What is a cross-sell?
A cross-sell is an offer for a product that complements the one a shopper is buying: socks with running shoes, a case with a camera. It differs from an upsell, which moves the shopper to a bigger or better version. A cross-sell adds a second product to the order.
How does cross-selling work?
You sell running shoes at $90. On the product page, a small row offers running socks at $14. Say one shopper in five adds them: across 100 orders, that is 20 pairs of socks and $280 you didn't have before, on traffic you already paid for. The shoe sale never blinked.
Cross-sell vs upsell: what's the difference?
An upsell trades up: the $120 shoe instead of the $90 one. A cross-sell adds on: the socks beside the shoes. An upsell sells a better one. A cross-sell sells another one.
On Shopify stores
On a Shopify store, cross-sells show up in three places: the product page (a "pairs well with" row), the cart drawer (a recommendation section you place in the drawer body), and the thank-you page after checkout. The cart is usually strongest. The shopper has already decided to buy, so one useful suggestion reads as service, not selling.
Related terms
Cross-selling with Sledge
Sledge runs cross-sell placements on product pages and in the cart drawer, and on the thank-you page. And built-in Growth Intelligence finds which pairings are worth offering from your order patterns, estimates the monthly impact in dollars, then measures the result against real sales.
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