What is cross-selling? Definition, examples and best practices
A cross-sell is a recommendation for a different, complementary product shown alongside the item a shopper is viewing or buying, such as a case with a phone, batteries with a toy, or socks with running shoes. Unlike an upsell, which swaps the item for a pricier version, a cross-sell adds something to the order.
How it works
Cross-sells usually appear on the product page ("goes well with"), in the cart, or after the order. Recommendations come from three broad sources:
- Merchant rules: you link products by hand, for example each printer to its ink.
- Catalog attributes: products that share a compatibility field or a collection.
- Purchase data: items often bought together. Amazon described this approach in 2003 as "item-to-item collaborative filtering," which matches each product a customer buys or rates to similar items rather than matching the customer to similar customers.
Baymard Institute separates two kinds of product-page suggestions: alternative products, which help if the current item isn't right, and supplementary products, which save time by surfacing compatible or complementary items. Only the second kind is a cross-sell in the strict sense.
How to size the effect
In words: added revenue equals orders that see the suggestion, times the share that add it, times the price of the added item.
Worked example (hypothetical numbers): 2,000 orders of a $100 camera see a $25 memory card, and 15% of shoppers add it. That is 300 × $25 = $7,500 in added revenue, and average order value across those orders goes from $100 to $103.75.
Why it matters for an online store
- Completes the purchase. A shopper who forgets the cable or the filter may return the product or leave a poor review.
- Lifts order value. Small add-ons raise basket size at little extra acquisition cost.
Common mistakes
- Too little information. In Baymard's 2021 product page benchmark, 68% of desktop sites did not give enough information for cross-sells on the product page. Baymard lists a thumbnail, a fully visible title, the price and the ratings average with count as essentials.
- Blocking checkout. Baymard's 2026 checkout guide advises removing mid-flow cross-sells that break the shopper's momentum.
- Irrelevant pairings. Suggesting items that don't fit the product teaches shoppers to ignore the section.
- Ignoring stock. Recommending out-of-stock add-ons wastes the slot.
CIQRA stores can bundle complementary products with bundle pricing, buy X get Y offers and gifts with purchase.