The strategy of Down-sell to boost eCommerce revenue

In this article, we'd like to continue the theme of selling methods for online stores. Unlike a cross-sell or an upsell, a down-sell is not intended to increase the value of the buyer's purchase. On the contrary, it's aimed at lowering it. Yes, you read it right, but how does it boost your revenue? Sometimes, it's more profitable for an online store to sell a cheaper product rather than promote ones with a higher price. It can only be worthwhile for several reasons, but the most common is if there's a risk of selling this customer nothing.

Downsell, by its principle, is a bit like Upsell, but it works in the opposite direction. The technique applies to clients with a small purchase budget. The seller's task is to quickly offer suitable options to persuade the buyer to purchase the product.

It's vital to respond fast to keep a client. Sometimes the store needs to offer a cheaper product with similar characteristics as a chosen, more expensive one.

For example, if a customer wants to buy a 55-inch TV but doubts because he needs more money to buy it, offer a TV of the same brand with the same characteristics but with a 48-inch diagonal. In addition, you can describe all the possible benefits of this purchase. One is the ability to make a purchase right now and get a TV today, rather than waiting for several weeks/months/years to buy a large-screen TV.

Let's look at a few more relevant and striking examples of Downsells:

  • The online perfume store offers to buy chosen fragrance in a bottle of 50 ml instead of 100 ml.
  • The online hardware store provides an option to place an order to buy an iPhone 14, not an iPhone 14 PRO.
  • The site online language school offers to buy an express English course, not a full introductory one.

We can continue this list of examples, and there'll be options for an effective down-sell for your online store specifics. Down-sell is one of the essential elements of a sales funnel. The essence of such a funnel is to use a pre-designed sales scenario based on the principles of "yes or no." The seller must have a well-prepared offer in advance for customer responses. Downsell is designed for those situations when the buyer says "No" to the presented proposal. If the seller understands that the consumer is still stalling to spend some money on a product or service for specific reasons, he should slightly lower the purchase decision threshold.

The Smart Related Products module for Magento 2 helps you to show products exactly for the custommer's need in time. The extension allows you automatically to show blocks with down-sell products and display them wherever you want with the help of Widgets.

Smart Related Products extension with features

How the down-sell technique works

We can imagine the following situation: After observing the prices, the client enters an online store's premium segment goods page and is ready to refuse the purchase. At the same time, the task of the store is to stop the user and ask him to stay on the page. The next step should be offering alternative options for getting products: installment plans; similar products with similar characteristics but slightly cheaper; goods from lesser-known brands, and so on.

Remember that lowering the purchase cost in any of the possible ways is called Downsell:

  • If the client is still waiting to pay the total funds to buy the proposed product, you need to offer him an instalment plan.
  • If the client believes the proposed product is too expensive, you should offer him several cheaper alternatives.
  • If the client has visited the page to view the list of products but is still waiting to make purchases, you need to offer him a free subscription. Thus, he can monitor the price change and the appearance of possible profitable promotions.

However, some online store owners believe that a Downsell automatically results in a loss of initial profit for the business. In practice, everything is entirely different. Let's make the following comparison:

  • The user went to the online store's site, saw an expensive product, and left the page without making a purchase.
  • The user went to the online store's website, saw an expensive product, got acquainted with more budget offers, and made a purchase.

In the first case, the store received nothing plus lost interest. In the second case, the store received, albeit not a lot of revenue, but didn't lose a client + sold the product. In addition, remember that if the purchased product is of high quality and value, the client will undoubtedly return to this online store for subsequent purchases. As a result, Downsell helped expand the customer base of the online store. In some situations, such customers return to make a more severe purchase, thereby increasing the average check amount.