Top Tips to Expand Your Sales

We have a discussion with Daniella.io who has created 50+ videos about Ecwid tactics on YouTube on her favorite tips for Ecwid merchants. We cover the following in depth with numerous examples so you can think of how to apply to your business:

• Abandoned Cart Recovery Emails
• Coupon Codes
• Cross-sell/Upsell

Show notes:

• Daniella.io
• Abandoned Carts How to
• Coupon Codes
• Suggested Products
• “Mandatory” Cross Sales
• Wix Integration
• Facebook
• Link to eBook (Coupon code PODCAST)

Transcript

Jesse: Hey guys! Jesse Ness here with the Ecwid podcast, I’m here with my co-host Richard Otey.

Richard: How is it going, Jess? How are you?

Jesse: It’s good. So, yeah, today I think I’m excited about this podcast, because, you know, a part of the reason we started this, we just wanted to have an e-commerce conversation. You know, if I have a happy hour with some friends, that are in the business, what kind of questions am I asking them, how can I, you know, find out how to bring my business forward, so, yeah, I’m pretty excited.

Richard: Yeah, this is going to be a good one, Daniella’s, definitely, how long she been working with Ecwid? I know she doesn’t work for you guys, but the work with you guys.

Jesse: So many years, I think, for listeners of the podcast here, you might actually be hearing a familiar voice, so, Daniella has made probably fifty to a hundred Ecwid videos and posted them on YouTube. So, that’s only the first fact about Daniella, so, you know, let’s bring her on, Daniella.io — she is a freelancer with over ten years of e-commerce experience, and like I said, she’s created, like fifty to hundred Ecwid videos.

Richard: She manages Ecwid store, right? We will ask her.

Jesse: So, Daniella, how are you?

Daniella: Hi Jesse and Rich, how are you guys doing?

Jesse: Doing great, how are you?

Daniella: I’m super happy to be here today with you, thanks for having me on the podcast.

Jesse: Yeah, yeah!

Richard: Of course, of course!

Jesse: So, Daniella, we’ve mentioned all the YouTube videos, so you are kind of a like a queen of Ecwid videos, so, thank you for doing all that.

Daniella: That’s my pleasure, I really love the product!

Jesse: Awesome! I mean, so that’s why we had you on. You know, we’ve noticed you in a lot of different places and really want to help out the Ecwid community, you’re putting out this great content, you know, both on YouTube and I know you have some clients. So, explain to us, what exactly do you do, how do you explain yourself?

Daniella: Sure. I started working with Ecwid, well, using Ecwid back in 2015. I was looking for a versatile e-commerce solution, that was really user-friendly, that can integrate multiple websites actually at a time, and that didn’t require any development, because I’m not a developer, I’m more an entrepreneur, and I really wanted something that would easy to use with my clients. And, yeah, I came across Ecwid, I was super enthusiastic about it, and I started helping entrepreneurs to get online with it. And they always had the same questions, and I don’t like repeating the same things so many times, so it’s like: “I’m going to start making YouTube videos!”

Jesse: So just turn on the camera, press “record,” and yeah, awesome!

Richard: You hit the whole rinse and repeat thing, you rinse and they can repeat over and over on their own. That’s great, good idea.

Jesse: So, Daniella, you mentioned that you found Ecwid several years ago. So, since I handle the marketing, how did you find Ecwid, what did you search for?

Daniella: Yeah, that’s a good question. I was actually part of a business incubator. Actually, I’m still there now. And I was talking to a couple entrepreneurs there, and I was asking, you know, what should I do, I was making an e-commerce platform. I was looking to make something kind of along the line of an eBay and sense that people could come on, have their own store and manage their store themselves, within a marketplace. And I was talking to people, should I go with Magento, should I go with all these other solutions that exist. And one guy said: “Have you heard of Ecwid?” I hadn’t, so I looked it up, and that’s one I discovered the product.

Jesse: Awesome. Thank you, to whoever that guy was.

Richard: Is he still in incubator?

Daniella: Yes, he is still actually.

Richard: So thank you, for real.

Jesse: Yeah, absolutely. Word in the mouth is the best advertising. So, I’m glad that he loved it and gave you the advice. So, that was a couple of years ago, when do you think you started using Ecwid?

Daniella: At that time, back in 2015, I started helping people to get online with it and then now I have my own Ecwid store too, so I use it for myself.

Jesse: Got it, so 2015. so not even that long ago, really, so, awesome, but you had several years, how many client websites have you worked on?

Daniella: Yeah, since then, I’ve helped — at least actual people that I worked with directly — about fifty entrepreneurs, to make their stores online, it’s so easy and so quick to get online, that it’s been easy for me to help fifty people directly. But I know that from my YouTube videos I’ve helped many other people, and sometimes it gets questions like: “Hey, Daniella, I really like how you are explaining this, could you help me with this and that?” Those I get a couple every week that coming here and there.

Jesse: Perfect. So, I mean, that’s a pretty good segue, you’ve helped all these people on YouTube, and now we’re taking that it’s pretty to a wider audience via the podcast. So, perfect.

Daniella: So happy to be part of that.

Richard: Yeah, good stuff. And it’s a part of the whole philosophy too. I mean, you’re solving your own problem at first, right. You’re an entrepreneur, you’re an action taker, you went to this business group. And someone told you about it, next thing you on the own it, here we are two years later, you’ve got fifty stores that you’re working with people and lot of that spread because you realized, you need to keep the things that were easy easy, right.

Because if you’re an entrepreneur, there’s always an endless number of things that you need to do. And so, these little things that you are doing to solve it, like, first picking a good cart to work with it, that was easy to work with, was one, second, you realized they’re all asking the same questions and you could answer those in a video, so you could get back to work. Because I think if you had to keep answering all those videos, or all those questions all the time, you could never get to the fifty stores, right.

Daniella: No, definitely not.

Richard: So you’re solving your own problems and keeping this processes as easy and free flow. Sounds to me, to be a big part of what’s helped you get these many customers, aside from having an obviously bubbly vivacious attitude. Like, that doesn’t hurt any. Do you think that kind of happen and you’re solving your own problems is led you to have these many stores or you just, do you want more? Can you handle more?

Daniella: Thank you. I mean, Ecwid is an excellent product so it’s been easy to just be like “Hey, look at this” and it’s a user-friendly, so it’s been very easy to find people, who had the issues, such as, you know, a lot of the solutions take fees on their sales, or those barriers to entry, like hosting and set up the installations, and you need a developer. All these things entrepreneurs do not want to do it, and neither do I, and yeah, Ecwid was easy to find those people to get them online, so it’s been pretty easy, thanks to the product, yeah.

Jesse: Good, good. I mean, I didn’t prompt you to say that or paid you for those words. So, I promise (laughing). Yeah, when you started with these clients, Ecwid could be put on a lot of different platforms, we usually use Ecwid with WordPress, or what was the other platforms that you are working with generally?

Daniella: Back when I was doing my own project, I was figuring out how I could get all of those stores into the same platform. I started using WordPress, and it was very easy just to add an Ecwid store to a WordPress page, and there you go ahead a platform with a bunch of Ecwid stores on it, that was managed by individual users, so it was very easy to set that up.

Jesse: Sure, still, your clients can still, if they want to create a blog post on WordPress, it’s already right there, they have access, they don’t need to ask you, they could just do it.

Daniella: Yeah, I love optimizing things and if you are booking an independent and own those things, because of a side note. Some people contact me, they’re asking if I’m in a web agency or things like that, and I’m really a freelancer and an entrepreneur. My true belief is that your website, your domain name, all that stuff, your store, your online store for entrepreneur those things, they asserts, they belong to their companies. And I don’t like taking those things, and contrary to some of that agencies, I have the philosophy to teach people so they can be independent and manage things on their own.

So when I started creating the platform using WordPress, there are a bit of a learning groups, I did have to teach people a little bit how to use that, but if some people wanted to independent on their own, have their own store and website, that they could manage very easily, I’d usually worked for them, and if they were local too. I’d usually directed them to WIX, which is also very easy to set up Ecwid within weeks, probably two platforms that I worked with the most so far.

Jesse: Sure. So if they were a little bit more technical and had some trumps, maybe WordPress, but if it’s just going to be, maybe the easier option might be weeks for some people. Was your thought?

Daniella: Yeah.

Jesse: Cool. Well, Daniella, I mean want to help you with your sharing of knowledge in teaching, so, let’s talk about the first tip you want to share with the audience about converting abandoned carts. Let’s break that down into, you know, I know what that means and Rich does, but for the people, that might not know what we’re talking about. What exactly are abandoned carts?

Daniella: Sure, yeah. Abandoned carts are pretty much a cart that your client started, they put a couple products in the virtual cart, and then they started the checkout process, but then they never finished it for some reason, they just didn’t completed their order. Sometimes it’s a lack of time, sometimes there’s a technical issue, for example, I’ve already seen that PayPal timeout and the people have to come back later on to do it, so there are multiple reasons why, but the first time I noticed that was actually in 2015. I had a client, who had $400 of abandoned carts, just sitting on the account, and I was like: “Hey, this is $400 just sitting there, that you can convert easily.” And he was like: “Oh, what’s that?”
So, I showed him how to set it up, back then you have to do it manually, so you just have to send an email, but recently I could come up with the really cool feature, you could automatically send your customers an email after they abandoned their cart. So two hours later an email can automatically go out to remind them that they have an abandoned cart and that they could come back to their order and complete it if they wish.

Jesse: Awesome. So you have helped that cliented a particular, you helped him to set up his process, you know, and yeah, you’re right, so Ecwid did make it automated now. You know, how hard is it to set up one of these…

Richard: Wait, wait, wait. Before we go on that, I’m interested how much of $400 did he convert, when he did it?

Daniella: Yeah, it’s actually interesting, I saw that Ecwid released a statistic that 15% of abandoned carts are usually processed, and that’s exactly what I observed, about 15% of his $400 that was converted.

Richard: Nice, so it worth this time.

Daniella: Absolutely, yeah. And now, well, to answer Jesse’s question that he started, I think he was asking, how hard it is to set that up with the abandoned cart automation now. It’s literally a click of a button.

Richard: So, if you made, you know, $50 back in a click of a button time, that’s a nice per hour rate.

Daniella: Absolutely. It’s not complicated at all.

Jesse: Wow, so, I mean, I work at Ecwid, I didn’t realize what’s that easy. So, basically, most merchants potentially have some money just sitting there, where you go into the abandoned cart section to set up the email. Did you customize an email for clients now, or it’s like it’s just ready to go up a push of a button?

Daniella: Ecwid already offers a customised message within the, when you go to the abandoned cart section, and you click on that to open that automation you click “OK” I’d like to activate that automation, there is a pop up, you can change the message, that’s there by default. You can customize it with your own information if you wish, or you could leave it the way it is.

Honestly, I usually leave for the way it is, I was going to modify, but it’s perfect, it’s pretty straightforward, it’s like: “Hey. We noticed that you placed an order up for this product” (with the product usually named) and, you know, you could be like: “If you have any questions, or need assistance, we’re here for you, and here’s the link, if you would like to complete your order.” So, that’s the most important thing is there by default.

Richard: I’m interested, two hours sounds like a perfect demand of time. Did you choose that time or there are available times you can send it within there? Or do they just know that a multiple time in Ecwid?

Daniella: Yeah, I think that time is set by Ecwid. I didn’t see any places where you can edit it, so.

Richard: Two hours is perfect. I just wanted to know because I didn’t know either that was that easy and sounds like: “Wow, someone was thinking ahead, like, let’s just put this optimal time, let’s make it super easy, a click of a button.” It would almost be silly for someone that’s hearing it right now, that owns an Ecwid store to not go right into their store, and walk through this. I wish I do a whole another this podcast specifically to walk someone through. Could you walk through, like is there a way you could do it right now in a few seconds or do you have a store or something there?

Daniella: Sure, I could do it really quickly actually from memory. I know the interface pretty well.

Richard: You’ve worked with fifty stores, you probably have done this a couple times now.

Daniella: I’m actually going to check just to make sure real quick. Because I know, there’s been a couple updates to the Ecwid interface recently, some really cool new things that Ecwid is releasing, and some of the options have been changed places, so I just want to make sure I…

Richard: Alright. Let’s go ahead and talk more about it. I mean, if you could do it on the background and if you find out, that’s fine, but if not, we can keep just talking about abandoned carts in general. So, to your point, are you found it?

Daniella: Got it!

Richard: Alright! So, go ahead.

Daniella: The user would go to “My Sales” and then click on “Abandoned Carts,” and then read at the bottom of the page, it says “Recover abandoned carts automatically”, just click on “Enable” and it’s done.

Richard: Well, and you’re now making two thousand dollars an hour! As long as you have four hundred dollars at least to your cart. Yeah, that’s funny.

Jesse: Yeah, so, I mean, so if I’m a merchant and I’m listening, this is your commute, you know, pullover, take on this not, this is just a…

Richard: Super easy tip, yeah.

Jesse: Do not drive and log into your Control panel, you know, but yeah. A super easy thing to turn on, you are going to start sending emails to customers immediately, that put stuff in your cart and then left the process. Everybody does this, this is not a spammy tactic, you can be kind of fun with the emails, you know, like, depending on your product, if you have a boutique, you know, “Hey, looks like you ran at the front door, and you left this bag behind, you know, chasing you down the sidewalk with a special deal” There are always to be creative, even if it sounds maybe a little cheesy. There are always ways to make fun.

Richard: It wasn’t horrible, I mean, you are trying to be fun, and you did there on the fly. That was actually not bad (laughing).

Jesse: There are no notes here, guys. We’re doing it live. So, I mean, Daniella, any other thoughts on abandoned carts, that you’ve set up for your clients, that you would like to share?

Daniella: No, but I definitely recommend that the customers use this option, it’s there, and it works, so, definitely activate that if you can.

Jesse: Awesome, perfect tip.

Richard: So, what were, so you’ve had this frequently ask questions, you started making this videos, other than abandoned carts, what was another, what was another thing that someone could take advantage of, a tip and/or a frequently ask question?

Daniella: Sure, yeah. Another thing, people usually ask about, was coupon codes, how to set them up, how they work, all those things.

Jesse: For people that haven’t seen this since the Ecwid control panel, you know, this is basically a way to send an email to customers, you know: “Hey, we’re having a sale, what’s the holiday that’s coming up, do you need to clean some inventory.” Essentially open up your own inbox and see all the emails that you’re getting from all the e-commerce companies and you can borrow those ideas, and coupon codes are what you do, that’s the mechanics to actually to make this work

Richard: Did you see anything, when you were working, because you have a lot of clients and so I’m interested in that merchants, that’s listening and wondering what do you offer? You don’t want to give away, you have a margin that you work with, do you start with the small number, like five dollars off and worked it up for ten, couple days later, like, do you have some sort of thing that you saw, when you were working with coupon codes across various merchants, that you would get different results?

Daniella: Within my merchants or me as a Daniella.io?

Richard: All you, right, because you’re sounds like, you are e-commerce too, so just in general, when you’re using coupon codes, what’s a good way for you too, what did you say in your video? Other then other set it up, like, what do you think someone should be doing when they set up their coupon codes inside Ecwid, we’ll put in links to YouTube or let people know to follow you more, but what would you say to them as far as when trying to figure it out how much?

Daniella: Okay. So, usually a good practice is to have some indication as to where and how the person got the coupon code within the code, or at least within Ecwid, at least have some kind of note somewhere as to did I give it away in person, did this person use this code when came to an event that I intended. Was it through networking, was it at the conference that I gave at the end? There was a conference when I gave off coupon codes, and then the people used the codes they came through the conference. Was it in the trade show, in-store, online, for example?

The reason for that is to understand where your best sales channels are. Because if you know that at the conference there are fifty people that use your coupon code in your store, it was another that worked there. And maybe you want to go back to that conference next year because it was because it’s something that worked for you, your marketing and the coupon code had return on investment. So, there’s that a good practice to have some kind of education, so it could be, for example, you name your coupon code “TRADESHOW”.

Richard: It completely makes sense, though, like you would name it what it is if you’re going to internet retailer or something.

Jesse: Or, like, if you’re going to the farmers market, and you’re putting up your tent and your table there, and you’re giving people customers, like, all that farmers market April 21, like, you know, give yourself some tip for later, that they’re like: “What the heck this Ecwid coupon code for, oh, yeah, yeah we read a trade show, or this was a promo that I did for Father’s day.”

Richard: I love that idea, plus you can segment now, so, when you’re putting that coupon code together, that answers kind of whatever it’s going when you’re working with the margins. You know how much that trade show cost, you know what type of client, you’re going to possibly get out of that trade show, it’s different for different merchants, but no, that’s a great idea to name it, the actual event, so it’s probably clear in their mind too, also, what does this coupon code for, again? You know, you could almost name it within that, you know, “SPRING50” for some sort of fifty per cent off for spring sale or something too, so, make sense.

Daniella: Absolutely, and I guess, in the world that we are on today, people think of coupon codes online a lot, they be like: “Okay, we get that coupon code in podcast and emails, articles and blogs, and you’re getting in your inbox,” but don’t forget to use them in person still, like a, in conferences and trade shows, as a sign-off after you’re giving a whole bunch of free content, it’s always good too, within the farmers market, why not. You can give a coupon code and say: “Hey, use this in my online store,” it’s a good way to get people, that are your physical customers to come online and purchase from you in your online store.

Jesse: For sure. So, Daniella, I mean, there is a lot of ways to use coupons, you know, can you give us a couple examples, that you would, you know, advise your clients to use them, like, when would you use a promo?

Daniella: You can use them to reward loyal customers, I really like that, particularly, because I don’t know, sometimes you’ve been a customer for a company for many years and you, I don’t know, talked about it to many, many people. And you never feel like the company thought of you, it’s cool to get a coupon code from a company that you really, really love and you could share it with other people or something like that. It’s a good way also to encouraging word of mouth. So, yeah, I’m rewarding loyal customers a one way.

Jesse: Well, I mean, with that too, like, this is, for e-commerce owners out there, I really hope you’re grabbing emails, so when you make a sale you definitely should be storing those emails somewhere. And then, you know, if you need a reason, maybe you need to place the inventory, you could always make a sale to your list, like, that the easiest money in e-commerce is repeat sale to your existing customer list. And, you know, you’re not paying for the marketing, so if you paid for the marketing to get them at the first time, this is essentially free, so, do not be afraid to send promotional emails to your existing customer base, not maybe everyday, take it easy, but don’t be afraid to do it.

Daniella: Absolutely, yeah.

Richard: To your point there though, with the loyal customers. I really love that idea and I’ve done it a few times with various customers, clients of mine as well. What’s really worked very well is what appears to be random too, right. Jesse’s point is a hundred percent correct, don’t be afraid to market to your list, but since we’re talking right now about rewarding a loyal customer, kind of, if it doesn’t feel, like marketing to them, but actually it’s not the same, like, it’s because it spring, or it’s because it’s Christmas, or it’s because of this, but it just really feels, because you are thankful for them being your customer, I’ve seen an event have a larger lift, I don’t know, if you’ve ever tried something like that that usually goes around the holiday and you’re trying to do your promotion at the same time, but one of your input if you’ve ever tried something like that, Daniella, do you have any thoughts on that?

Daniella: I haven’t tried it, but I definitely have a couple companies that I really, really like and, yeah, I don’t know, I feel like sometimes you get that question “How likely are you to refer to this company”, I think it’s the NPS — Net Promoter Score. If you got a 10 on 10 I want to reward those customers, I really want to, like: “Hey, thank you so much for being so enthusiastic about our company for referring it to your friends, like, here’s a coupon code if you want to share it with your friends, the next people that you were referring to.” I think that’s a really good idea, I haven’t seen it implemented towards me or my customers, I haven’t seen them implemented it either, but I think it’s a really cool idea and I definitely want to try it with some clients in the future.

Jesse: For sure. Actually, I wanted to add it to Daniella, I know these are your tips, but I want to add one to, I’ve personally used them on my own business to basically solve customer service problems. So, if somebody’s calling in about a delivery problem, you know, “this was late”, “I expected it to be different”, etc., like whatever the reason is, it’s very easy to give them a coupon code for a future order, and that coupon might be a little bigger than you would like to give if you were giving them a refund, because they basically have to order again in order to use that coupon. So, I’ve seen that used very effectively to diffuse difficult customers. They might start out yelling at you on the phone, but by the end, you know, a $50 or $100 gift certificate, you know, and they’re smiling and telling their friends about it at the end of the call.

Daniella: That’s a great idea, yeah for sure, yeah.

Jesse: Daniella, your next step, what is your next tip on coupons?

Daniella: On coupons, well another thing you can use them for is, like I was saying before, encourage offline buyers to purchase online. So, you’re saying, I hope that you guys e-commerce owners out there, store owners out there are taking your customers emails.

Of course you probably do it online, right when they’re placing an order, but also in person. Some people will say NO, and that’s okay, but if you can get their emails in person from your physical customers if you own a brick-and-mortar store, and then offer them coupon code, if they make their first purchase online, it can be great. Some people actually make it higher return on investment through online sales than in-store sales, if you’re one of those people who want to encourage your physical buyers to purchase online, using coupon codes and getting their emails for coupons is a good way to do it.

Jesse: Absolutely.

Richard: That’s great, you can probably use it both ways too, I’m sure, right, like, you have some sort of driving them from offline to online, just getting a bounce around in either of your ecosystems going to probably make a stick your customer. I mean, you’re obviously not going to sell pizza online too, but, right, if there was something where “Hey, print this out and come in or just show us on your phone come in the store, come into the restaurant, coming to whatever it is”, you could do this both ways, sounds like.

Daniella: Definitely. Yeah, that’s great.

Jesse: Yeah, so, Daniella, because you’re the YouTube “how to” specialist here, can you give a quick rundown of where you would go inside the control panel?

Daniella: Absolutely. So, if you’re in the Ecwid control panel and you’re not driving right now, right…

Richard: Maybe we should put time stamps for this.

Daniella: You go to “Discounts” and then you can create a discount coupon. So, you add a new coupon, I might have a video on my YouTube channel, it goes in detail on this, because it’s a little complex in the sense that very easy to create a coupon code, but there’s a little button called “No limits” and that offers an extensive array of, like, possibilities.

Richard: You mean, like, “no limits” on the possibilities? Wow, so I was thinking there.

Daniella: I didn’t think of that, but it’s really good. Unlimited possibilities with this button you can apply your coupon code to a subtotal on all orders, or you can limit it per category, per product, it could be a one-time use or more than one use.

Jesse: What about shipping? Can we do free shipping with that?

Daniella: Definitely, yeah, absolutely.

Jesse: Okay. So basically just get creative and get in there and start to see, like, you want percentage off, dollars off, certain products, maybe there’s a product you do have too much of and you want to clear it out, you know, like. So, if you can think about it and you see all the emails you get in your inbox, you can replicate that inside of Ecwid, it doesn’t take that long, and I think we’ve come to a point in the world now that people expect coupons. So, if you’ve bought from a place, you expect of it eventually to get an email from them to check in, and coupons really come a part of that transaction.

Daniella: Definitely.

Richard: Oh, that’s awesome. Did you or do you use coupons much in your e-commerce and what is your e-commerce store yourself?

Daniella: It’s Daniella.io/store. Pretty much in my store, I have Ecwid e-books. Couple e-books that I wrote for Ecwid because I really like the product and I had a whole bunch of ideas, so, it’s just a couple of e-books that are close to the business.

Richard: Have you found out after how many downloads of these e-books does it turn into a client? You don’t have to answer that, I’m just messing with you, I’m a marketer too, so, I just constantly I could go down so many paths, I got to keep it on track here, I’ve got to keep it on track.

What’s another one of the things that come up in the how-to videos that you have as far as, what people can do, unique ways to maybe they’ve gotten to the store, you’ve sold a product or they’re about ready to sell a product, is there a way to maybe increase the average order or get a bigger sale out of presenting things in a different way? Do you have any tips or anything come up with something like that?

Daniella: Yeah, definitely. There’s something that people don’t think about all the time, or they know of, or they’ve been they’ve already used, but they don’t offer in their own e-commerce, and that’s cross-selling, up-selling, and down selling or maybe they do it in the store in their brick-and-mortar store, but they don’t do it online. So, I could explain maybe this more about these things: cross-sell, up-sell and downsell.

Richard: Yeah, let’s hear it, sounds good.

Daniella: Okay, well, cross-selling is a way to increase your revenue but at the same time you want to offer good service. So, a couple examples of that are Amazon’s customers who purchased A also purchase B, for example, I just bought a new mic for my recordings, I hope the sound will improve on my recordings, thanks to this, and I bought it on Amazon, and when I purchased it, they offered to get the arm with it which is great, because I needed something to prop it up on my desk and I didn’t think about it when I was buying the mic. So, it really helped me, and Amazon made this cross-sale pretty easily, because it’s something that I needed with Mike I was buying, so.

Jesse: Awesome. And so, Ecwid merchants actually had that same ability to set up that same, you know, upsell opportunity?

Daniella: Absolutely. It’s really not hard to set up within Ecwid. Did you guys want me to go into how to do that within Ecwid?

Richard: No, you could still just talk about a little bit more about cross-sells in general and then will maybe pop down to see if it’s pretty easy to do over a podcast, if not, we can always go into detail later and do some of our webinars, so.

In general, I’m just wondering how people would do this, what should they be thinking about when they’re doing these cross sales, I mean, that’s obvious, but not so obvious, right. Another one, a friend of ours that Jesse and I that we used to work with and he still has an e-commerce store, he used videos a lot, he did iPhone parts and when he would do a video on how to replace a part, then he would also show other things that you might need, like: “Oh, if you’re going to replace this part you’re going to need this tool, and you’re going to need this magnifying glass to see that small part,” or whatever and so. It’s fascinating to me how much you can potentially increase that average order value if you really think about the customer experience, where the customers are, what they’re really doing and even though you used Amazon as an example there, into Jesse’s point Ecwid could do this. It’s in you know of your customers, even though their machine algorithms are good. Watch, you are going to get things for mics for the next 3 weeks, although you already bought the damn mic, right. So, we can actually do better than Amazon, when we get really think out the customer path, because we know them, we talk more, you know, they’re great, and there are behemoth and you know the whole another segment we should probably talk about, you should probably have that store as well. But, just because of their sheer size, but it for this being able to control in your Ecwid store and knowing your customer and your customer’s journey, that could be a very powerful way to up the average order value.

Daniella: Absolutely. There’s a couple questions that, like, listeners can ask themselves to help them to figure out what they could cross-sell together if they weren’t, for example, could you sell your product with a service? For example, if you have a product that needs a repair service, or a warranty or a guarantee, those are easy cross-sells. Also, does it need some other product to work, for example, you are giving the iPhone; definitely I’ve already had that experience myself where I was going to fix an iPhone, but I didn’t have the tools to do it. So, if I had seen a cross-sale that was offering me those tools, I would have got them for sure.

Richard: Shit, we should have you go to his site.

Jesse: Whoever said that store of wasn’t thinking they yet to think? What do people need as soon as they buy it?

Richard: I’m surprised, If you had done a YouTube video search first on how to do it, you probably would have found this, but you’re entrepreneur going for it on your own.

Daniella: That’s it I wanted to get it done. Anyway, but yeah, they’re also, I don’t know, if the listeners, if they have e-goods, that’s another way of cross-selling if you want to offer a downloadable product with what you’re selling, it’s another way of making sure that your customers have a good experience with the product sometimes.

Richard: That’s a great idea there because you got an e-book and now you give even hyperlinks in their back for other products and/or services in your store in the e-book.

Daniella: Yeah.

Jesse: And you have a pretty decent margin on an e-book as well, so you get to keep that money. So who are other examples of sellers that should think about it, you know, an up-sell, cross-sell?

Daniella: Actually I had one client recently who is selling candle holders online, it’s a thing that you put waxing, and it makes a room smell really nice. I’m sorry I only know the word in French for it, but I’m not going to say it.

Jesse: We can be bilingual there, go for the French word.

Daniella: I worked with her in French, but… She just wanted to make sure that her customers knew that they needed a special wax for it to work correctly, right. So, she was like: “I want to offer a cross-sell, but I want to make sure that my client takes action and say no I don’t need it if they don’t need it, or ‘yes I do, I don’t’ have any in a home”. Ecwid didn’t offer that specifically. You couldn’t cross-sell products easily you be, like: “Hey, do you want to buy this with that?” It’s not mandatory, and in that case, we just made an option, and we made sure that the person has to take action on that to cross-sell. So it’s really cool that you can do, just you know, “Those who purchase A also purchase B, are you interested?” regular cross-sell, or “Hey, do you want this product?” and that’s more of a mandatory cross-sell when they actually have to say yes or no.

Jesse: Got it. Okay, then you’re covered, the customer had the option, they had to actually click something in order to say no.

Daniella: Aha. And that is important for some other clients I worked with, who are selling batteries. They were selling it in a brick-and-mortar store, but they have the possibility of purchasing online, and for legal reasons, the person actually had to say: “Yes, I heard that I need this product, but I don’t want it.” So, sometimes there are constraints that make you say yes or no, and you have a legal proof like the person said no, they didn’t want to buy it with it. So, it depends on the cases.

Jesse: Perfect, this case. Yeah, So, I think it’s kind of to every merchant out there to think about, you know, “Okay, the products I’m selling, is there something I tell them in the product description, like, oh yeah you’re going to buy this,” and then you need this. If you’re not selling those items, you’re definitely leaving money on the table, you don’t want to tell them to go to Amazon.

Daniella: No.

Jesse: Cool, so, you know, any other ideas on cross-sells?

Daniella: Yeah, one idea. Always make sure that your cross-sells are pertinent. I’ve seen some clients do some cross-sells that just don’t make sense. Cross-selling is a great tool, but make sure that what you’re offering does go with the other thing, I mean that the two items should go together or three or whatever, as many items are you’re cross-selling, but it should make sense.

Jesse: Okay, perfect.

Daniella: Like, don’t cross-sell a banana with the bike, like, you know, you want to cross-sell a bike with a helmet, that makes sense.

Richard: I was going to date myself, we used to have banana seats on our bikes.

Daniella: Banana seat, okay, that’s a good cross-sell! Banana seat.

Richard: So, as far as an up-sell in a scenario it was, some people might be thinking that you know, that sounds very similar. What is the difference between an upsell and a cross-sell?

Daniella: Yep, cross-selling is more of a suggestion, unless you’re in the case where you know, you’ll have to ask the client if they want the product but, up so is more where, you know, the customer is interested in the product, but they might be interested in something as a little bit higher quality or higher perceived value.

If we look at iPhones, for example, someone’s purchasing an iPhone and they could buy the latest iPhone, but they’re still the one that they’re buying the older version, maybe you want to up-sell, and you want to try to sell them the better version one, and they can compare them and have a look and see, you know what I mean, it’s offering, you know, the higher-end product and letting the client decide if they would rather have that one.

Richard: Is that usually happening, like, they put it in their cart and then you’re trying to do it after they’ve put it in the cart, or what exactly, where is that happening for them, how are they experiencing it?

Daniella: So within Ecwid for the clients that I have, we’ve mostly done it within the description. So it would be in the part description you just say: “Hey, if you are interested in the product that, you know, higher-end or,” we used a better word than what I just said.

Richard: “If you don’t want that scrummy product…”

Daniella: No, wouldn’t say that, but that word that correctly, but you would link to this product, the other product that can have a look at. And explain why maybe that one would be a better choice, it’s always customer service, if you want to offer good service, maybe that product actually is better, the one that they’re looking at, you know, little bit cheaper, might not last as long, but it’s still a good product, but you still want just to see if they want to go towards the higher-end products.

Richard: Yeah, I’m sure there is always a percentage of your market, we’ve a kind of experienced in working with different clients and on their own stores, that they’re just some clients, if you let him know there’s something more high-end, there’s just going to be a percentage that will always take it, I can’t guarantee it’s going to be a large percentage but they’ll be some percentage of your customers that will take the higher-end offer.

Daniella: Up-selling can be going for a higher-end product, but it can also be, you know like, for example, buy 2 get 1 free, you’re up-selling, because the person is going to buy two, but they’re also going to get another one, or they’re going to buy one, maybe they’re thinking of buying one, but now they’re going to buy 2 to get 1 free.

Richard: That’s actually a good question, I’ve never really asked you that just is and maybe you know, like say someone was doing a book launch, could you set it up where it’s like, buy one, buy three, buy five, you know, to where you can kind of have these different packages to almost to encourage them between the lines, like, buy some for your whole family for. I’m putting you on the spot here because I have no idea, I could dive in and find out pretty quick, but have you ever seen anything like that or?

Daniella: Honestly, I haven’t set it up in Ecwid, but if I had to think of a quick workaround, I know that you could offer a coupon code, so, for example, if you put that offer on, if you went to the “No Limits” option, and then you made that offer on specific products, and then you made the subtotal that had to be a certain amount, and the person used the coupon code in which case to be able to use the offer, or if it’s buying 2 get 1 free, I guess, it’s a version of buy 2, you just send him one free, you don’t even have to set up anything in Ecwid for that.

Jesse: For sure, I mean, so that’s one way to do it, I think another way, that’s used commonly is, you know, people need to hit a certain threshold, right. So, you know: “Hey, spend $100 and get $10 off or spend a $150 and get free shipping.” So, there are several ways that you can incorporate your upselling there, and there are couple ways to do it. But definitely a lot of terms that by hitting a certain threshold, so people need to spend more money at the store.

Daniella: Yeah, good call, yeah.

Richard: I can imagine too, like at checkout, that would be a great spot also there oh and maybe the up-sell shortens the time frame for them to be able to, you know, “we’ll assemble it for you” or whatever the thing is, right. Who knows what someone’s business is that it’s listening right now. But once they’re in there, there might be some what’s that phrase again, where are you it’s cheap, it’s fast, and it’s good you get a pick too? So, it’s like, maybe, the up-sell is, like: “Oh, you got it,”you know, fast and or you got it good and cheap, but, you know, you can help sell the faster or something like that, you know what I mean? Not necessarily shipping it faster, but you don’t have to be a service business or something probably to take advantage of that. So you were also mentioning down-sales — what exactly is that?

Daniella: That’s kind of the opposite of up-selling in a sense that the person’s looking at the mid-product at a mid-market product and maybe that customer would actually want the lower-end product. So, you have to know your customer personas pretty well to be able to gage this to apply it well to your products. But sometimes if you notice, for example, there’s a couple indicators that can show you that you should be down-selling, for example, if you notice that your customers are leaving your online store without purchasing at a specific product they always leave on that product, they never purchase it, maybe you could, you know, have a pop-up that comes up and say: ‘Hey, you know, if you buy this other product, that’s lower perceived value, still a good product, but you know, a little bit less expensive, maybe doesn’t have as many options and features on it, maybe you’ll be able to catch sales, before they leave your store with that pop up so.

Richard: Man, you just gave me a great idea. I think either that or I’m just dreaming. We’re such a comparative species, that if you could, as long as you’re not misleading and you actually had a real product you were trying to sell for a high price, and you knew, that most people weren’t going to be able to afford that product, and you’re almost doing it like it’s a car commercial during the Super Bowl, and you see that lease, and it’s for that great price, but then in the fine print you’re like: ‘That’s not the one that shown in the picture though.’

I’m not necessarily saying to be misleading, because they’re not either, you got a limited amount of time, and we’re trying to catch people’s attention. So what I really mean by this is if you had a real product there, and you knew they aspire to get to that, the down-sell could be: ‘Hey, you not quite there yet, or how about this,’ and almost of a psychological play in being transparent, like: ‘Hey, you might not be able to afford this yet, but you aspire to do that how about this one, you know, I like an entry-level version of that high-end product.’
And then they don’t feel like: ‘I’m buying a low-end product,’ it’s like we came you presented in such a way where it’s almost you giving them training wheels to get to that higher-end product.

Daniella: Yeah, for sure, like of being something that works too.

Jesse: I think this is Elon Musk’s idea here, this is the Tesla 3.

Richard: ‘I know you want the Tesla S, but that’s a lot of money. Here is the Tesla 3, it looks kind of the same, but a little smaller…’

Richard: ‘But for those who want a rocket…

Jesse: You’ve got the up-sell and down-sells covered, I mean that’s a pretty wide range there from trips to the Moon down to a, call that an entry-level car.

Richard: That’s hilarious!

Daniella: If you wanted to bring it to like, our listeners who maybe don’t have Teslas to offer. One thing I saw was really cool, was, I had one customer selling music, and they wanted, they notice that like CDs sometimes, you know, people don’t use CDs anymore these days, and you have to ship it in the physical product. And they decided to down-sell with a pop-up using downloadable music, he’s like: ‘Okay, I’m just going to let them be able to download it. I don’t have to ship anything so I can lower the cost.’ And yeah, it was an easy down-sell for him he didn’t want to offer it as a specific, like the front right up until a front product, that rather people purchase the CD, but at the end of the exit he has a possibility of buying the downloadable files instead.

Jesse: So he actually used an exit pop-up, you can you describe what an exit pop-in is for the audience?

Daniella: it’s it’s a pop-up that comes on your screen when at a certain point which you can configure usually. And yeah, you have to take action on your other days to close it either, you have to say okay, there’s some kind of action that you have to take. Sometimes it can be to provide email, here’s another offer there’s a couple of things, maybe you guys might have better wording on that for me.

Jesse: There are ways to do it. Okay, it’s the annoying pop-ups that everybody hates, but they do work, and I think there’s, i’m pretty sure there is it an app inside of Ecwid that does that, so we’ll do a little more research and put that in the show notes.

Richard: Yeah and I’m about to leave anyway, so.

Jesse: See you later, here’s a pop-up, sorry.

Richard: So there was you’re doing all this on YouTube, and you got you have all this exposure, you have all these other clients, that you’ve been working with. I’m sure there are times when you just, like in the cross-sell, you see certain products that would work well with another product.

I know Ecwid has a feature and you can help me come up with the name of it is, I can’t remember exactly what it’s called, but say you have an audience, and you want to feature your product in front of someone else’s audience, it is a good fit for that there’s a widget or something that helps you sell on partner sites, like something like that, like, say someone is just. How does that work? First, do you know what I’m talking about?

Daniella

Richard: Awesome, because I’m almost positive when we talked a while back you are saying that you are doing this with what I’m asking so. One, is there a certain name for that widget and I’m sure we could do a whole podcast on, this so let’s try to keep it a little high-level, what exactly can someone do to take advantage of someone else’s audience keeping this really easy within Ecwid, selling it potentially on other people sites and what does that look like?

Daniella: Absolutely, okay, this is one of the reasons why I came with Ecwid initially, I was looking for a solution that can integrate, like, you can have more than one store on a website. In the case of our listeners maybe they want to add their store to a partner site, then maybe work with a blogger, and they want their store to be on that blogger site, or within a blog post. The idea’s that, you can take your Ecwid store and put it anywhere you want online, and you can manage everything in your Control panel. So you could have your sore on, I don’t know, a hundred websites, but you’re still managing everything in one spot, that’s an incredible opportunity, and it’s something I really love are I feel like a lot of people don’t know if that Ecwid is capable of doing this so, it’s definitely something super enthusiastic about talking about obviously.

Richard: Yeah! Trying to keep it super high-level, but just one or two questions here, because we definitely should go deep on this at one of these days. How does that work like this, does that person can do the other, say Jesse and I, let’s use us an example. I have something that I want to sell on Jesse’s site. Does Jesse manage that store, do I give him a piece of code, how does that work. I can obviously just go put it on a bunch of sites, and no one knows so.

Daniella: Of course the person has the consent to.You can’t just, like through your store anywhere.

Richard: However we wish we could.

Daniella: Only on certain places, so make sure that you’re not putting your site on whatever. So in your case either you can give Jesse one product so you can give him a piece of code, it’s just a piece of code, that you sent him it’s easy that, all I have to do is copy paste it, there’s no programming, nothing it could be any platform, it could be WordPress, Wix, custom HTML — doesn’t matter. So you could send the code for just one product, or you can send the code to your entire store. I can explain where to find that in that Ecwid, but the basis of it, it’s as easy as that. He just takes that piece of code, paste it to his site, and that’s it will anyone can purchase from your store that is now on Jesse’s site.

Richard: And in Ecwid is it that tracking that that’s coming from Jesse’s side or do some sort of, like your coupon code and outer some way you name that product a little different on his store? So you would know where it’s coming from or some sort of affiliate setup? I know that’s a bunch of questions in one question, but you get where I’m coming from like, how would you know where that’s coming from?

Daniella: I have so many ideas to answer your question too.

Richard: So it does sound like we should do a full-blown webinar, another podcast on this particular thing. Give me your initial thoughts of that and because we don’t want to keep you all day, it’s not necessarily that easy. I’m sure even though pretty easy with Ecwid to run 50 stores so that’s the first example of something you think and we’ll leave it at that.

Daniella: I must admit though I have had questions about how to track this the most optimal, so maybe if we do another podcast on this in the future we can make sure that we give them the best information for how to track that, but I know that there are two options that integrate with Ecwid to be able to track a reseller’s so you could have a tracking code with an external third-party plugin that works with Ecwid plugin. There’s two of them that I know that work with Ecwid. I haven’t tested it though, so.

Richard: Yeah we’ll do that, because this is fascinating like I could go I could literally talk all day about the possibilities with this and it sounds like you could too on just the ideas they started to come up, but I mean I wouldn’t want to blow everyone away too much, there are so many things that people, alright we covered three-four things people could do right now that could truly potentially move the needle today in their business pretty easy. So we’ll go deeper at another date on that, but that’s cool.

Jesse: Yes, I want to touch a little bit on the strategy there. That’s maybe a little more in-depth maybe a video is better for that, but I wanted to let every all the merchants think about their business and what’s the strategy behind it? Like if I sell a product and I read all these blogs about my industry, that might be an option, if you know the webmaster or somebody that works the business, the beginning of a partnership, begins right there. So you can have your store on that existing blog or forum. So, just wanted everybody to kind of expand their mind a little bit and thinks beyond just your own store. You can be on Facebook, you can be on multiple partners sites, you can be on social media, everywhere from your one store, so definitely think about that.

Daniella: Absolutely. I actually have a video that explains how to add an Ecwid store to any website, and I can be the basis for anyone actually I might have some customers who have taken that video and sent it to their partner so that they can follow the tutorial which is about 1 minute. And learn how to add the code to their site, so it’s super simple, it takes a minute but that resource’s there for you if you want to already test it out with a partner, just grab the link on YouTube and then put it in the notes on this podcast.

Richard: It sounds good, that’s a good idea.

Jesse: Yeah, great idea so will get done the show notes so people can dive deep a little bit more and I think this is a good time to bring you back and we’ll go more in-depth on this. So, yeah we can cover some great topics about coupons, we talked about upsells, cross-sells, abandoned carts and a lot of those strategies all work together. So, you know, if you’re using an abandoned cart, you should be put in a promo in there, you should be, you know, using cross-sells or up-sells, so definitely the tips come over together.

Daniella: Definitely.

Jesse: So, Daniella, I really appreciate having you on here today, where can people find out more about you?

Daniella: Yeah, on my website, so it’s Daniella.io. I if you want you can look for me on YouTube the same thing just search for Daniella.io. And yeah, I have an Ecwid an e-book containing 30 ways to increase your e-commerce revenue with tips like ones that we talked about today, and that’s available in Daniella.io/store. You know, as we talked to about offering the coupon code, you can get 15% off if use the promo code ‘PODCAST.’

Richard: Nice, they can see it in action.

Daniella: Exactly.

Jesse So you named it ‘PODCAST’, everybody. So when you see this coupon later, you know that you’re on, the customers came from podcasts are. So, awesome, timing together.

Richard: And, Daniella the multitasking entrepreneur probably created that on the fly, because it’s so easy while we were doing the podcast.

Daniella: Don’t tell them that! (laughing)

Jesse: Awesome, so yeah I hope those are a bunch of really good tips for merchants out there you know, listen to it again, check out the show notes if you want to see more information, YouTube videos, Daniela thanks for having you on.

Richard: Great to have you on, Daniella!

Daniella: Thank you it was a pleasure honestly, thank you!

Jesse: Okay this is Jesse Ness with Richard Otey on Ecwid E-commerce Show.