How to Product Bundle + 7 Product Bundling Best Practices

Product bundles are one of the most under-utilized tactics in eCommerce today, though just why is a bit unclear. After all, they are an incredible tool to:

• Increase your average order value.

• Get rid of dead stock.

• Provide convenience, improving the customer experience.

• Create a solid way to personalise your store.

So in this post, we’re going to take a look at exactly how you can master your product bundling game. We’ll cover everything from figuring out which products work well together, to making sure inventory all stays aligned on the back end.

Ways to bundle

There are tons of ways you can bundle your products, depending on what you want to achieve. Here are the three most common ways to do it:

1) Bundle Packages

Costco is a good example of a retailer that has a lot of success selling bundled packages.

With dedicated collection pages, Costco creates groups of products that a customer would usually buy together. 

By including all appliances in a single package, Costco encourages customers to buy all the appliances needed for a new kitchen in their store.

Not only does it make life easier for the customers looking for a new kitchen by including everything they need in a single order, they strongly advertise the amount the customer is saving by doing so.

Customers can save around $1,000 by purchasing the bundle – massively increasing the average order value (AOV) and giving Costco an edge over their competitors.

You can bundle your products with an app like Infinite Options.

2) Cross selling

Cross selling is where you would recommend related items on a product page in order to encourage someone to bundle them together themselves.

Best Buy provides a great example of a company that do product recommendations well.

Whenever viewing an item on the site, Best Buy will show corresponding products below that are recommended by their experts:

Recommended items should be highly relevant to the product being viewed – ideally based on items that are frequently purchased alongside that item.

This method is successful as it allows you to increase your AOV without increasing the price of individual items. Visitors may not know you offered certain items before seeing them bundled with the product and listing multiple items.

Offering the ability to add all items to cart in one click makes it easy for visitors to buy multiple products at once.

You can use a tool like Cross Sell or Also Bought to do this with Shopify.

3) Upselling

Upselling is slightly different to cross selling as it’s about convincing the customer to upgrade the product they were originally planning on getting. Upselling is often not about bundling but about getting the customer to buy the higher quality (read: more expensive) version of the item they wanted. However, there are certainly ways upselling involves bundling. For starters, if any of your products can be purchased with insurance or a warranty, that counts as a bundle.

The best way to upsell items is to include useful add-ons in one place to save time. For example, when a customer buys an iPad, Apple takes customers to a page with iPad accessories.

Successful upselling requires retailers to know their customers well. And also be aware of what type of customer may be buying specific products.

For example, the upsell items for a camera will differ depending on whether it’s for a professional or amateur photographer.

You can even use an app like Zipify to create upsells after customers have checked out.

Product bundling best practices

There are no strict set of rules to bundling products, so don’t be afraid to play around with them a little. So long as you keep these best practices in mind, you can make your bundles work for you:

1) Use data

Using data and analysing product performance will help you understand which products are bought together most frequently, and which products would work best together. Shopify users can actually plug in an app called Bold Brain to do the work for them!

Using data will allow you to create strategies for your different buyer personas.

Your bundles should make sense together, and be of value to the customer. So make sure to:

• Look for buyer behavior patterns.

• See what products customers frequently buy together.

• Use your knowledge in the field to choose products that complement each other.

2) Bundle fast and slow selling products

Bundling your unwanted stock with your most popular products makes the item more desirable by appearing as if it is more in demand than it actually is.

Shoppers interested in purchasing the top selling item will also be more inclined to buy the bundle if they feel like they are getting a good deal. You can also consider selling high ticket item with a lower ticket item so that you can create a bundle that’s more price enticing.

3) Make sure inventory is kept up-to-date

It can be hard to keep track of stock if you’re applying the same single item to a number of different bundles.

Suggesting products that are actually out of stock is a guaranteed way to annoy your customer. So it’s essential to avoid running out of inventory without you noticing.

Find an inventory management software that can cope with product bundling well. Make sure it will deduct inventory when you sell both singular and bundled items.

4) Emphasize the bundle savings

Make sure you’re highlighting any cost-saving the customer will get by purchasing the items in a bundle.

You don’t want customers to have to figure out the saving manually. Or worse – not even realize it at all.

So any discount needs to be made extremely clear when presenting your bundles, cross sells or upsells together.

5) Offer bundles at the checkout

Offering bundles at the checkout is more likely to result in quick purchasing decisions from buyers ready to checkout.

Make sure your suggested products:

• Are helpful to the customer.

• Relevant to what’s already in the cart.

• Not too expensive. (Think: the impulse buys strategically placed at the supermarket checkout counter.)

Remember that the key is for the customer to see value in the potential recommendation – meaning they’re more likely to add it in last minute.

6) Create a dedicated bundles page

Creating a unique page for product bundles will attract any customers looking for a good deal.

You can even consider changing bundles over time – corresponding to holiday promotions, key calendar dates or highlighting a ‘bundle of the month’.

7) Make a big deal on social

Building product bundles into your social commerce strategy is a great opportunity to make more sales.

You can even create a specific collection in Shopify for your bundles. Then get them to show up in their own category in your Facebook Shop.

Just make sure to keep sharing the bundles when relevant. You could have a dedicated time when you announce a ‘bundle of the week,’ for example. And even try building bespoke bundles for specific buyer personas, then running social ads to these people.

Conclusion

There are loads of ways you can use bundles to your advantage – whether you’re wanting to shift slow moving stock, increase the average order value or improve the usability and personalization of your store. 

Ready to start bundling on your Shopify store? Click here to Install our Infinite Options app and get started right away