You’ve done the hard work. You have managed to get people to your ecommerce site. They are browsing, reading, deciding, even buying.

What next?

You could get more of them.

But you could also get more out of those who you already have.

Here are a few ideas how to get customers to add more to their shopping carts.

1. Show related products

Assuming you have the data and the technology savvy to make it work the right way, showing related products can provide huge lifts. To get it right, though, you need to test pretty thoroughly.

Experiment with placement. The related items can show up in the areas below:

• Product page
• Cart-add confirmation popup
• Fixed cart-add confirmation page
• Cart
• During checkout

2. Upsell to free shipping threshold

Irrational as it may be, free shipping is a powerful motivator to get people to spend more (although shipping might not cost them that much in the first place).

Make sure you’re maximizing your free shipping offer by reminding customers how much more they need to spend to get free shipping. However, offer only if the customer is within a certain percentage threshold or dollar amount of your free shipping. If the customer only has 5 dollars worth of products in their cart, it doesn’t make sense to ask them to spend 45 dollars more, just so they can take advantage of your $50-minimum free shipping.

3. Offer a discount on certain price threshold

Nudge customers to check out more stuff by offering a discount if they spend a certain amount. You can either offer dollars or a percentage off if a customer buys X worth of items.

4. Bundle Products

You can also persuade customers to checkout a set of related items by grouping them into a cheaper package.

Bonus: Allow Customers to Make Installment Payments

One way to make pricing more appealing to customers is to divide the price. You can do this by offering installment payment options. By breaking down the price into smaller units, you can make an otherwise overwhelming amount seem less expensive.

Conclusion

You work arduously to get customers to your site and to convince them that you’re the best company to do business with. So, aside from presenting them with what they initially wanted to buy, leverage the customers’ buying mindset by showing them related products. Also, give them compelling reasons not to postpone their purchases by offering some sort of incentive if they check more items out in a single transaction.

4 Ways to Get Customers to Add More to their Shopping Carts

 

PS. Any unpleasant surprise at checkout is an automatic drop in conversions. Be honest, open, and don’t hide anything. If the customers see or realize the shipping cost or the taxes for the first time at this point, many of them will abandon the whole process.