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Upsell / Add-Ons


FRH Dave

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When a user places an order, I'd like the ability to conditionally upsell the customer on relevant services.  For example:

  1. User orders a VPS
  2. User declines management
  3. User proceeds to checkout
  4. Because the user declined management, Blesta throws a special offer (defined by the host) their way at the checkout screen.  "We want to help keep your VPS secure - try our management at 50% off for the first three months, then cancel any time", etc.
  5. If the user accepts the offer, it's added to the cart.  If not, the cart remains as-is.

An alternative and slightly less obnoxious method would be to automatically send off an email after the order is placed instead of presenting the offer at the checkout screen.

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I like the idea, and I think conditional upsells have been largely ignored.

 

This would need to be part of some type of "Upsell" feature, integrated with the order plugin. Can you think of any other use cases besides x% off for x term?

Not just upsell with a discount but other suggested items with no discount would be nice as well.  That way you can just suggestive sell based on the service they chose.

 

Having rules would be needed as well such as show X upsell when Y item is in cart and Z item is not in cart. (Just reread your post and it seems like you covered that)

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I like the idea, and I think conditional upsells have been largely ignored.

 

This would need to be part of some type of "Upsell" feature, integrated with the order plugin. Can you think of any other use cases besides x% off for x term?

 

Definitely.  The logic should be able to accomodate a reasonable number of levels (maybe up to "cart contains x AND y AND not a AND not b"), but even a simple "if cart contains x AND not y THEN present offer z" would work wonders.  There are a few scenarios, but it always boils down to offer a product, with or without a discount.  We might offer a massive discount on cPanel if the customer is buying a $100 / month VPS, but a tiny discount if they're buying our $20 / month VPS.

 

If cart contains x, offer discount y on product z for # months

If cart contains x, offer discount y on product z for life

If cart contains x, suggest product z (full price)

 

If you want to make this REALLY powerful, give it the ability to adjust the promotion by day.  Tomorrow might be "Free Domain Friday", and anybody who buys a VPS gets a free domain.  Then it's "SSL Saturday", and anybody who buys a managed VPS or managed dedicated server gets a SSL certificate for only $.99.

 

This is a feature that's incredibly powerful whether implemented in its most basic form (if cart contains x, and doesn't already contain y, then offer y with a discount) or in a powerful conditional branch (if the customer buys a SSL cert AND the customer already has a VPS AND the current VPS is unmanaged AND it's Saturday THEN (IF the customer has cPanel THEN offer SSL certificate installation for $9.99, else IF the customer has no panel THEN offer SSL installation for $19.99, else IF the customer has Webmin offer SSL installation for $999.99)).  I don't believe anyone else has this -- certainly not WHMCS.  It would be a huge selling point.

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What a second guys.  This is a great idea, in theory, but... please take a step back and think about this a bit.

 

In our experience, we've found it is better (more completed sales) to initially sell the customer on the most basic services and just get them signed up.  Presenting them with various "upselling" offers at the time of initial signup will slow the order process and make it more potentially difficult for the typical non-techy customer, who just wants basic hosting and a domain, to understand. 

 

There's a reason why you see the largest web hosting providers have a very simple and basic order system.  You normally can't add anything except hosting and a domain name.  Upselling is something they do later... once the customer has become a customer. 

 

The idea behind this is to completely remove all possible barriers to completing the initial signup process.  Giving the new customer too many options and choices makes their signup confusing, and increases the likelihood they will abandon the process.  It is better to upsell *after* they have bought something and have already become emotionally and financially committed to your company.  Now you can sell them all the other stuff.

 

So it is MUCH better, in my opinion, to have a system where the initial order is very basic.  Then after they order.. wait 24 hours and your system then starts sending them applicable product upselling offers.

 

So for example, I think the best sort of order and upselling system is like this:

 

1. Customer uses super simple order system to purchase a domain name (or transfer) and web hosting.  (See the other current thread about simplifying the order process to just those basic steps.  One single simple order page.  Done.)

 

2. Now customer has paid and is committed to your company financially. They are emotionally invested.    So your system can look at what they purchased and send out an email offer with discount codes or whatever to upsell them on other stuff.   You can run these "offers" at any time at the push of a button.

 

I hope that makes sense?  I'd rather see Blesta be able to handle step #2 above, which we can then run at any time, then to integrate this into the initial order system, which would likely do nothing but confuse most of our customers (who are non-technical).

 

So... Step #2 would be settings in Blesta where we can specify things like IF the customer has X product AND NOT Y product, THEN send them a sales email offering Y product with Z discount code.  This will be much more effective, and will result in more initial signups *and* more purchases of the upsell item.

 

:)

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The idea behind this is to completely remove all possible barriers to completing the initial signup process.  Giving the new customer too many options and choices makes their signup confusing, and increases the likelihood they will abandon the process.  It is better to upsell *after* they have bought something and have already become emotionally and financially committed to your company.  Now you can sell them all the other stuff.

 

Yes, I'd like to see email-based upselling as well.  Having both of these tools available is ideal, and lets the host choose whether to sell up front, after the sale, or both.  Having both makes it easy to sell VPS management at the point of sale, then 3 days later, if the user has a VPS and still does not have management, they get an email offering an initial hardening / service optimization combo for $20.  It's also possible to structure the logic so that the upsell is presented after payment.  I wouldn't mind the additional 2% + $.30 hit, or the logic can even be written to not finalize the payment before the upsell is chosen.

 

However, I disagree that upselling at the POP is going to significantly harm the closure rate (and as a host with monthly signups in the single digit rate, I'm saying this as someone to whom a single customer is significant).  Off the top of my head, both GoDaddy and Vistaprint do upselling at the point of purchase, and given their revenue, it doesn't seem to hurt them at all. 

 

That being said, both have the potential to annoy, and some customers will be turned off by either.  A host who gets a shared hosting order, then tries to upsell them to VPS, then tries to upsell them (either at POS or via email) to dedi, then tries to upsell colo, then tries to upsell a SSL, then tries to upsell a new domain, then tries to upsell VPS management (for their shared hosting, remember), then tries to upsell them on a dedicated IP ...  That host is going to thoroughly irritate the customer and lose the sale, and with good reason.  It's up to the host to implement them in a non-irritating way.

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However, I disagree that upselling at the POP is going to significantly harm the closure rate (and as a host with monthly signups in the single digit rate, I'm saying this as someone to whom a single customer is significant). 

 

With monthly signups in the single digit rate, your opinion is of course still valid but doesn't exactly carry much weight.  We see regular signups across multiple brands in the hundreds per month. We've played with this exact question quite a bit (does simple signup affect sales?) and found that the simpler the signup... the more sales we received.  This applies to both our low-cost and high-cost brands. 

 

Off the top of my head, both GoDaddy and Vistaprint do upselling at the point of purchase, and given their revenue, it doesn't seem to hurt them at all. 

 

GoDaddy is fairly well known for creating a frustrating signup/order process that is replete with extra upselling options. It honestly boggles my mind that they continue to have such a convoluted signup/ordering process, but I think they throw so much money into their advertising that customers just plow through it because they don't know there are lots of other options. 

 

Just my 2 cents, but I think a simple order system with an "after order" upselling process would be more affective for the majority of Blesta users.  Of course, everyone's needs are unique, but since this is a new feature request, I'd much rather see it implemented in a useful way we can actually use.  (ie: We would not enable any upselling capability if it is during the initial order process, so such a feature would be pointless for us.)

 

In all honesty, once Blesta implements the logic for this kind of upselling system, it wouldn't be super difficult to put it into place during the order and then after, as I suggested.  The difficult part is doing the logic behind it all, so once that is done... maybe we can see it implemented in both ways, and blesta admin can enabled/disable each method as desired.

 

:)

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With monthly signups in the single digit rate, your opinion is of course still valid but doesn't exactly carry much weight.  We see regular signups across multiple brands in the hundreds per month. We've played with this exact question quite a bit (does simple signup affect sales?) and found that the simpler the signup... the more sales we received.  This applies to both our low-cost and high-cost brands. 

 

Then the simple solution is, of course, not to use it.  :D

 

If you're not interested in doing an upsell at the POP, then you certainly don't have to.  That doesn't mean that nobody else will want to use it, nor does it mean that your experiences are universal.  On the other hand, upselling and impulse marketing does drive sales across the board -- be it e-commerce, retail, B2B, or anything in between.  Frustrating or not, GoDaddy sells.

 

Hence my suggestion of having the option to present it either before or after checkout, with or without the ability to postpone payment processing until an upsell is selected or until a timeout is reached.  Creating a table of rules based on order / account conditions with a "Present via:  Checkout / Post-Checkout / Email" option would work wonders for the UI and ease of implementation, and would be supremely powerful.

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  • 8 years later...
1 hour ago, Franz said:

Was there any further thoughts given to this? There's a feature request here https://requests.blesta.com/topic/product-recommendations but it only has 3 votes ?‍♂️

It's a good idea for sure, but as you've noted it hasn't had that much support thus far. As a result, it isn't a very high priority, but definitely something we'd like to add support for.

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