The Good:
In-application cross-selling is a great way for companies to
get people to buy add-ons to their games and software that can be even used on
several apps.
It also makes it easy for to the companies to promote their
other games and software.
Zynga
is an example of company that not only uses in-app promotions but also allows
users to get exclusive in-game items for cross-app use in games like Farmville,
Cityville and Mafia Wars.
Godzilab's "StarDunk" is a free game but users can
get in-app upgrades and game items if they download other Godzilab apps.
Tapulous’ TapTap Revenge series has just adopted the freemium
model and the in-app promotions offer additional song packs and the company’s
other games.
What is good about these examples is that the prices of the cross-sold
items are close to the initial purchase price and they are highly related to
the user (Appendix 1).
RyanAir has
pretty much perfected their website’s purchase funnel with cross-selling items
and services. After choosing the your flight dates you get to the passenger
details page (Appendix 2) which offers a myriad of additional things the passenger
can purchase. Passengers have to pay extra for pretty much everything that is
normally included in the price of a ticket by other airlines. These include
priority boarding, travel insurance, SMS confirmation, RyanAir approved cabin
bag, special equipment, special assistance and method of payment. After booking
the flight, the customer is bombarded with hotel and car rental options. These
advertisements are specific to the location and date you’re flying so they’re
highly relevant. The pricing of the different items and services is also quite
low so the hurdle to add them to your purchase isn’t too high.
The Bad:
H&M’s new
website received a lot of criticism after its launch last September and for
good reason. What is even more appalling is the cross-selling used by the
company. I browsed the website for a while, going through only men’s clothes. I
browsed through all the men’s categories and paid special attention to Jackets
& Blazers. After choosing a blazer for purchase and proceeding to checkout
the site offers me women’s tops and a dress! This is just ridiculously poor.
The site even says “Something for you!” but there’s nothing in my browsing
history to indicate any interest in women’s clothes (honestly). I guess it’s
good that the items offered are significantly cheaper than what I was planning
to purchase but they could not be less relevant and interesting to me. And I
sure am not going to risk buying stuff like this to my girlfriend. It’s clear
there’s not much optimization and tracking going on on the H&M website.
What they should cross-sell to me? Nice shoes, pants, shirts or ties for men
(Appendix 3).
And the Ugly:
Expedia.co.uk is
trying to take advantage of cross-selling in their trip booking funnel by
offering people the opportunity to purchase a travel insurance with their
holiday. The relevancy is there and the price isn’t too bad either. The
execution however is horrible. The whole site too “busy” and displays too much
information whatever the customer is doing. With the travel insurance example
they just make the purchasing of it look difficult unpleasant. What they should
do is first of all redesign the whole site but if that’s not possible, then at
least they should take out most of the information related to the travel
insurance part. I would approach it like it was the thing I was actually
selling. They should have few key bullet points visible and if customers decide
to purchase the insurance, then they would receive all this information in the
form of a popup window or something like this.
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