12 Posts of Christmas: Tip 6 Don’t forget the Batteries

As the parent of a boy that often gets electronic gizmos for gifts, my favorite gift-givers are those that are extra thoughtful and include whatever batteries the gift may require. There is a reason that batteries are often stocked in the checkout lanes—they are a nice way to provide a reminder to the buyer they may need batteries, and a great way to bump up the average order size.

You can do the same thing in your own checkout if you are a Merchant Standard or Merchant Professional account holder. These packages include the Cross-Sell feature where you can merchandise specific items in your shopping cart depending on the item the buyer has added to their cart. If you sell electronic goods, maybe you would cross-sell batteries (if you sell them) for items that require batteries.

You can choose a few different strategies depending on your buyers and the products your store sells. If you sell DVD camcorders for example, you may wish to cross-sell DVDs, memory cards, camera bags, or other accessories. The higher cost items can really boost your average order size but you may have to offer discounts or other incentives to convince buyers into adding these items on top of a high-ticket item; the Cross-sell features allows for both a dollar amount off or percentage discount. You can also try to convert lower cost items by cross-selling low-cost items and changing your cross-sell headline to something like “Don’t forget the stocking stuffers” (you can even add an image to appear before or after the text using HTML). You may even wish to review past orders to see which items if any are commonly purchased together. Whichever route you choose, try to figure out what items are the “batteries” for your type of products.

Learn more about the Cross-sell feature.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business