How to Upsell and Increase Conversion at Your Surf Shop POS

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How to Upsell and Increase Conversion at Your Surf Shop POS


Learning how to upsell at POS, both at the counter and online POS is critical to the success of all businesses but even more important to small surf shops looking to eke out a living in a niche sport and market.

Surfing is an optimal sport for up-sells. And… with more people surfing than ever, there are plenty of customers to offer additional products to. Because surfboards and other hard goods don’t always carry the highest margins, it’s key to educate your staff on what items carry higher margins and generate the most profit. Here’s a list of how to think about up-selling products and services to create stability and growth for your surf shop.

Relevancy is Key: Know What to Up-sell

Because of the growth in the sport as a result of Covid-19, there is a large opportunity to offer up-sells if the customer is a first time surfboard buyer. Because buyers of a new surfboard are usually itching to get in the water, making relevant suggestions for add-on purchases, makes for an easy up-sell. Wetsuits, track pads, leashes, wax, ding repair kits, surf lessons if you offer them and surfboard protection plans too are all relevant to the first time surfboard buyer. Not to mention, that just about everyone could use a new pair of boardies or sandals. Even with surfing being a laid back sport, the sales staff should be trained and incentivized to act as an expert within the shop, making recommendations to the customers, with reasons why the purchase is going to enhance the buyers surfing or beach experience. Many shops make the mistake of letting the customer shop for themselves, waiting for them to show up to the register with their desired product. Your staff should be engaging the customer throughout their shopping experience to provide both a catered experience and a higher average order value (AOV) at checkout.

Leverage Technology: Let Your POS Do the Work

If you are using a point of sale system it’s easy to add up-selling and cross-selling options via call-to-actions like, recommended purchases, similarly purchased items, promos and pop-ups. Platforms like Shopify now provide a great e-commerce option as well as an in-store POS platfform. Just make sure that the recommended upsell items are correctly wired together so your staff acn easily make the purchase recommendation. When a customer purchases a new surfboard, you want it to become second nature to your employees to ask: “Would you like to add a protection plan with that?” or “Can I help you pick out a leash and track pad for the board?” A prompt for these items should appear within the checkout process for your employees to easily make the addition to the customers purchase.

With strategic upselling, a shop can increase their AOV. This is arguably the biggest benefit to introducing an upsell.

There are a lot of ways you can use upsell and cross-sell to enhance your customers’ purchase experience while increasing your average order size as well. There are tons of free Shopify apps that can help you execute cross-selling and upselling to your customers. Our recommendations are: 

  • Nosto. Offers a complete personalization solution that allows marketers and e-commerce professionals to deliver personalized shopping experiences to their customers with tools recommending similar products, onsite pop-ups and in-store personalization providing a higher average order value at checkout.
  • Zipify One Click Upsell. Built for Shopify Plus customers, this app boosts Average Order Values with one-click upsell offers.
  • Super Bump. Gives you the ability to create targeted, post-purchase offers.
  • CartHook Post Purchase Offers. Adds one-click promotions inclusive of upsells and free gifts.
  • Post Purchase Promotions. Boost revenue with native post purchase upsells.
  • Ultimate Special Offers. Create one-click offer upsells directly in your store checkout.

The primary goal for upselling will likely be increased sales and AOV, but the customer experience should be factored in when designing upsell options. Recommending customers to purchase random products can leave them annoyed and impact their interest in returning to your shop. Present what makes the most sense for your customer to purchase at the right time and you’ll be well on your way to a profitable and positive upsell experience.

Check the Swell (Weather): Use it to Your Advantage

This applies to existing customers that you have their email, phone number (for SMS) for or that follow your shop on social media. As you are well aware, the swell and weather has a lot to do with your sales on a daily basis. Paying close attention to the daily weather and Surfline swell report can help you anticipate your opportunities to upsell. Upselling can happen while in store but can also happen online or with in social media with increasing abilities to convert a customer direct to purchase within Instagram and facebook. This might be an opportunity to sell some extra sun block or recommend a switch up to a stronger leash or change in fins set up. It’s called impulse purchasing for a reason, because it’s done on without much thinking! So take advantage of that moment at checkout or on social media and offer the right promo for the day, depending on the swell size or temperatures on the sand.

Emphasize Value: Discounts & Installments Increase Conversion

Another opportunity at the point of sale is highlighting deals and offers. You want the customer to feel like they’ve received some kind of deal. So whether that means offering something at discount or providing them with a coupon to use during their next visit (ensuring a return customer), make sure they feel that they’ve received something of value.

If online, you may want to provide buyers with a buy now, pay later option on your bigger ticket items. This will dip into your margins a bit, but offering the option usually increases conversion enough to outweigh the dip in profits. Here are the three most popular buy now, pay later options for apparel and hard goods in the market:

  1. Afterpay.
  2. Klarna.
  3. Affirm.

Add Additional Margin: Surfcare Adds Profit to Every Board Purchase


Giving customers an option to add a protection plan to their surfboard at the time of purchase, protecting it against dings and breaks helps convert a customer who is on the fence about spending the extra bucks on a new board. If they know they don’t have to worry about the probable damage their surfboard will incur, the higher the chance they will make the leap and buy a new board off the rack. Offering this at point of sell gives the shop a high likelihood of increasing the sell. Surfcare adds all profit to the additional purchase with no cost to the surf shop. Not to mention, increasing customer satisfaction for the day when the buckle, snap or ding their new board.

By making some of these simple changes, you should see an increase in average order values and profits coming out of your store at POS.

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