What is a basket opener?
A basket opener is a carefully selected product that pulls in traffic and helps convert customers. It’s priced to stand out in competitive channels like Google Shopping, not just to make a sale, but to start a larger purchase.
These products are often popular, easy to understand, and commonly searched for. When customers see a good offer on one of them, they click, visit your site, and often add other products to their basket. That’s where the upsell happens.
Basket openers are essential when you want to stay relevant. About three-quarters of internet users in Europe shop online (Eurostat), but you can’t have the best product price on every single product. That’s why focusing on products that offer an attractive price, keep a solid conversion rate, and help customers build a bigger basket to create upselling makes sense. When your prices are competitive, you’re more likely to appear in the top results, get more clicks, and use your marketing budget better.
Basket openers are not about having the lowest price on your whole assortment. They’re about being strategic with your pricing, drawing attention where it matters, and setting up opportunities to upsell, while keeping your overall margin structure intact.
Can I use loss leader products as basket openers?
Loss leaders and basket openers might seem similar, but they serve different purposes.
Loss leaders are products intentionally priced below cost to drive traffic or footfall, with the hope that customers will buy additional, profitable items. This approach can work in some retail settings, but can sometimes lead to unsustainable margins, price wars, and poor return on ad spend in e-commerce.
Basket openers, on the other hand, are not about pricing at a loss. They're about selecting the right high-traffic, high-conversion products and pricing them competitively, but not necessarily aggressively. These products attract the right kind of attention in channels like Google Shopping and help open the door to larger baskets, bundles, or repeat purchases.
Think of basket openers as the modern, data-driven evolution of the loss leader. They rely on performance data, competitive monitoring, and pricing rules that protect your margins rather than sacrifice them.
Why blanket discounting hurts more than it helps
Lowering prices across your entire product catalog may sound like a simple way to stay competitive, but it often leads to unsustainable margins and weak positioning. It can confuse customers and frustrate partners, especially if pricing feels inconsistent or reactive.
That’s why digital marketing experts like s360 recommend a more focused approach. Instead of matching or undercutting every competitor, they help brands identify where pricing really matters and protect value elsewhere.
→ Read our casestudy with s360: Optimize your price position and perform better on Google Shopping
How the basket opener strategy works
The basket opener strategy begins by identifying the right products. These are typically:
- Products with high search volume
- Well-known items within your assortment
- Easy to compare and often purchased online
- Likely to lead to larger baskets or repeat orders
Once identified, these products are priced competitively to boost visibility and ad performance. With the retail pricing intelligence PriceShape provides, you can target the right traffic and guide shoppers with high purchase intent toward other products or bundles.
This strategy creates a win-win: customers get a great deal where it counts, and you maintain healthy margins on the rest of your catalog.
Why basket openers work best when upsell is likely
Not every basket opener leads to an upsell. Some will convert as a single-product purchase, and that’s fine if the traffic is qualified and the return is solid.
But the best basket openers are chosen because they often lead to more. They sit at the start of a purchase journey and create natural opportunities for customers to add other products. Whether through recommendations, bundles, or just buyer behavior, these products help you turn attention into higher order values and increase your average order value (AOV), without lowering prices across your catalog.
Real performance results from brands using basket openers
In a recent s360 case study, basket opener products outperformed the control group across every key metric:
~100 times higher revenue
7 times higher return on ad spend (ROAS)
18 times more ad clicks
14% lower cost-per-click (CPC)
5.7 times higher conversion rate
These results show the strength of smart pricing built on real market insight, performance data, and strategies that drive upsell and conversion.
How PriceShape supports basket opener pricing
With PriceShape, you can identify which products have the highest potential as basket openers based on live pricing, competitor activity, and market trends.
How PriceShape helps you execute your strategy:
- Monitor how competitive your selected products are
- Set pricing rules that keep basket openers sharp
- Track product-level ad performance
- Adjust pricing dynamically across channels
Basket openers aren’t just about pricing low, they’re about pricing right. With PriceShape, you’ll have the tools to back those decisions with data, measure the impact, and scale what works.
Ready to identify your first basket opener?
PriceShape gives you the tools to spot high-impact products, monitor performance, adjust pricing dynamically across channels, and create better upsell opportunities. When you're ready to move beyond blanket discounting and focus on profitable growth, basket openers are a smart place to start.
You can already try our Sneak Peek feature to get a preview of your live pricing data and how it's presented in PriceShape. No setup needed. If you're ready to go deeper, you're welcome to start a free trial and see the full picture.
