Offering Product Bundles for Christmas

A simple way to increase sales and average order value this Christmas for your online shop is to offer product bundles.

Increase profits with product bundles this Christmas

In the run up to Christmas you should be looking for every opportunity to attract customers, increase sales, and increase their order sizes. By offering a bundle of products together for a slightly discounted price, you can encourage customers to buy more than they were planning to.

The key to successfully offering product bundles is to make sure that the products included are relevant, and the customer will find them useful - a product bundle has to have benefits for the customer.

If someone is buying a sewing machine, then you could offer needles and thread for a combined price that’s slightly lower than if they bought all the items individually. However, research shows that customers are put off by bundles that contain one high priced item, and one very low priced, irrelevant item - while it might seem like a good idea to off load poor selling stock by bundling it up with an expensive item, customers might stick to the individual item, or be dissuaded from buying anything at all.

If you want to offer a bundle as a way of clearing old stock, try to find a high selling item that relates in some way to the product that you’re trying to sell off, this will convince customers that it’s something they need and they’re getting a good deal.

If you offer relevant items in a bundle, it saves a customer searching through your online shop for the other items, and is likely to ensure that they buy all the items they need at once from your shop.

Product bundles as an advertising opportunity

Offering products as part of a bundle at a lower price than normal is a great opportunity to advertise and promote your online shop. Send out an email to all your current customers on your mailing list, and promote your bundle offers on social media to attract new customers.

There are other benefits to offering bundles, such as reducing your shipping costs and your workload (sending more products in fewer shipments). Bundles can also give your shop a unique selling point and give your customers a deal that they aren't able to get from other online shops - making yours stand out from your competitors.

Setting up your product bundles

Start by researching what bundles your competitors offer. Then look at your own inventory and past sales to work out which items are popular, and which items people buy together. Try to find items that could be relevant to people buying your most popular items and combine them.

Once you’ve selected your bundles, work out a reasonable price for each one. Work out the margins for each item, and work out what you can afford to take off - the discount has to be significant enough to encourage customers to buy, but not so much that you make a loss.

You also need to consider your stock levels - make sure that you have enough stock of all the items in the bundle if individually or in your bundle.

There are different ways of setting up a product bundle depending where you are selling, here's a few resources and apps to help you on your way.

Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200442390

Shopify - https://apps.shopify.com/product-bundles

Magento - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yCbxbcCUCM

eBay - Set up a separate listing with the bundle of related items that you sell. For more information - http://andrewminalto.com/bundles/