Teachable insights: Order bumps drive sales through urgency

We’ll break it all down below and showcase how real data proves order bumps drive sales and lead to urgency.

A better way to sell

When it comes to your online courses or coaching business, revenue is the star metric. Typically, creators increase this bottom line by focusing on increasing their average order value (AOV), or how much on average a customer spends on each order. But this can be difficult to do. No one wants to raise their prices or spend more energy seeking out new customers (yet). 

So, we introduced order bumps as a low barrier to entry to help you increase your AOV without raising the price of your products or bringing in more customers. And so far, this new feature has been adopted by nearly 600 schools, which have seen thousands of transactions that contain an order bump go through. 

Reminder: Order bumps are products that complement your main product and are offered at checkout to customers as last-minute add-ons that add both value and increase your average order value. You want your order bump to be either the same price or slightly less than what you are selling. So for example, if you are selling a product for $37, you may offer an order bump for $19.

Inciting times

Order bumps drive sales and have earned Teachable creators more than $107,000 in GMV since the feature’s release. That’s a pretty big number. So, what’s the deal with order bumps anyway? Well, they cause action. And when it comes to making sales, action is what counts. Your job as a creator is to demonstrate that whatever your customer is buying is worth the price you’re asking.

Simple enough. But here’s where an order bump comes in. 

An order bump is a sales strategy often used to trigger a sense of urgency with the buyer that then incites action. This urgency is typically caused by the price-to-value ratio of the order bump. Simply put: The value of the content of your order bump surpasses the extra money it adds to their order. It’s the extra side of guacamole at dinner—extremely tasty and compared to the rest of your order, a total steal.

And action

Because a customer is already at checkout, it’s far easier to incite purchasing action. Some reasons are:

• Customers are already convinced of your products’ value
• Your order bump (in theory) complements or enhances the product they’re already purchasing
• You’ve positioned your order bump to cause FOMO (fear of missing out)
• You’ve priced your order bump appear as a bargain (more on pricing later)
• Customers are already in the mindset to buy

Because we understand that tapping into that FOMO brain is a great way to get sales and increase that average order value, we launched a “strikethrough” feature for order bumps. This particular feature allows you to set a “sale” price that appears below your original bump price.

This is a valuable addition to the feature for creators who want to offer sale prices, display bargain values, and you guessed it, lean into urgency.

The psychology of pricing

We wrote a whole blog post dedicated to sales strategies and pricing around order bumps. We even talked to expert and Teachable creator Julie Stoian to get her insight on the matter of making money with order bumps. 

Ultimately, how you price your order bump is up to you. But one thing is certain:Teachable creators using order bumps see a higher AOV. In fact, they see about 8% more AOV with an order bump than without. And the average order value with an order bump is about $139. 

But there are a few key learnings:

• Lower priced order bumps tacked onto higher priced ticket items tend to perform best
• Order bump should be either the same price or slightly less than what you are selling
• Order bumps should convert at a rate of 30% or higher

Here’s one thing to keep in mind when pricing your order bump. If you’ve followed our pricing advice for your online course, then you’ve already priced your course with a premium price tag. And you know that a premium price tag often signals more value and commitment to students purchasing. Your order bump should be priced to convey both value and bargain. In this instance, consider a “lower” price tag for your order bump (without sacrificing too much value in your order bump’s content) to signal to your customers that they’re getting a deal.

By popular demand

According to our insights, most Teachable creators are opting to use courses as the type of product they offer for their order bump. However, this doesn’t mean you should feel limited to only offer courses. 

On any plan on Teachable, you can now add an order bump on any course checkout page. An order bump can be:

• Any product you’ve created on Teachable—courses, coaching, or bundles
• Any product with a one-time purchase pricing plan

This means an order bump can be:

• Templates, worksheets, or ebooks: Have a pace chart PDF that complements your course on half marathon training? Offer it as an order bump to pair with your course on how to run a half marathon for non-runners.
• Mini courses: Mini courses are great ways to test out new content, offer up existing content that isn’t selling on its own, or provide supplemental content that you didn’t include in your course curriculum.
• Coaching sessions: Teach a WordPress design course? Offer up an hour-long feedback call to review your student’s work. Just remember: Coaching might be a much more premium add-on and might not work for everyone, so you don’t have to offer it at too low a cost. 
• An additional course: Have courses that are sequential? This might be a good time to introduce your more advanced or follow-up course as an add-on where students can get a special discount if they purchase the course as an order bump.

Bottom line: Experiment with what order bump works for you and your business. The most successful creators are utilizing the feature strategically. They’re offering valuable content that’s priced to create urgency and demand. And that all equates to sales.