How to Choose the Right Order Bump, Upsell and Downsell (Backed by Real ThriveCart Data)

This site uses affiliate links and I may earn a small commission when you use my links and make a purchase without incurring additional fee yourself. Many thanks for supporting this website. Please see my legal page for more details.

---

You may have already added a bump or two to your checkout. Maybe an upsell too. And if you’re really on top of things, a downsell waiting in the wings for anyone who says no.

Many online business owners wouldn’t be able to tell you: Is it working? Not “did someone buy it once,” but is that specific bump, on that specific page, pulling anywhere near its weight compared to everything else in your account?

I couldn’t answer that either, not properly, until I pulled every funnel I’ve built since 2021 into one place and actually looked. 

248 products and funnels later, across 5 years of ThriveCart data, some of what I found surprised me. 

My most-used upsell turned out to be my worst-converting one. My best bump outperformed my worst by 22x, on pages with comparable traffic. And the gap between my best-optimised funnel and my average funnel was so wide it changed how I think about this entirely.

So in this post, I’m sharing what actually moved the needle, backed by real numbers, so you can choose your own bumps, upsells and downsells based on evidence instead of guesswork.

And if you want to nab the automation tool too catalogue and analyse your own funnel data, you can hop on the waitlist here.

What’s the Difference Between a Bump, Upsell and Downsell?

An order bump is the checkbox add-on shown right on your checkout page, before someone’s even finished buying.

An upsell shows up right after they’ve bought, usually a bigger or more premium offer. 

A downsell is the safety net – shown only if they say no to the upsell, typically an easier or more affordable way to say yes anyway – to a smaller version or the same offer on a payment plan.

3 different moments, 3 different psychologies. Some people might tell you it’s the same sales tactic wherever you put it. It isn’t – and that’s exactly why a tactic that crushes it as a bump can flop as an upsell, or the other way round.

Thrivecart claims a properly optimised funnel can boost average order value by 118% – is that actually the case?

ThriveCart’s own marketing says stacking multiple bumps, upsells and downsells together can boost average order value by up to 118%. I wanted to know if that number was real, or just a best-case headline.

So I checked it against my own data. My single best-optimised funnel right now boosts AOV by 117% – almost an exact match to ThriveCart’s claim. So yes, it’s real and it’s achievable.

What surprised me was this: my average funnel only lifts AOV by 11.8%. That’s not a small gap. Some funnels werre firing on all cylinders and others were leaving money behind, sitting right next to each other in the same account.

If 118% is possible and my average is sitting at 11.8%, that gap is where the opportunity actually lives. Probably in your account too.

How Do You Choose the Right Order Bump?

An ideal bump is ideally cheap, instantly understandable and priced in a specific sweet spot. It’s an ‘easy yes’ offer. 

For example when you go to pay in a shop and you see a deal on chocolate bars and the cashier asks if you want to add one – it’s 50% off!

(I know I can never say no to a deal on Chocolate! Yum!)

Across my own funnels, bumps priced in the $15 to $30 range consistently won on revenue per sale, not just conversion rate. 

Go cheaper and conversion climbs a little but each ‘yes’ is worth less. 

Go more expensive and conversion drops off a cliff while revenue per sale doesn’t actually make up for it.

The best performing bumps did seem to follow a pattern. Templates and simple, content-style assets – swipe files, planners, short guides – consistently outperformed bigger or more complex products in the bump slot. 

People say yes to a bump in seconds. Anything that needs more than a few seconds of thought is fighting the format.

If you don’t optimise your funnels properly, you’ll be missing out on significant income: my best bump converts roughly 22x better than my worst, on pages getting similar traffic! 

I found bumps mismatched so badly to the page they were on that conversion rates sat at a fraction of what the same bump pulled elsewhere – in one case, 20x lower than average. Same product. Wrong placement. 

How Do You Choose the Right Upsell?

Start by picking an upgrade to what they just bought – these generally convert better than an unrelated cross-sell. Also don’t assume your most popular upsell is your best one.

This stung a bit when I found it. My most-used upsell turned out to be my lowest-converting one. I’d leaned on it across multiple funnels because it felt like the obvious choice. The whole time it was underperforming everywhere it showed up.

The pattern underneath it was clear once I saw it laid out: upgrades beat cross-sells. An upsell that feels like “more of what you just said yes to” – a VIP version, the next tier up, the tool that pairs naturally with what they bought – consistently outperformed a generic course or unrelated offer bolted on as the next step.

I found across my checkout pages, 37% had no upsell at all. No second offer, no extra chance at revenue, nothing. If you’re auditing your own funnels and find pages with a bump but no upsell, that’s money sitting on the table totally unclaimed.

There’s a similar pattern when you look at offer type too: buyers who’d just bought a course were noticeably more likely to say yes to an upsell than buyers of other offer types. If you’re choosing where to build your strongest upsell first, a course checkout is a good place to start.

How Do You Choose the Right Downsell?

Your downsell should be your best remaining offer, softened by easier terms, not your cheapest option.

The single strongest combination I found was an upsell for a course at full price, followed by a downsell offering the same course on a payment plan if they said no. 

Adding that payment-plan option as the downsell roughly doubled uptake compared to the upsell alone, recovering buyers who would otherwise have just left.

That’s the opposite of how most people think about downsells. The instinct is to offer something cheaper and smaller as the fallback. My data says the better move is offering your best thing again, just with easier terms attached, so saying yes requires no new decision, just a softer one.

Does Adding a Second Bump Actually Double Your Revenue?

No, but it’s still worth doing in the right spot. Adding a second bump didn’t double bump revenue in my data. It lifted it by roughly 50% on average.

That’s a meaningful gain for very little extra setup work, as long as the first bump is already a good fit for the page. A second bump amplifies a pairing that’s already working. It won’t rescue one that isn’t, so fix bump 1’s relevance before you reach for bump 2.

Top tip | Keep a database with all your bump copy and images including title, tagline, description, prices. That way, updating a sales page is as easy as copy and paste. I’ve included this inside the Funnel Footprint.

Should You Discount Your Bumps Heavily to Get More Buyers?

Not necessarily. This is the finding that changed how I price things now. 

Where I’ve tested the same bump at a higher and a lower price, the higher price won on average revenue per sale almost every time, with conversion rate only dipping slightly.

For the first time, I could actually answer the question I’d been guessing at for years: does discounting your bumps deeper make financial sense? 

Based on my own data, usually not. A small drop in conversion rate rarely makes up for the revenue left on the table from pricing too low in the first place.

The deal still needs to feel like a win. But discounting an offer by 50-60% is fine. You don’t need to be discounting by 70-80%

Why Is This So Easy to Get Wrong (And Easy to Miss)?

Because many cart checkout platforms don’t make any of this easy to see. (Thrivecart I’m looking at you!) 

Bumps, upsells and downsells live scattered across different product pages with no single view tying performance back to the page they’re attached to.

If you only have a handful of offers, you can check them manually. But if you are a multi-offer business with multiple carts for multiple offers (funnels, launch offers, flash sales, tripwire pages, pages duplicated for bundles and giveaways…) then it gets messy, fast. 

Here’s what slipped through my own gaps before I went looking properly… 

I’d sold a course with an upsell I’d retired years earlier. 

I found 3 live, findable versions of an offer I’d already retired. 

2 versions of a $597 course were still floating around priced at $297. 

And someone had bought a bump I no longer even sell, on a page I’d forgotten still existed.

Most ThriveCart sellers have this exact same blind spot, because the platform gives you no easy way to see any of this. The first you usually hear about it is an order for something that shouldn’t be buyable, or a confused email from a customer.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between an order bump and an upsell? 

An order bump appears on the checkout page before the purchase is complete, usually as a simple checkbox add-on. 

An upsell appears after the purchase is finished, typically as a separate offer for something bigger or more premium. Usually an upsell can be added with a single click since payment details have already been provided. 

Both increase average order value, but they work at different moments in the buying decision.

Is a downsell the same as a cheaper upsell? 

Not necessarily. A downsell is shown specifically when someone declines the upsell and the most effective downsells aren’t always cheaper versions. 

Offering the same upsell on a payment plan, rather than a smaller unrelated product, can convert better because it removes the price objection without requiring a new decision.

How much should I charge for an order bump? 

Based on real funnel data, bumps priced between $15 and $30 tend to perform best when you weigh conversion rate against revenue per sale together. 

Pricing much lower can lift conversion slightly but reduces how much each sale is worth, while pricing much higher tends to drop conversion more than the higher price makes up for.

Should every checkout have an upsell? 

It’s worth aiming for one wherever it fits naturally, since a meaningful share of sales pages run with no upsell at all and are leaving revenue unclaimed as a result. The exception is when you don’t have a relevant next offer yet – a forced, irrelevant upsell usually underperforms badly.

Does adding a second bump or upsell really help?

 It can, but it amplifies rather than fixes. A second bump or upsell tends to lift revenue further when the first one is already converting well, but it won’t rescue a first bump or upsell that’s a poor fit for the page it’s on.

Why does my most popular upsell convert so badly? 

Popularity and performance aren’t the same thing. An upsell can get reused across many funnels simply because it’s convenient to plug in, without anyone checking whether it’s actually the best fit for each specific audience. 

It’s worth auditing your most-used offers specifically, not just your newest ones.

How do I even find out which of my bumps and upsells are underperforming? 

You’d need to pull conversion and revenue data for every bump, upsell and downsell across every funnel into one place, then compare like with like. ThriveCart doesn’t show this natively, which is exactly the gap I built my own system to solve.

Start Where I Started

If you’re not on ThriveCart yet and you’re piecing this together from a checkout tool that can’t even do multiple bumps, ThriveCart is what I’ve used since 2021 to run all 248 of these funnels. Their Pro+ plan is what unlocks multiple order bumps, upsells and downsells in the first place. You can grab my ThriveCart bonuses here if you sign up.

And if you want to actually see this kind of breakdown for your own funnels, rather than wondering whether your bumps and upsells are pulling their weight, that’s exactly what I built The Funnel Footprint to do. If you want to nab it at it’s lowest launch price, pop your name on the waitlist below – it’s launching very soon.