In online retail, there’s one tool that in skilled hands can become a goldmine—and in unskilled ones, an irritating distraction. That tool is upselling.
Put simply, upselling is offering an additional product or service that increases the value of a purchase or solves a related problem. But behind this simple definition lies a deep layer of knowledge, experience, and technology.
Where We Encounter Upselling
In e-commerce, upselling typically appears in two main places:
- On the product page – for example, when you’re viewing a laptop description and see a section like “Frequently Bought Together” or “We Recommend with This Product.”
- In the shopping cart – when you’ve added an item and are about to check out, and the system suggests adding a case, cable, or a bonus item.
It may seem like a small thing, but these touchpoints can decide whether you increase your average order value by double digits—or miss the opportunity altogether.
Signs Your Upselling Is “Broken”
One of the most common red flags is completely irrelevant recommendations. For example:
- You open a product page for an iron, but the upsell block shows a baby stroller.
- You add a smartphone to your cart, but the system suggests headphones with a connector your phone doesn’t even have.
Often these sections are labeled “You Might Also Like” or “Customers Also Bought,” but filled with random products. This isn’t just a logic fail—it’s a blow to your store’s reputation.
Experience shows it’s better not to show upsell suggestions at all than to display nonsense. When a customer sees irrelevant offers, they interpret it as the store trying to “sell anything” and realize you don’t understand what you’re selling.
Upselling Is Not a Toy—It’s a Serious Sales Tool
When done right, upselling can increase sales in some niches by 30–50%. And that’s without expanding your assortment, running extra marketing campaigns, or investing in complex development.
In e-commerce, the battle is for percentage points. Raising your average order value by just 5–10% is already a win. That’s why upselling, in skilled hands, becomes almost a “holy grail” for online stores. But the keyword here is skilled.
Even big brands often make mistakes. Browse well-known e-commerce sites and you’ll see upsell blocks either empty—or offering complete nonsense.
What’s Needed for Effective Upselling
To offer the right products, your store needs a horizontal product relationship architecture—where each product is connected to others according to clear rules:
- Accessories
- Consumables
- Spare parts
- Alternative/replacement products
- Bundles and kits
Without this structure, relevant upselling is impossible: the system simply won’t understand which products go together.
How We Solve It
NotPIM works with thousands of suppliers, aggregating their content and building the right connections between products. We generate ready-made upsell chains and deliver them directly to your store.
Thanks to more than 2,000 ready-to-use integrations, we can export these connections straight into your CMS. And if your store doesn’t have its own upsell architecture, we provide a custom upsell widget that visually matches your site’s design—selecting products as if it were a built-in feature.
The result? An upsell system that’s relevant, functional, and actually drives revenue—instead of just taking up space on the page.
Bottom Line
Upselling is a powerful tool for boosting revenue, but it demands accurate data and smart configuration. Doing it “halfway” means losing both sales and customer trust. Doing it right means increasing your average order value—without changing your assortment or adding unnecessary costs.