Upselling: Are You Using this Technique in Your Handmade Biz?

Do you wish potential customers would spend more time in your handmade shop, rather than clicking away to another spot on the World Wide Web? Want to keep those customers around a bit longer (and increase your profits)? You, my friend, need to use a simple technique called upselling.

I've talked about upselling before in this post: Upselling: An Easy Way to Increase Profits, but I saw a wonderful example of the technique while eating in a restaurant this past weekend.

Joe's Crab Shack is one of our favorite restaurants to visit in Myrtle Beach each year, and my husband and I found ourselves at Joe's once again a few days ago. (The coconut shrimp is fabulous!)

Sitting right on the end of the table was the "teaser" advertisement below. Campfire S'Mores?? Yes, please.


We hadn't even ordered our main course yet, and I already knew that I wanted to order that dessert. I rarely ever order desserts at restaurants, but those s'mores looked too good to pass up. And yes, the dessert was every bit as good as it looks . . . yum.

What lesson can we learn from Joe's technique?

Put featured products in front of customers as often as possible, even if they aren't in the market for that particular product.

Etsy sellers have the opportunity to do this by selecting items to feature at the top of their online shops. Customers see those items first, so sellers should put their best products (most popular, most unique) in those spots.

Another place to upsell is in your Facebook fan page timeline. The photo strip at the top of your fan page is a wonderful place to feature your signature items. I talked extensively about the Facebook photo ribbon in this post: The New Facebook Fan Page Can Boost Your Etsy Sales - Part 1

If you haven't yet taken my free 7-day e-course about writing irresistible product descriptions, I encourage you to sign up today. I devote an entire lesson to tips on upselling. There's a great tip in there about using Etsy URLs to upsell in your product descriptions.

What are some other ways you can incorporate upselling into your marketing strategy? How are you already using the upselling technique? Do tell.