Many e-commerce businesses assume customers simply aren’t interested in upsell offers. In reality, the problem is often much simpler. The right products are being offered at the wrong time – or the business isn’t able to update recommendations quickly enough to match changing customer behavior. That was exactly the challenge faced by one of Scandinavia’s leading electronics retailers. Customers regularly completed purchases without adding accessories, extended warranties, or support services. Not because the offers lacked value, but because the recommendation system itself had become the bottleneck. Let’s read about upselling in e-commerce.

Customers Aren’t Ignoring Your Upsell – they are missing it

Every e-commerce business wants to increase revenue without constantly acquiring new customers. One of the most effective ways to do that is through upselling in e-commerce—offering relevant products or services that complement what customers are already buying.
Yet many online retailers struggle to make upselling work.
The problem often isn’t the offer itself. Customers are interested in accessories, warranties, subscriptions, installation services, or premium product bundles. The real issue is that these offers appear too late, aren’t relevant enough, or require so much manual work to maintain that they quickly become outdated.
As a result, customers complete their purchases without ever seeing products that could genuinely improve their shopping experience while increasing the retailer’s revenue.
This is exactly the challenge one of Scandinavia’s leading e-commerce companies faced—and why they partnered with Fabres to redesign their entire upselling architecture.

Why Traditional Upselling in E-commerce Systems Become a Business Bottleneck

Many companies still rely on recommendation systems built around hardcoded business logic.
Initially, this approach seems manageable. Developers create product bundles, configure recommendations, and deploy new rules whenever marketing requests changes. The problem appears when the business starts moving faster.

 

Promotional campaigns change weekly. Product launches happen continuously. Customer preferences evolve almost in real time. Suddenly, every small modification requires developer involvement, code reviews, testing, and deployment.
Instead of enabling growth, the recommendation engine becomes a bottleneck.
The e-commerce team has ideas but lacks the tools to execute them independently.

When Technology Slows Down Sales

This was the situation facing one of Fabres’ clients—a leading Scandinavian e-commerce retailer.
The business team already knew which complementary products they wanted to recommend. Chargers, extended warranties, support packages, and product bundles all had clear business value. The challenge wasn’t deciding what to offer. The challenge was being able to update recommendations quickly enough.
Every adjustment to the recommendation logic required developer time. Product bundles were hardcoded into the system. Even simple changes involved manual development work, testing, and deployment. Meanwhile, customer behavior kept changing.
The existing solution simply couldn’t keep pace with the business.

Building a Product Recommendation System That Business Teams Can Control

Rather than improving the existing solution, Fabres redesigned the entire upselling process.
The goal wasn’t simply to build another administration panel.
The objective was to give ownership back to the people responsible for growing online sales.
Fabres developed a custom management interface that allows business users to:

• create and edit product bundles,
• launch upselling campaigns,
• update recommendation rules,
• test different product combinations,
• make changes without writing code,
• react immediately to changing customer behavior.

This fundamentally changed how the organization worked.
Marketing and e-commerce teams no longer had to wait for development resources to improve the customer journey.

Event-Driven Architecture Built for Modern E-commerce

Behind the new platform sits a scalable event-driven architecture powered by Azure Functions.
Instead of relying on rigid application logic, the solution responds dynamically to customer actions and business events, making it easier to introduce new recommendation scenarios while maintaining performance at scale.
The architecture was designed to support:

• real-time product recommendations,
• rapid business experimentation,
• scalable recommendation logic,
• easier maintenance,
• future platform growth.

Beyond improving customer experience, the new platform significantly advanced the company’s e-commerce process automation, eliminating repetitive manual work and reducing operational overhead.

The Results: Faster Teams, Better Recommendations, Higher AOV

Technology alone wasn’t the biggest success.
The real transformation happened inside the business.
Once the platform went live, customers started engaging with more relevant recommendations delivered at exactly the right stage of the buying journey.
Because offers became more contextual and easier to optimize, the company saw an increase in Average Order Value (AOV) while creating a smoother shopping experience.
Internally, the benefits were equally significant.
Business teams could launch campaigns faster, test new ideas more frequently, and continuously optimize the checkout experience without relying on developers for every adjustment.
The most impressive result, however, was operational.
The time required to manage upselling logic decreased by a factor of ten.
Instead of spending days implementing minor changes, teams could respond to market opportunities almost immediately.

What Every  Business Can Learn About upselling in e-commerce

This project demonstrates that successful upselling isn’t about showing customers more products.
It’s about showing the right product, at the right moment, while giving business teams the flexibility to adapt continuously.
Many companies believe their biggest challenge is improving recommendation algorithms.
In reality, the bigger issue is often organizational.
When every change depends on software developers, innovation naturally slows down.
Modern product recommendation systems should empower marketing teams—not create additional dependencies.

Three Principles Behind Successful Upselling

Businesses looking to improve upselling in e-commerce should focus on three core principles:

1. Business Ownership

Marketing and merchandising teams should be able to update recommendations without developer involvement.

2. Flexibility

Recommendation logic should evolve alongside campaigns, seasons, customer behavior, and new product launches.

3. Timing

Even the best offer loses value if it appears too late or in the wrong context. Real-time product recommendations consistently outperform static recommendation models because they adapt to the customer’s buying journey.

Technology Is Only Half the Story

The success of this project wasn’t driven solely by architecture.
It was built on a long-term partnership.
Fabres has been working with this client for more than seven years. Their engineers participate in daily stand-ups, strategic planning sessions, and product development alongside the client’s internal teams. Several developers have remained on the project since the beginning, creating deep product knowledge and continuity.
As the client’s CIO explains:

“We have a very stable team from Fabres. Some of them have been with us from the very beginning.”

The Head of Web Development adds:

“They’re so involved that we don’t really think of them as an external partner. They challenge our thinking, bring valuable ideas, and help us build a better product. We couldn’t deliver half of what we do today without them.”

Long-term collaboration creates something that project-based outsourcing rarely can: trust, shared ownership, and continuous improvement.

Is Your Upselling in E-commerce Strategy Being Limited by Your Technology?

If every recommendation update requires a development sprint, your biggest obstacle probably isn’t your sales strategy—it’s your architecture.
Modern event-driven architecture, Azure Functions, real-time product recommendations, and e-commerce automation enable businesses to react faster, optimize continuously, and increase revenue without increasing operational complexity.
At Fabres, we help e-commerce companies build technology that removes bottlenecks instead of creating them.
Whether your goal is to increase Average Order Value (AOV), improve checkout performance, or give your business teams greater independence, we can help you build a recommendation platform designed for long-term growth.
Ready to transform your upselling strategy? Get in touch with Fabres and discover how the right technology can turn every checkout into a bigger business opportunity.

Let’s talk about how your e-commerce platform can become faster, more flexible, and easier to scale.

Fabres helps enterprise product teams scale delivery without scaling internal HR overhead. Our engagement model is built around full integration with your existing processes — no middlemen, no separate management layer, no black-box delivery.
Contact  Bartek or Wojtek, our Strategic Partnership Managers.
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