An Advanced Strategy To Sell More T-Shirts

Plenty of t-shirt sites offer specials. Buy three get one free, free shipping of orders totaling a certain amount, percentage off an order and a bunch of others to increase the amount of the purchase. One method that isn’t seen too often is the standard up sell. Many large online retailers use this method successfully, but it appears that most t-shirt sellers have been convinced that the shortest path to checkout is the most successful which it may not always be.

Most customers are creatures of habit and basic human nature is what it is. With this knowledge visitors can be converted into customers. If you monitor your customer’s actions you can identify when a visitor is triggered to get out their credit card, and use that information to develop a strategy to improve your sales efforts. If you understand what triggers create sales you can come up with a plan that will work on a large portion of your buyers.

If you learn to exploit a visitor’s tendencies to develop habits, you have everything you need to create sales that become larger and larger as the person becomes more involved with your site. Obviously, this will sell more shirts and make more profit.

For a habit to work for you, you need to drive a visitor to complete a purchase. For example, you’ll understand how this works to create larger sales if you’ve ever been to a deli. Say you order up a pound of roast beef, the employee will put more than that amount on the scale, never less. Then they’ll ask you if you want some taken off or if it is okay.

As the customer making the request you have already committed yourself to the pound of roast beef you asked for. Now, most of the time someone will say that the additional roast beef is just fine, not wanting to make a big deal of it. It normally doesn’t stop there, when you are handed the roast beef you are then asked if there is anything else you need. You’ve already committed to a purchase so there is a good chance that you would be inclined to purchase additional items like some cheddar cheese.

The reason this works is because you originally committed to a purchase and asking for additional items is taking advantage of the habit you’ve already exhibited. On the outside it may just seem like a little additional money here and there, But if it done to every single customer that is encountered, it can multiply into a significant amount.

This is a strategy that works with retail sales, but can be many times more powerful on the internet. If you can get a visitor to commit to a small sale at the beginning and during the checkout process, present them with additional items, it is surprising how the amount of the purchase will grow.

If you’ve ever registered a domain name with Godaddy you understand the concept. First, you pick the name which has a minimum one year registration, but a 2 year registration is automatically set for you, doubling the order amount right off. As you proceed through the checkout process you are offered the opportunity to add a whole slew of additional products and services to your order like hosting, email, additional domain names and more. There is a simple reason why they do this and that is because it works.

Now, you’re not selling domain names or lunch meat, so how can this work for your t-shirt site? Let’s say you have a new shirt and for a limited time you are offering it at a special price. A visitor recognizes that getting that shirt at your special price is too good to pass up, then adds it to his or her cart and begins to check out. That visitor is then presented with another special offer on a second shirt or say a package of limited edition prints that is only available to them when purchasing the first shirt. If the second shirt or package is added to the order the total of the sale increases as do your profits.

You don’t want to overload your customer with too many options and you may only want to use this strategy from time to time so not to wear it out. If you use your imagination you can come up with all kinds of offers that can increase the amount of a sale and add to your bottom line using this type of strategy.

Anthony Marsh is the owner of Popular Threadz and Crack Smoking Shirts. He runs the online resource TeeBiz.com and the t-shirt community TeeBurb.com.