Post-purchase upselling is one of the most underutilized yet powerful opportunities in your ecommerce strategy. It's where a loyal "thank you" moment meets tactical growth, turning one time purchases into subscriptions, add ons, and long-term customers. Let’s make it seamless, effective, and conversion-rich.
What Are Post-Purchase Upsells?
These are strategic offers presented after a customer completes a checkout, inviting them to convert their one time purchase into a subscription or add subscription products to their order. The aim? Boost your Average Order Value (AOV) while building durable customer relationships.
Setting Up Your Default Settings
Head over to your Merchant Portal’s Optimization section → Post Purchase Upsells to set defaults that work across your store:
Offer Subscription Upsells to One Time Checkout
Automatically prompts upsell suggestions when customers purchase a one-time product that’s also offered via subscription.Default Subscription Shipping Price
Set this to $0 for a frictionless experience; overrideable per upsell flow to fine-tune shipping strategy.Additional Promotion Discount
Stack discounts smartly. For example, if your selling plan already includes 10%, a further 10% upsell drop brings customers a 20% total discount off of the Shopify price, compelling value with one click.
Setting Your Conditions
Now that you have your default settings configured, you are ready to set up your first post purchase flow. Click "Create New Post Purchase Upsell" to get started.
Conditions:
Set conditions to determine when this post purchase configuration will display to customers.
NOTE: No conditions? The upsell will display to all eligible customers.
Condition Type | Definition | Example |
Includes All Products Selected | All variants must be in the order | If I select Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry, the customer must have all three variants on their order to see the configured post purchase upsell products. |
Includes Any Products Selected | Will look to any of the variant ID's on the existing order | If I select Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry, the customer must have any of the three variants on their order to see the configured post purchase upsell products. |
Excludes All Products Selected | Will look to all selected variant ID's on the existing order | If I select Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry, the customer must NOT have any of the three variants on their order to see the configured post purchase upsell products. |
Cart Value Equals | Will look to the exact value provided | If I input $5, the customer must completed exactly a $5 order to see the configured post purchase upsell products. |
Cart Value Less Than | Will look to values under the value provided | If I input $5, the customer must have completed a $4.99 order or below to see the configured post purchase upsell products. |
Cart Value Greater Than | Will look to values above the value provided | If I input $5, the customer must have completed a $5.01 order or higher to see the configured post purchase upsell products. |
NOTE: You can layer multiple conditions together to configure your ideal target segment.
Configuring Your Upsell Products
Once you’ve identified the target segment for your upsell flow, it’s time to configure the products that will be offered. These settings give you full control over what displays, when it displays, and how it’s prioritized for maximum conversion.
Test Products Against Each Other:
Activate this setting to run A/B (or A/B/C/D) tests between the products you’ve selected.
How it works: If you select four variants, only one will display to a customer at a time.
Why it matters: This lets you measure performance across products and identify your highest-converting variant.
Prioritize These Upsells Over Items That Were In Their Cart
Use this setting to control whether your configured upsell products take precedence over subscription upsells for items the customer just purchased.
Enabled: Your configured post purchase products will appear prioritized above any “upgrade to subscription” offers.
Example: A customer buys Vanilla as a one time purchase; instead of seeing a subscription upsell for Vanilla first, they’ll see your configured upsell products.
Disabled: The subscription upsell for items in their cart will appear above your configured products.
Set Specific Upsell Products:
This section controls exactly which products appear in your upsell flow for the configured segment. You can fine-tune the offer with the following settings:
Shipping Cost: Add an extra shipping charge for the selected product(s).
If a customer chooses multiple upsell products, they’ll be charged the shipping cost for each selected product.
Additional Discount: Layer on extra savings beyond the default selling plan discount.
Works in combination with your Default Settings and the product’s selling plan discount.
Example:
Default Settings additional discount: 10%
Variant-specific additional discount: 10%
Selling plan discount: 10%
Customer total discount: 30% off the original Shopify price.
Collection:
Use a Shopify collection handle to dynamically pull upsell products from that collection.
Find the handle on your Shopify Collection page — it will look like:
test-smart-collection
When a collection is selected, products that match the upsell conditions will be automatically pulled into the post purchase flow, and randomized for display.
NOTE: For collection-based upsells:
Shipping settings will automatically pull from your Stay or Shopify shipping profile.
Discount settings will automatically reflect the product’s selling plan discount
Finalize & Activate Your Post-Purchase Upsell
Once you’ve finished configuring your settings:
Give your upsell flow a clear, descriptive name.
Set the status to Active.
Click Save.
Enable the Stay AI Upsell Widget in Shopify
To ensure your upsell displays correctly, update your Shopify settings:
In your Shopify Admin, go to Sales Channels.
Click Apps and Sales Channels.
Select Checkout.
Scroll to the Post-purchase page section.
Choose Stay AI from the list.
Click Save.
You’re all set!
For additional FAQs, best practices, and optimization tips, click here or contact your Customer Success representative.