I ordered a few hundred business cards for Phillips Design this week. I settled on VistaPrint after reading a few positive reviews in online forums. While I have yet to see the actual cards, the company has already left a bitter taste in my mouth from their in-your-face upselling techniques.

During the order process VistaPrint attemps to upsell various stationary with the customer’s logo plastered on it around 2-3 times, in some cases making the user scroll down an entire page with “special” and “limited time” offers. After skipping through these, a final attempt to sell the same thing at an even lower price was made.  After ordering the cards, an email order confirmation is sent with another dozen special offers.

In my opinion this kind of marketing poisons the entire user experience just to make a few extra dollars. It certainly made me think twice about referring any of my clients.

Upselling is an excellent way of giving the customer extra value and increasing business profit — just be careful not to overdo.

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Enjoy!

Andrew Phillips