Cross Selling

- some of the screen shots on this page were not sized correctly and must be updated

ProductCart gives you the ability to cross-sell items on your store. Cross-selling can help you increase your sales by presenting customers that are in the process of buying a certain product with a number of related products in which they may also be interested. Most large e-commerce stores use this marketing tool, and in a variety of ways. ProductCart v3 and above also allow you to create product bundles, which let you promote the purchase of related products by offering a discount when the products are bought together.

Under Manage Products, click on Cross Selling, then select the General Settings link to specify how you would like to use ProductCart’s cross-selling feature on your store. The page that is displayed allows you to set the following options:

• Turn cross selling on/off – This option allows you to turn the feature on or off. This way you don’t have to remove relationships that you have set between products in case you opt not to have cross selling active on your store for some period of time.
• Show related products on product details page.This is the first of three display settings. This option defines whether related products will be shown on the product details page. If set to ‘Yes’, then N products related to the selected one will be shown on its product details page. N is the number of products that have been associated with the primary product. Related products are displayed at the bottom of the product details page, below the Add to Cart button, but above the Long Description if the product has both a short and a long description.

• Show related products when adding to cart. This option defines whether related products should be shown on the shopping cart page (pc/viewcart.asp). If set to ‘Yes’, then N products related to the ones that have been added to the shopping cart will be displayed. They are displayed below the shopping cart content, at the bottom of the page.

  If there two or more products in the shopping cart, and two or more of them have cross selling items assigned to them, ProductCart will display the items associated with all products in the cart. However, if there are overlapping cross-selling relationships (same product has been assigned to two or more of the items currently in the shopping cart), those items will only be shown once.

Product bundles are not shown in the cross-selling section of the view shopping cart page

• Show product thumbnails? If “no”, text links appear. – This setting defines whether related products should be shown with their respective thumbnail images or not. If product thumbnails are used you can set the following two properties to force an image size that is smaller than the actual thumbnail size:
  • Thumbnail height. In pixels, enter “0” to preserve the actual image size
  • Thumbnail width. In pixels, enter “0” to preserve the actual image size
  • Text to show. Enter the text that you would like to display right above the related products. For example, it could say something like: ‘Customers that have purchased this product have also liked…’. The text is limited to 250 characters.

The settings described above apply to all cross selling relationships shown in the storefront. You can override some of those settings at the product level. To do so, create a cross-selling relationship for one of your products as indicated below, then click on Edit Product-specific cross selling settings. Note that you can only edit settings that apply to the product details page, not the ones that apply to the shopping cart page since that page is not “product-specific”. Click on Remove Product-Specific Settings to go back to applying the storewide settings to that cross selling relationship.

The next step is to create relationships between products. Select Marketing > Cross Selling > Add New Relationship. At this point ProductCart will take you through a multi-step process to set up a new relationship between a primary product and its cross-sell items.

• Step 1 consists of searching for the primary product using the familiar, AJAX-driven product search feature.
• Step 2 consists of finding and selecting products related to the primary products. You can select products shown on different search results pages. Just check the checkbox next to all the products that you want to assign to this cross selling relationship.
• Step 3 allows you to set the sort order in which related products will be shown on the product details page. This gives you flexibility when displaying cross-sell items as you can place the ‘strongest’ candidate for a cross-sale at the top of the list. Note that if you create bundles between the primary product and one or more of the sub-products, those bundles will always been shown in a separate section of the page, before all other cross-selling items, regardless of the sorting criteria that you entered on this step.
• Step 4 completes the ‘wizard’ and shows you the details of the cross selling relationship that you have just created. Let’s look at the different features that are available to you on this page.

The top of the page shows the name of the primary product. Click on View to see a preview of how the cross selling relationship looks in your storefront, on the product details page.

The left side of the page lists the cross-sold items (related products). Click on the product name to open the Modify Product page in another window in case you need to edit any of those products.

The second column contains a drop-down menu that allows you to specify the type cross selling relationship. You can create two types of cross-selling relationships for your products:

1. Sold as Bundle. Bundling allows you to encourage customers to purchase two products instead of one. It also helps you highlight the product that is bundled with the product originally selected by the customer. For more information about product bundles see the corresponding section later in this chapter.
2. Not a Bundle. Choose this option if you simply want to promote cross-selling items, without proposing that they are purchased with the primary product as a bundle (e.g. a bundle might not make sense to the customer). These products are shown separately from bundled products on the product details page.

Multiple cross-sold products can be added to the cart together with the main product. To do so, customers will check the checkbox located underneath the products that they wish to purchase (see images below). The checkbox is not shown if a product has required options that the customer needs to select.

When you check the Required option on the Edit Existing Relationship screen, the checkbox will be automatically selected and cannot be de-selected by the customer. This feature is useful when you are selling products that require the purchase of another product (e.g. a required accessory).

Use the Order column to rearrange the order in which the cross selling items are displayed.

Remember to click on Update Relationship to save any changes. Click on Add Products to add more products to the relationship. Click on the Remove link to remove a product from the relationship.

Let’s take a look at how cross selling relationships are shown in the storefront.

The following image shows three cross selling products, displayed on the product details page. At this point, none of cross-sold items has been set to be sold as a bundle, and none of them has been set to be a required accessory.

As you can see two of the products can be added to the shopping cart by the customer by checking the checkbox displayed underneath each product. One of them cannot be added to the cart with the primary product because product options have been assigned to it: the customer must view and select those options before being able to add the item to the shopping cart.

If you edited the cross selling relationship to make the first two items required accessories, the page would display the products on the next image. Notice the first checkbox, which is now checked by default and grayed out (so the customer cannot uncheck it). The text “Required Accessory” is also shown, together with a required icon. You can edit the former as explained in Editing Text in your Storefront, and the latter by uploading a new icon as explained under Store Icons. It is interesting to note the second item, which is now a required accessory, displays no grayed out checkbox. You may recall from the previous example that is because the product has options assigned to it. The difference is that the required status will allow that product with options to be added to the shopping cart. So if you want your customers to select options make sure that product is NOT a required accessory.

When a product is added to the cart and one or more required accessories are also added, a message on the View Shopping Cart page (pc/viewcart.asp) notifies the customer explaining that “Please note that we have added to your shopping cart additional products that are required by <Primary Product Name>.”

When cross selling products are displayed on the shopping cart page, checkboxes are not shown as you cannot add a product to the shopping cart from that page.

When you set up a cross-selling relationship as a bundle, ProductCart will display the two bundled products (primary product + cross-sold item) in a special area of the page, above other cross selling items.

Customers can either add to the cart the primary product by itself or the bundled products together. To do so, they will select the radio button located below the bundle that they wish to purchase, and then click on the Add to Cart button. A radio button is used instead of checkboxes because customers cannot add to the cart two bundles at the same time.

Bundling allows you to promote the sale of a related product that customers might not have known about, or that they might not have considered purchasing together with the primary product. Providing a discount on the bundle increases the incentive to purchase both products. The discount can be a set amount or a percentage off the sum of the two product prices. Discounted bundles can help you increase the Average Order Amount , which is a great way to increase sales on your store.

On the Edit Existing Relationship page, when you select Sold as Bundle from the drop-down for any of the Related Products, the Discount input field becomes available (it is otherwise grayed out). Enter a number indicating the discount that you want to offer when the bundle is purchased. For a percentage discount, check the % checkbox. Otherwise, leave it unchecked. For example, if you enter “5” you store will give a $5 discount on the purchase. If you check the % checkbox, it would instead treat it as a 5% discount. The discount on the bundle, if any, is shown on the product details page to let customers know that it is available… (see below: “You save: “)

Here's what the shopping cart looks like when a customer adds bundled products. Note the product bundle discount and subtotal.

If a customer removes one of the bundled items, the second item is not removed from the shopping cart. However, the discount is no longer applied.

Please note the following limitations about product bundles:

• You can only bundle two products. You cannot create a bundle that includes three or more products. If you are looking at selling multiple, bundled products (e.g. a gift basket), then you might want to consider using a Build To Order product. If you don’t have the Build To Order version of ProductCart, you can easily upgrade to it.
• Bundled products will not be displayed…
  • if the cross-sold product is not active
  • if the cross-sold product has one or more required product options (which means that the customer must enter some information on the product details page before being able to add the product to the shopping cart). If the options are not required, the bundle will be shown.
  • if the cross-sold product has one or more required input fields (same as above).
  • Apparel products: bundles are not compatible with Apparel products