Bundles: the simple, proven strategy you aren’t doing yet
APRIL 12 2024 | 5 MIN READ
Selling your products as bundles can increase your conversion and your average order value, without having to create new products.
Bundles help guide the customer to what they should be buying. If your shop attracts newbies, and your products require any education, a bundle gives them a place to start.
Bundles give customers an easy way to spend more with you in one visit.
Three reasons your need bundles in your shop:
new customers need a clear entry point into your products
you can upsell from single product to bundle without a massive discount
you establish an expertise in your niche as a curator
Here are some lessons learned about bundles, from 3 real shops.
oh-eco
Alyssa at oh-eco sells products for building a sustainable lifestyle. Her brand is welcoming and judgement-free, focusing on helping people build sustainable habits over time. This attracts customers who are new to sustainable living and don’t know where to start. Without bundles, she could lose customers to their own overwhelm.
Types of bundles Alyssa could do:
a Getting Started Bundle with popular products that are easy to use and will help build sustainable practices over time, like a skincare, haircare or kitchen bundle.
a Best Sellers Bundle with the highest selling products, to tap into the psychology of “people like me buy things like this.”
Bundle Pairs, like a shampoo and conditioner bar set, dish soap and scrubber, travel straw and travel utensils.
an Everything-You-Need Mega Bundle that let’s people make all the sustainable swaps today, instead of over time. This also creates a bonus opportunity for an educational add-on, like a book or a course.
ReallyGoodPlanning
Nicole at ReallyGoodPlanning is an expert event planner, and she creates downloadable templates and workbooks to make event planning stress-free.
Nicole’s signature product is a bundle: the Event Planner’s Workbook, with every template you would need and educational resources to not just plan one event successfully, but all future events.
She also sells all the templates in this bundle individually. This allows customers to be introduced to her brand at a low price point, and create an opportunity to upsell them to the bundle, increasing their lifetime value, and then downselling those that didn’t purchase another template. This one bundle creates a whole strategy to selling to customers after they’ve already purchased.
Ceres Baby
Ana at Ceres Baby makes handmade, sustainable baby clothing. Baby clothing is a category where consumers are already used to buying bundles, like layette or onesie packs. And her products are in similar styles or fabrics, making them perfect suited to be sold together.
Types of bundles Ana could do:
Quantity Bundle - Create an automatic discount when someone buys in quantity – like her bummies: buy 3 for $50 instead of $60 if they bought 3 at full price. This could also work really well for the leggings and onesies, things that parents will probably need in multiples.
Build a Set Bundle - Whether people buy the matching onesies, leggings and bummies, or go for a range of prints, there is a great opportunity for “build a set” type messaging: on the product page of the Forest Friends onesie, she can feature the best style pairing of leggings and bummies, and encourage people to purchase one of each.
Curated Gift Bundle - This is an important option if she has a lot of gifting shoppers. A curated combination of items worth ~$100 or in tiers – $50, $100, $200, etc — to make it easy for aunties and grandmas and everyone else to buy a thoughtful gift.
Tech setup
Once you know what kind of bundle you want to build, the question becomes, how do you do it?
If you are on Etsy, you will need to create a separate bundle for your listing, and may need a solution to help you properly manage inventory.
But if you are on Shopify, there are quite a few options for making these bundles work.
To build a static bundle, like the Curated Gift or Getting Started Bundle, you want to create a standalone product the customer can easily shop. But you don’t want to have to manage the inventory of this bundle separately — especially if it isn’t packaged together for shipping.
Shopify has a free app just called Bundles that you can use to do this – it is relatively new, built in the last year or so, and designed to offer the most basic bundle functionality, so it’s perfect for setting up some simple bundles at no extra cost.
To build a mix-and-match bundle, like the Build a Set Bundle, you will need an app to give the customer the ability to choose what pieces are part of the bundle. The expensive version with the most functionality is Rebuy: it has some really great bundle features built into their Smart Cart feature. It starts at $99/mo and gets a lot pricier as you grow, but you’re not just paying for the bundle builder.
A Budget option would be something like Bundler Product Bundles – it has the on-page bundling functionality that will make this work and is only $6.99/mo.
For simple quantity discounts you just need to use Shopify’s automatic discount feature, no app required. (You could theoretically create the mix and match bundle with automatic discounts as well, though it will be more complicated.)
Merchandising
With the bundle infrastructure in place, now you’ll want to create a good product listing. This means:
images or video with the products together — ideally photographed vs photoshopped.
an emphasis on the value vs buying each product individually — this is where the Compare at Price in Shopify can come in handy.
an emphasis on any bonus they’ll receive from purchasing the bundle — if you include a product or something that might not otherwise be available outside of the bundle.
Next Steps
What bundles can you create on your shop? Do you need help in identifying bundles that are right for your customers?
I can help you identify this with a custom growth plan.
