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How to Create WooCommerce Downsell, Upsell Offers?

Step-by-step and simple explanation to create WooCommerce downsell, upsell offers in the sales funnel. And some strategies to grow sales using downsell offers.

Last updated on November 25, 2022

Spending hours promoting your products, you would always want to have a positive response from the prospects. No matter how hard you try, sometimes customers aren’t interested in your offer.

The reason could be anything from irrelevant products to overpriced items. So, how do you win over the lost deal on your WooCommerce store? Using upsell, downsell or cross-sell offers.

Not sure what that means? Don’t worry. This article is all about cashing in on the opportunity of converting your lost prospects into potential buyers.

What is a downsell?

In simple terms, downsell means to offer an alternative product at a lower price when someone declines a product or an offer.

Smart marketers who fail to get a customer buy their premium or higher-end products, optimize their offerings to offer a less expensive product with limited features to close a better deal. You are offered a small-sized Coke on purchase of fries when you ignored the big-sized Coke. That’s a downsell.

Downselling is calculated marketing and is often, preceded by up-selling or cross-selling.

It is more like changing sides in a way that not just helps make sales but at the same time maps the customer’s shopping appetite.

How to use downsell offers along with upsell and cross-sell offers in WooCommerce?

You may be familiar with how smartly Amazon does upsell offers. It shows you related or complementary products that go with your current product. In the end, you end up buying more than what you intended for.

Using Smart Offers you can create WooCommerce upsells, downsell, cross-sell offers in the sales funnel and make your customers buy more. Show users the products they will absolutely need. And even better, give them at a discount.

Going by the definition, upselling is the art of offering a premium version of the product a customer is already looking to purchase. Cross-selling, on the other hand, is offering products that are relevant to the current purchase and if often brought as an add-on.

Let’s see how these three work when a customer, say Matt visits your store to buy a smartphone. Matt is interested in a 6GB RAM variant.

  • Upselling here would be promoting a 8GB RAM variant phone.
  • So if Matt rejects both the 8GB and 6GB variants, you show him a 4GB RAM variant or a 6GB variant at a discount. That’s a downsell and Matt accepts.
  • Now you offer a headphone that’s a related product. A cross-sell offer.
  • And if Matt rejects, you offer a protective case which costs less than the headphones. Now that’s another downsell.

You see, you can target multiple offers in the sales funnel.

That’s what our next section is all about.

Step-by-step details to create WooCommerce upsells, downsell and cross sell offers in the sales funnel

Believe me, it’s very easy and you can accomplish it without the need of a developer.

Smart Offers plugin makes the entire job of down selling and upselling simpler.

Let’s say a user wants to purchase a GoPro HERO 6 Black camera and he adds the product to the cart.

Here, we want to upsell GoPro Action Camera Kit Bundle as a One Time Offer at 20% Off on the cart page.

Creating upsell offer for camera kit

Step 1 – After you download and install the Smart Offers plugin, click on the Smart Offers tab on the left side of your WooCommerce dashboard. Go to Add New Offer and give an appropriate title to your offer for your own reference.

Step 2 – Under What to Offer, choose the offered product as GoPro Action Camera Kit. To sweeten the deal, we set the discount to 20%.

WooCommerce upsells set upsell offer discount

Step 3 – Select the page where you want to target your WooCommerce upsell downsell offers. We select ‘Cart page’ in our example.

Show upsell on cart page

Step 4 – Decide how you want to show your offer; as inline content or as a pop-up.

Show offer as popup

Step 5 – Under Offer rules / Display rules, select Cart/Order > Contains Products > GoPro HERO6 Black.

Your upsell offer will be automatically triggered when the user adds GoPro HERO 6 Black to the cart and he will see your upsell offer of the Camera Kit.

Set rules to show upsell

Step 6 – Now comes the important part – Accept Actions.

Next step after the upsell offer is shown depends on you – whether you want to show the user another offer if he accepts the current upsell offer!

And what if the user reject the upsell offer? Show another offer?

In our case, if the user adds the camera kit to the cart, we show another offer (cross-sell) – Sony Secure Digital SD Memory Card.

You can also select other options like applying coupons, redirecting to another URL and others.

We link this offer to the main offer by enabling the Show an Upsell offer and selecting “Offer Memory Card” under Accept actions.

Show another upsell or cross-sell on cart

Step 7 – And if the user skips the upsell offer of the camera kit (first upsell offer), we show a downsell offer – GoPro Action Camera Battery. Downsell because it is cheaper than the camera kit.

Simply link this offer to the main offer by enabling the Show a downsell offer and selecting “Offer Battery” under Skip actions of you main offer.

You can also select other options like hide the current offer, redirect to a page and others.

Show downsell offer in cart

Now, as mentioned above where you link upsell and downsell offers, you need to create those offers first and then link to the main offer.

Here’s how to create upsell / cross-sell offer for the memory card

  • Under Offer Title, set the name to “Offer Memory Card”.
  • Under ‘What to offer‘, select Sony Secure Digital SD Memory Card as the offered product. Since we are offering it full price, we leave the discount column blank.
  • Select product to show cross-sell
  • Under Where to show, do not enable an option. The offer will be shown at the same place where the main offer is shown. (Cart page)
  • Select page to show cross-sell
  • Next, Under Show offer as, we select popup.
  • Choose popup or inline to show cross-sell
  • Under Offer rules / Display rules, select Cart/Order > Contains Products > GoPro HERO6 Black.
  • Set rules to show cross-sell
  • Under Accept actions, default will be “Add the offered product to cart“. You can select other options if you wish.
  • Add offered product to cart if user accepts the offer
  • Under Skip actions, we enable Hide this offer.
Hide the offer option if user rejects the offer

That’s it. Your other upsell offer is created which you can link to the main offer as mentioned above.

Here’s how to create downsell offer for the battery

  • Under Offer Title, set the name to “Offer Battery”.
  • Under What to offer, select GoPro Action Camera Battery as the offered product and set the discount to 50%.
  • Select products for downsell offer
  • Under Where to show, do not enable an option. The offer will be shown at the same place where the main offer is shown. (Cart page)
  • Select page to show downsell
  • Next, under Show offer as, select popup.
  • Choose popup or inline to show downsell
  • Under Display Rules, select Cart/Order > Contains Products > GoPro HERO6 Black.
  • Set rules to show downsell
  • Under Accept actions, we enable Add the offered product to cart.
  • Add offered product to cart if user accepts the offer
  • Under Skip actions, we enable Hide this offer.
Hide the offer option if user rejects the offer

That’s it. Your downsell offer is created which you can link to the main offer as mentioned above.

The downsell offer should be an absolute must product and most importantly something that’s really inexpensive; which is the battery in this example.

Here’s how your final offers will look like

  • If the user accepts the first upsell offer (Camera Kit), we show a cross-sell offer (Memory Card).
  • If the user rejects the first upsell offer (Camera Kit), we show a downsell offer (Battery).
WooCommerce upsells
WooCommerce cross-sell
WooCommerce upsells downsell

If the customer accepts any one or both your upsell offers, it’s great. And if he rejects the upsell offer but accepts even the downsell offer, that’s also good. At the end of the day, you have made more money from a single order itself.

This is how you can create powerful WooCommerce upsell, cross-sell and downsell offers even for Black Friday and Cyber Monday season using Smart Offers plugin. All you need to do is to buy the plugin and get started.

Get Smart Offers

Create different offer combinations as you like using Smart Offers…

You can create any combination of offers using Smart Offers and increase your conversions.

and a lot more combinations…

For example, if you are selling a laptop, then protective skin guard or mouse can go as a handy downsell if someone rejects your upsell offer of accessories.

You can offer any product as well as bundles as an upsell or downsell offer. Btw…you can easily create product bundles using WooCommerce Chained Products.

Want to create a specific offer series for your sales funnel? Let us know and we’ll help you out.

Pros and cons of downsell

Look, upselling is pretty tricky and might not render results if the customer isn’t in the mood of spending such huge amounts or doesn’t require more features.

What’s more important is to understand when to stop. Often when upselling, marketers do not just lose the deal but at the same time, lose a potential customer. This is where downselling comes into play.

Pros of downsell

  • With downselling, marketers build brand trust and customer loyalty.
  • Downsell provides your customers with a range of choices to pick a product from.
  • Buyers have the ease to segment products based on their budget and buy one that not just meets their requirements but also adheres to their monetary considerations.
  • No matter what the customer prefers, a sale is made.
  • Downsell helps understand customers buying preferences. This can be used to target the same with related products.

Cons of downsell

On the flip side, downselling has its share of disadvantages too:

  • Pitching more and more products sounds too salesy and runs the risk of losing potential customers.
  • It is often noticed that customers perceive such an act to be desperate and executed to serve the need of selling.
  • Another serious issue is the bad buying behavior. Some get into this habit of saying no and then benefit from the downsell offers.

There are a few hacks that help marketers test the waters without giving away too much. If you are not sure what to do when to do, and how, here we have highlighted ways to make the most out of downselling.

Seven downsell tips – What you should avoid

Downselling isn’t something that you do always but works best when you know that a customer isn’t happy buying the product you are currently offering. It is best to discuss with the clients and come upon equal terms to close a deal.

  • Always be clear on your offerings. Do not keep your buyers wondering why you are selling products at lesser rates.
  • Never compromise on your ethics. Downselling merely states offering premium products at low rates. Be honest in what you are offering and how.
  • Focus on relevancy. You cannot pitch a product that isn’t relevant to the customer. Make sure the same piques the interest of the buyer to make sales.
  • Do not sound too desperate. Often marketers are so much moved by the idea of selling products and providing alternatives that they cross the line. It so happens that the customer finds it desperate, turning hostile towards the same. Therefore, never overdo it.
  • Do not offer a premium product at low rates. Customers definitely are the fuel of your business. But offering your premium products at low rates not only leads to a loss but at the same time lowers the worth of the product.
  • Do not follow the click-bait terminology. It is important to offer what you have promised to. Do not trick your customers with the products offered.
  • Not everyone makes a purchase. Be careful when you are pitching a product. You don’t have to re-target every customer.

Four smart strategies of using downsell

In order to make the most out of the marketing technique, it is important to be wise and employ smart selling strategies.

Bundle packages

At times, the deals fail to appeal to the buyers and hence a package of products sealed together does the job. Scott Hallman, a renowned entrepreneur etched a 125% conversion rate by downselling his coaching programs. While budget constraints might have hindered their purchase, emphasizing a package entices them to make the move.

Cart abandonment emails

Saw a customer leave the cart unattended? Pitch them an email with another low-cost alternative. Or you can also give them additional discount on their current abandoned product to promote a purchase. A survey reveals that nearly 56% of cart abandonment is due to higher rates. Outreaching them with better deals is one way of downselling.

For WooCommerce store owners, you can try out AutomateWoo. It does an excellent job in managing everything about cart abandonment emails.

Offer a resource using exit-intent pop-ups

Visitors didn’t buy anything and leaving? Offer them a lead magnet, some quality resources or any low-cost product to keep them in the loop using exit-intent popups.

Suggest low-cost options or related products on the product page

Amazon leads the race here. Visit your Amazon store page, open a product, scroll down and you will see a list of similar products with different rates. This gives your buyers ample choices to make the best purchase. You can do a similar thing on your WooCommerce store.

Wrapping it up

Creating multiple offers like the above example will guarantee conversions as customers won’t deny valuable stuff.

And making it easy for you to create such offers is Smart Offers…committed to your success always.

Get Smart Offers

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