Best Cross-selling and Upselling Tips For Shopify Stores in 2025

Running a Shopify business means you have to constantly work on building your customer base.

Shopify merchants in 2025 are always striving to improve their bottom line, so it only seems right to want to improve the profitability of their business. 

Cross-selling and upselling strategies can help you do that by increasing your average order value. Increasing the average order value in your store can bring high organic traffic to your Shopify store.

As a matter of fact, many Shopify store owners, including those who are selling online, are putting a lot of effort into these strategies. 

You can focus all your effort on attracting customers to buy a product. But aren’t you kind of ignoring the people who just made a purchase from you? What about those who have been loyal to your brand for years?

Upselling and cross-selling are customer retention strategies that help overcome “the dip” and give your store a more sustainable sales growth. 

In this article, I will tell you how upselling and cross-selling can help your Shopify business reach new levels by turning 1-time customers into lifetime ones. 

Upselling and cross-selling are the two proven strategies in 2025 for both online and offline businesses.

What is Upselling?

Upselling is a sales technique that involves offering customers products or services that are more expensive than what they initially asked for. 

For example, if a customer comes into your business asking for a $50 pair of shoes, you could offer them an upgrade to a $60 pair of shoes with added benefits.

What is Cross-selling?

Cross-selling is another sales technique that involves offering customers additional products or services related to their original request. 

For example, if a customer comes into your business asking for a $50 pair of shoes, you could offer them an upgrade to include socks or shoe polish with a discount. 

Here are some tips for effectively upselling and cross-selling at your Shopify store:

Best Cross-selling &Upselling Tips for Shopify Stores

Identify the Right Customers

Before you start an upselling campaign, it’s important that you identify the right customers for it.

You want to target those who are likely to buy more than one product or service from your store or website during a single visit, such as people who come into your Shopify store and abandon their carts. 

The same applies if you are running a cross-selling campaign. Target customers who have already purchased from your store or abandoned their carts, so that they don’t think twice about buying another product from your store.

Do Your Research

When you are trying to sell something, you need to know what your customers want. This can be done by finding out their preferences or asking them directly. 

You can ask questions like “What other products have you been looking at?” or “What would you like to see us carry?”

With iCart, the best Shopify upsell app, you can create surveys in the cart itself to get answers to customer queries. 

The first step in upselling or cross-selling successfully is knowing what kind of products or services your customers will be interested in. Make sure you know what kind of things they typically buy from your business, as well as what kinds of things they might need but haven’t yet thought about buying from your business.

You will need information so that when to try upsell or cross-sell them on something new, you can make an educated guess about whether or not they will be interested.

Offer Discount

Offering customers a discount is one of the most effective ways to upsell and cross-sell. It can be as simple as offering a percentage off their total purchase or as complex as offering them an additional product for free with their purchase.

Shopify upsell apps like iCart can help you create upsell and cross-sell opportunities by offering discounts with features like product upsell and AI-powered recommendations.

The key is to make sure that there are clear benefits for the customer and that you can manage this process effectively.

Offer a Variety of Products

If there’s only one thing on your menu that fits into a customer’s needs, they will probably go somewhere else if they can’t find anything on your menu that fits their demands – especially if they have already tried out several different places before coming into yours.

Make sure that you offer at least two options for each category so that there’s always something available, no matter what type of product someone is looking for.

Conclusion: Implement These Upselling Tips to Boost Sales

Upselling and cross-selling can be key to increasing revenue and profit, especially when a Shopify business is operating on tight margins, and as a Shopify expert, I have seen many of them do.

This is why it’s important to have a viable strategy in place for these two popular sales techniques. By following the quick tips above, you are on your way to creating a successful cross-sell upsell strategy.

Upselling Tips FAQs

1. What is the best upsell app for Shopify?

iCart is often considered one of the best because it supports one-click upsells, AI-powered product recommendations, and multi-cart options. 

2. How to upsell at checkout on Shopify?

Use a Shopify app (iCart) to embed relevant upsell offers within the checkout flow. 

3. How to upsell effectively?

Segment offers based on customer behavior (cart contents, previous purchases, location) so the upsell is relevant, thereby increasing chances of conversion.

4. What are the good examples of upselling?

Offering a premium version of a product at checkout (“upgrade to leather version” or “fast delivery option”) is a classic upsell example. 

5. How to successfully cross-sell?

Place cross-sells where customers are browsing related or complementary items (product pages, cart drawer, thank you page) so they’re shown at naturally relevant moments.