How cross-selling has boosted Levenger’s sales

Since Levenger Inc. began promoting cross-sells online a little over a year ago, both the average value of an order and the average items per order have increased significantly, Lynnette Montgomery, Levenger’s Internet marketing manager, tells Internet Retailer.

While it is happy with the results of cross-selling so far, the company won’t know until it installs web analytics technology, which it expects to do in January, the details about how particular cross-sell offers perform in relation to the products they complement, Montgomery says. “Once we have the analytics up, we’ll want to know statistically that the wallet goes with the purse, for instance,” she says. “We want to make sure that these are the best ‘May we suggest’ products.” Montgomery says Levenger has narrowed its selection for an analytics product and expects to settle on a system by year’s end.

Levenger offers 1,000 SKUs online and thus is able to create cross-sells manually, Montgomery says. Levenger applies four rules to cross-sells: They can’t be more expensive than the main product, they can’t include sale items, there should be three offers and the items must be in stock. A software program that monitors inventory automatically removes items from cross-sells if the item sells out. One person working manually is able to keep up with the additions and deletions to cross-selling, Montgomery says.

Cross-selling at Levenger is a combination of art and science, she says. Levenger looks at what customers buy together to get ideas for cross-sells but also applies a merchandiser’s instinct in which products complement one another.