Imagine you’re buying an iPhone. You search for the best options and your eCommerce store amazes you with exclusive offers. Instead of the iPhone alone, you are offered a combination of the phone, back cover and screen guard at a lower price.
This is an excellent example of product bundling, a technique in which several products are combined and sold for one price, primarily used to encourage customers to buy more products. McKinsey suggests that 35% of Amazon purchases come from recommendations (many of which qualify as "bundles"), and they have a success rate of about 60%. And bundling is one of the best methods to increase your eCommerce store's average order value, bundle sales, and revenue.
In this article, let's explore product bundling, discover its benefits and take some inspiration from product bundling examples in detail.
What is Product Bundling?
Product bundling is an effective marketing strategy used across all markets in eCommerce, from apparel and beauty, cosmetics and more.
Customers love it because they can save money. eCommerce stores like it because it increases conversion and sales.
The secret of product bundling is identifying the most appropriate mix of products in a bundle. Consumers will always favor products that are cost-effective and are worth the price. However, to determine the most compelling deals, you need to remember that usually, people don't like doing math. Customers mostly believe that the better deal is to get an item added in for free than getting an overall discount for all the products.
If you want to understand in detail, you can also collect data regarding the customer's taste, color, brand, size, and other factors. If you notice Shopper X bought jeans from your store and ordered another shoe you sell frequently, this data shows you can successfully bundle products together.
What are the Benefits of Product Bundling?
Bundling is attractive to consumers as it is a value-oriented purchase with complementary offerings. Customers always look for minimum effort with maximum benefit, and bundling is a single source that offers several solutions. Let's take a look at how it can be beneficial for your business in the long run:
Boost sales
The most significant advantage of product bundling is that it boosts your overall sales, the most critical metric in measuring business success and growth. An eCommerce owner can uplift the overall revenue and conversion rate by increasing the amount spent on a particular transaction. By combining your products, you can make your customers buy more than one product with a single purchase. Product bundling is also a way to sell less popular products with best-selling items. This can benefit the seller as it creates a long-term opportunity for add-on bundle product sales when you get multiple products in a customer's cart.
Increase your average order value
The difference between the original price and what the customer pays is consumer surplus. Product bundling is an effort to capture the maximum surplus, increase sales, and get the maximum average order value from a single transaction. For example: Instead of buying just one tube of paint during a single purchase, the customer is offered a paint tube, paintbrush, and palette as a product bundle, encouraging them to purchase more than one product, increasing your average order value.
Save marketing and distribution costs
Product bundling can help you save significantly on marketing and distribution. Instead of making individual print and web ads for every single item, you can display them as a bundle that helps you save on your marketing costs. At the same time, it helps you market and sell a minimum number of products with maximum benefit. While packaging different items together, you only need one single bin instead of different bins for storage. Also, bundling products helps you ship very few boxes of individual items and saves money on postage of products.
Enhance customer experience
You can increase customer loyalty by providing unique and personalized product bundles. Check out the customer behavior of your regular customers to explore their favorite products. Later you can create an appropriate product mix based on their intent. It gives customers an exclusive opportunity to choose products and services complementing their needs. Then you can help them add, remove or edit products to make the final result more appealing. If you design your bundle based on their needs, this will help your customers find it easier to buy everything in a minimum period. This makes the customers' shopping experience smooth and hassle-free, encouraging them to stick to your brand.
Reduce inventory waste
There would be remains in the inventory as dead stock, adding to your costs, and is finally regarded as waste. This could be a great opportunity to use product bundling to clear out the dead stock. If you bundle a less trending product with a faster-selling product, customers will be wanting to buy it. This helps reduce your inventory waste and decrease your inventory costs.
Improved perceived value
Perceived value refers to the value a customer puts to the goods you're providing. Generally, customers prefer products that seem worth the price they are paying. Bundling products creates a perception of a higher value The bundle is perceived as a better deal because it features additional products that customers might have been interested in but ignored due to the cost. .
5 Tried and Tested Product Bundling Ideas and Examples to GrowYour eCommerce Store
Here are a few product bundling examples and ideas to help new eCommerce stores get started with the product bundling strategy:
Combine low selling items with trending ones
Every eCommerce owner struggles with a few products that never sell. How do you solve this and get these products sold? You can choose a product bundling strategy.
A strategy called pure bundling works best to push out unsold items. The best way is to sell unpopular products with the most trending products. This combination in a bundle can attract customers as most attention goes to the trending product. Take your lowest sellers that are still in good condition and offer genuine savings.
The above example best represents a pure bundle. The most trending product Apple airpods is combined with least sold products like airpod case, accessories. So, the product bundle is sold for a lesser price. When a customer looks at this bundle the whole attention will go to the airpods. And seeing the additional items all combined for a lower price, there is a high chance that the customer will buy the product.
Add personalization to your product bundles
Bundling has been consistently doing its best for eCommerce. But there has always been an increase in demand for personalized choices and seamless shopping experiences.
Adding personalized choices can generate more sales as a bundle. You need to look at past orders and repeat purchases to see what your customers typically need and offer them accordingly. You can offer personalized cross- sell or up-sell recommendations to customers according to their intent.
Do you know how it can become easier? With a personalized product recommendation engine!
It can help you engage shoppers with personalized cross-sell and up-sell recommendations tailored to their shopping intent. This can lead to a hassle-free customer journey and help you create highly converting shopping bundles.
Add the “Buy more pay less” product bundles
You can help your shoppers save their pockets by providing them with an added benefit. This typically increases the order quantity on your upcoming sales also. An intelligent way to implement this strategy is by including a reward or prize.
This increases the overall perceived value of the bundled product offer and boosts the average revenue per user. In this bundling tactic, the customer won't be able to buy the products individually but will get the products at one price when purchased in a bundle and a price that increases the perceived value of a product for the customer and increases sales. This type of volume reward can also boost your AOV. Customers buy more products in one single order, increasing the revenue you generate from a single order.
Don’t forget to offer special deals and discounts
When done correctly, offering a flat discount works great as a product bundling idea. This can help create a better brand reputation in the minds of your customers. Discounts make them feel good, and it motivates them to choose your brand over competitors.
For example, you can go for buy-one-get-one (BOGO) bundles. BOGO product bundles may come as a big pack of defined volumes offering a product for free or providing a discount.
Another example of discount product bundling is free shipping. High shipping costs are a significant reason for abandoned carts and customer churn. The advantage of a free shipping discount is that it helps compensate for the packaging and delivery fee. By providing free shipping if they choose a bundle, you ensure that customer costs are covered, and they are offered maximum value from the purchase.
3 Metrics to Determine which Products you should Bundle
Now that you know how to add product bundles to your eCommerce store, what’s the next step? Well you need to start measuring the impact of these product bundles. Are they adding any value? Are these product bundles generating sufficient revenue? And how will you measure that? With these metrics.
Most and least sold items
One of the most significant benefits of product bundling is selling the least sold products, reducing waste, and clearing inventory. You can do that by tracking the revenue from your most trending products and SKUs. These metrics will clarify which products your bundles should be built with. Later, you can also check the products that aren't selling and use them as a complementary product with your most selling products. Combining these bundled products can clear your dead stock and restrict your inventory holding costs.
SKU profitability
This measurement can help you identify which product is performing the best in your inventory, and you can compare it with other items in your stock. The SKU profitability enables you to segregate your overhead costs and finalize the whole profitability you got from a particular item.
This measurement can help you find out the potential problems in your strategy. This will help you to be prepared and make the required changes if the profit margins dip low. One of the significant changes would be personalizing your product bundles to boost more sales and upgrade the customer experience.
Annual growth
The growth of a particular product annually reveals its average order in the last year by using this metric in your current inventory and product bundling plan. You can also get an idea of a product's yearly growth and performance. After identifying these statistics, you can track the product's sales and better design your bundle. And with this, you can finalize if a product is selling well, and you can combine it with a less sold product and anchor a perfect product bundle.
Final Thoughts
Product bundling is one of the most trusted methods for selling offline and online goods. As the eCommerce industry has evolved, bundling products have consistently gained popularity.
With the online space growing efficiently, eCommerce owners have to develop innovative product bundling methods and strategies that make them more attractive to potential customers. Product bundling helps you sell items for less and increases your overall average order value. When done correctly, offering a product bundle is the best way to boost sales and increase customer satisfaction simultaneously, and eCommerce owners should make it a priority to ensure customer stickiness.
Argoid's hyper-relevant cross-sell bundles are always personalized, and the buyers get what they wish for. The ai-driven recommendation engine allows you to analyze customer behavior to discover products and leverage relevant cross-sell recommendations.
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FAQs on Product Bundling
What is product bundling?
Product bundling is a technique in which many products are selected and grouped to be sold as a single unit for a standard price. This is often done with products primarily used together, like brush and toothpaste. This strategy is used to motivate customers to buy more products.
Why is product bundling popular?
Bundling enables you to sell more products and decrease marketing costs. Instead of marketing one product, you can group more than one complementary products and market them as a single product
Which brands do product bundling the best?
The biggest online brands are already succeeding in product bundling like Amazon and Kylie Cosmetics. Bundling helps to increase productivity and reduce marketing and distribution costs. It allows the consumer to find one source that offers several solutions.