Before I expand on the above heading, I do have a slight confession to make - you will have to do some work for this process to work but I promise it really isnt much and the long-term benefits can be absolutely incredible :-)
The process that I want to discuss in this article is upselling. Upselling may be a method of marketing that you already use in your own online business but if not, I am sure you are familiar with the process.....
Let me give you a couple of real world examples of the upselling technique:
1. You visit your favourite burger joint (McDs, Burger King, wherever, they all use upselling). You order a burger and you are asked, Do you want fries with that Assuming you say yes, the next question is, Large A high percentage of people will go for this option because for some reason it is easier to say yes than no. You will probably then be asked if you want a drink and again, if you want it large.
2. If burgers are not your thing, how about a visit to your local bookstore How many times do you see the piles of three for two books Of course you can buy just one book but if you find another two that you like, you get one free so thats surely a better deal right
Both of these are examples of upselling and as you will have worked out, upselling is quite simply a marketing method used to persuade your customers to spend more money than they had originally intended.
However, there is more to it than just forcing a few extra dollars/pounds out of your customers pocket. You see, for upselling to work properly, there has to be something in the deal for both parties. This means that the customer has to benefit too. Indeed, the upsell has to be attractive to the customer in order for them to even accept it. To take the book example above, it is no good offering a pile of three for two books if there is only one title that is popular or a new release - they all need to be good titles that people will want, otherwise the customers will just buy the book that they were originally interested in.
So how does upselling transfer to your Internet business
Usually it is as easy as adding an additional upsell page in between your normal ordering page and your payment page. This is especially easy with eBooks and other digital products but there is no reason why it cannot be applied to any product being sold online.
I personally use upselling on most of my websites and in a number of different ways so it is probably as easy to look at how I use upselling as this will help you to begin to apply the technique to your own website business.
I use upsells on my eBook sales by directing the customer to an upsell page after they have decided to purchase one of my products. A typical upsell will be to offer the customer the chance to purchase both the eBook that they are interested in plus one or more associated eBooks for a heavily discounted price. I ensure that the discount is considerable as this makes the deal far more attractive for the customer but involves me in no extra work if they decide to go ahead with the upsell.
With my membership sites, the upsell is slightly different and subscribers are offered the chance to make a large saving if they opt to pay for an annual subscription rather than month by month. Again, a great deal for the buyer but no extra work for me.
Upselling is an extremely simple concept yet incredibly effective. On average, 40% of my customers opt for the upsell if it is offered and I have seen situations where as many as 70% of buyers upgrade to the upsell offer.
Remember, the key to successful upselling is to give the customer a superb deal - it isnt all about forcing that extra bit of cash out of the buyers wallet. If you dont offer great value and quality products, your customer will end up requesting a refund. But if you DO offer them a bargain then you will have a happy customer that will buy from you again and again.
To put a cash value on the power of upselling, just consider the following comparison for a moment.....
You offer a product for $20 and 100 people buy it. Your income is $2000.
You offer a product for $20 and again, 100 people buy it but this time buyers are offered an upsell which costs $40. 40% of buyers opt for the upsell offer. Your income is now $2800 - a 40% increase!
How much extra work would be involved in handling the second scenario above None really. If you are selling a digital product then there is no extra work but even if you are selling a tangible product, you are shipping to the customer anyway so how much additional effort is required to put the upsell product in the same package
Powerful stuff and if you are not using upsells already, you really should be.
Copyright 2004 Richard Grady
About The Author
Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which is published every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim your free gifts), visit:
With the exception of myself and a small handful of very remote and isolated journalists, no-one today bothers writing about the growth of the web. Its old news, and we already get it. Todays buzz is more about reaping the benefits of whats already there. Global business is now the norm, and the world is our marketplace.
Those of us who are fortunate enough to be making a living writing and selling software have the luxury of riding on the very crest of the wave of good fortune. The whole Try Before You Buy concept allows us to send our software across the whole world quite literally in minutes, and users from almost every part of the globe can download, try and hopefully buy our products. If our business deals exclusively with downloads and avoids working with physical media, then we have nothing to worry about with getting our products from A to B, and no packaging, shipping, customs or tax issues to keep us awake at night.
But the reality is somewhat different, and the vast majority of websites selling products or services online are doing so almost exclusively with the US market in mind. If you truly want to sell your products to the rest of the world, chances are that youll need to make some changes.
Change the way you think!
The very first step is the most important, and requires a change in attitude. The world extends beyond the US borders, and to assume that the rest of the world follows the same norms as the US is wrong. A potential buyer may not speak English as their main language, may have no access to US Dollars, and may not have, use or want to use a credit card.
Assuming youd still like to sell your products to a buyer like this, you have to consider the practicalities. Setting up a link to an online currency converter is childs play, and theres no shortage of options to choose from. Doing so not only reassures the buyer that you take international considerations into account, but also makes the buying process easier for them. And making it easy sells.
Make sure that you provide this information before the actual order page. Many peoples first question when a product catches their eye will be how much it costs, and they shouldnt have to go searching for it. Again, make it easy.
The same principle should also be applied within the software itself. If your application deals with different currencies for example, then you shouldnt assume that the user will automatically want the US Dollar as their base currency, or even that they will want to use the Dollar at all. And Im assuming that you have already included the Euro, havent you Many users will be unfamiliar with the concept of sales tax, and other countries have different names, such as VAT in the UK, and GST in Australia.
Regional variations in numerical formats are also important - most countries outside the US dont use the MM/DD/YYYY format, and many will use a comma for a decimal symbol, and a period for the digit grouping symbol.
If your icons and interface are non-standard, then make sure theyre clear to all users. Theres a reason for sticking with the standards and familiar icons, and thats the fact that they have become instantly recognisable to most users, all over the world. If youre going to use something a little more original, make sure that other people will understand the symbols and images that you use. Having a US stop sign might not mean as much to someone whos never actually seen one before.
What about your web forms
But even once your potential buyer has found your website, understood how much your software costs and even decided to buy it, the battle may be far from over. If youve ever tried ordering from an international store on the web, and you live outside the US and Canada, youll already know how frustrating the process can be, and how the dreaded web forms can often make the process near impossible for us to work with.
Ive tried to buy products from sites that dont have Finland listed in their pull-down menu, that demand a State and/or County even when I dont live in one, and dont leave enough room for my phone or fax numbers.
Even though my wallet, bills and bank statements are all full of Euros, there are still (at the time of writing) a huge number of sites that allow me to pay in everything from Algerian Dinars to Zambian Kwacha, but still dont consider the EURO a real currency. Id suggest they wake up.
And even the more flexible forms that allow all these options may still fall over when it comes to shipping costs. I can enter my delivery and credit card addresses in Finland, but when it comes to choosing my shipping option, I frequently have US POSTAL SERVICES and US FED-EX DOMESTIC only. More than once this has resulted in my simply giving up and looking elsewhere. Wasted opportunities dont get any easier to avoid!
If you use a third party to handle your sales, then make sure you use one with flexible options. I use SWREG, who can handle everything under the sun, including fax, phone, online, check, international money orders, direct payment and more. Can yours
And if your software involves a large file download, then you have to consider the many users around the world connecting at a theoretical 56 KBPS, who simply cannot even consider downloading a 15 MB file. If you want to reach those people, then you have to make it easy for them. Even if you dont want the headache of burning a CD and mailing it yourself, there are services out there that can do this for you, and their prices are very reasonable. Make it easy.
If you dont want their business - let them know!
But ultimately if your business cannot or will not adapt to the rest of the world, then I have one humble request. Please make it clear from the start. Ive filled out so many of your long forms, only to find out at the very end of the process that you cant deliver to Europe.
Amazon is considered by many to be one of the worlds most successful online stores, yet even they are guilty of these sins. Assuming I dont mind paying the shipping, I can order books and software through their US website. But when I go to software downloads, and add these items to my Shopping Cart, everything is fine until it comes to checkout time. At this point I get a message informing me that they do not offer digital downloads to my country. Go figure - and ask yourself why they waited until that moment to tell me.
Ive also filled out other long forms and received an email 24 hours later explaining that you dont normally ship outside the US; but if I will pay an additional $35, youll send your $30 product direct by courier.
And when your international user has already downloaded, installed, used and admired your software, falling at the final hurdle is a very painful and frustrating process.
The irony in writing this article is that while preaching the concept of internationalism, many of the ideas I suggest for achieving it are aimed primarily at US developers. But its not only the US developers who need to expand their views.
The ability to reach across the globe is yours for the taking. But if your software, website or ordering options arent up to the task, then youre throwing away a whole world of opportunities. Think international. Be seen, be sold.
Copyright 2004 Dave Collins
About The Author
Dave Collins is the CEO of SharewarePromotions Ltd., a well established UK-based company working with software and shareware marketing activities, utilising all aspects of the internet. and .
This article may be used freely in opt-in publications, RSS feeds, printed material and websites, provided that the full and unedited resource box (About the author paragraph) is included and all links remain active. A copy of the issue/material or a link to any online posting would be appreciated but is not equired. Send an email to .