimately, these repeat customers boost long-term profitability.

Increased Average Order Value

Post-purchase upselling also offers the benefit of higher average order value. Displaying upsells after the transaction is complete gives shoppers a way to add items to their orders without impacting the original purchase. 

Post-transaction upsells are essentially impulse purchases, like buying a magazine in the grocery store checkout line. Impulse purchases are incredibly valuable drivers of revenue: CNBC reports that the average U.S. consumer spends $5,400 annually on impulse buys. Coupled with the benefits of repeat customers, it’s clear that post-purchase upselling is an extremely effective mechanism for growing your profit. In fact: Shopify reports that e-commerce post-purchase upsells can help increase revenue by as much as 10-30%.

Why are Post-Purchase Upsells Effective?

Post-purchase upsells encourage customers to add a product to their original order. This leads to incremental revenue that would not have been possible in the initial transaction. The timing of these product upsells is what makes these offers so effective, as well as the ease of the purchase and the fact that the customer has already made a purchase decision.

Sense of Urgency

Delivering a special offer (such as discounted price) when a customer has just completed a purchase lends a sense of urgency to the upsell. There are a few ways to create this sense of urgency. Set a limited time offer, or show how few products are still in stock to motivate someone to upgrade to a more expensive product. You may also want to include a widget with a countdown timer showing how much time someone has before their cart expires. 

In this scenario, a shopper has just clicked buy on an item, only to receive a pop-up asking if they’d like to take advantage of a special offer — a discount available only for the next hour. 

The customer in this example is already in the shopping mindset. They’ve committed to your brand and have built enough goodwill to make an initial purchase from you. The urgency that this offer presents makes it almost a no-brainer to take advantage of the deal. This can lead to a high success rate for your company, and lead to the benefits previously outlined.  

Ease of Purchase

The Baymard Institute puts the average rate of cart abandonment close to an astonishing 70% — meaning 70% of consumers browse your website, look at different pages, explore products, and even add them to the cart, only to leave the page before checking out. 

When this happens, there’s a certain amount of remarketing and outreach that might need to take place in order to encourage the customer to return and finalize their purchase. It’s a difficult process for your brand and for the customer. 

Post-purchase upsells avoid this process altogether. Upsell apps and widgets empower the customer to complete a second purchase in just a few clicks. There’s no lengthy evaluation process needed, and no friction preventing the customer from checking out with ease.

Does Not Endanger the Sale

Often, carts are abandoned due to decision fatigue or irritation with constant upsell offers presented early in the shopping experience. Pre-purchase and cart upsells risk endangering the sale by distracting or annoying the customer. However, post-sale upsells does not put the transaction at risk — it’s already been completed. All that’s left is to see if you can earn a little extra revenue from the existing sale. 

3 Ways to Increase Sales With Post-Purchase Upsells

Post-sale upsells require the right approach and the right tools. Here are some ways to implement post-purchase upselling, increase your conversion rate,  and create a standout post-purchase experience. 

Implement an upsell app

Upsell apps can be installed into your Shopify site after the post-purchase page to automatically show upsell offers to your customers. These apps display upsell opportunities based on product recommendations from other customers, pre-determined offers that you set, such as gift wrapping, and bundle products that you might find at the cashier counter at brick-and-mortar stores.

Look for an app that gives you the flexibility to control how your upsell offers behave, where they are presented, and what information they pull to show the related products. Honeycomb by Conversion Bear is one great option — it’s easy to install and works instantly with any Shopify store theme in one click. 

One-click post-purchase is easily made available to your customers, too. Honeycomb comes with a free trial so you can try it for yourself and see how powerful this app really is.

Understand your customer

Upselling at any stage of the customer journey only works when you match the right offer to the right customers. To do this, you need to know your customer and the market. Use your sales data and marketing data to understand which related products are most likely to resonate. Customer surveys, feedback, data from their browsing and shopping histories, and from broader shopping trends can all inform what offers you choose. It’s also important to regularly test your offers to make sure the app is matching the right offer to the right customer depending on what’s already in their cart. 

Lay on the peer pressure

Urgency and FOMO are your friends when it comes to post-purchase upsells. Add widgets that put the customer under (gentle) pressure after the checkout page. Images, count-down clocks, and limited-time-only discounts can lead a customer to avoid the feeling that they’ve possibly missed out on getting a great deal on a better product. 

If you want to learn about upselling strategies and how they are used, check out the video below.

Conclusion

Post-purchase upselling is a great option for e-commerce brands seeking to increase retention and average order value, all while delivering a great customer experience. With the right tools, your Shopify store can begin testing offers to find the most effective way to upsell your customers. 

Learn more about how Conversion Bear can help you close more sales and optimize the post-purchase experience for your brand. 

‍