By Simon Jones

In the retail world there is an unspoken convention that when checking out you must be bombarded by inexpensive impulse purchase-driven items. At the grocery store, you are tempted by bubble gum, magazines and phone cards. At furniture stores like Ikea, even, you may be tempted by Swedish meatballs and chocolate bars. And who ever left a fast food restaurant without being asked “do you want fries with that?”

Why is this? Because, time and time again, it has been proven that the average retail customer will, in fact, accept the offer of a low-cost addition to their shopping basket once they've reached the point of opening their wallet.

Bizarrely, the vast majority of online sellers have missed this point.

The large retailers, of course, often have excellent and effective strategies in place: you can't get out of (or even around!) Amazon.com without their offering you scores of items they think you'd like. But for the average site, the best you're likely to see is a somewhat halfhearted effort to tack on overnight shipping or gift-wrapping.

The challenge, especially for merchants pushing intangibles like software and music, is that they may not have a rich catalog of options to offer. For a grocery store, it requires close to zero effort to source a pallet of bubblegum to position by the checkout; for a company selling their own software on the Web, it is not as obvious how to find a similar offer to line up on the online BuyNow page.

This is exactly why Plimus introduced Network Sales in Spring of 2009, and is now promoting the concept of Bubblegum Promotions. Simply stated, Bubblegum Promotions are broadly-appealing, low-cost, impulse purchase-driven offers that can be easily added to any purchase process driven by the Plimus platform. Any merchant selling through the Plimus e-commerce platform can now implement Bubblegum Promotions in just seconds and add the potential for double-digit revenue growth without investing a penny in developing or sourcing new product.

The Plimus catalog offers a wealth of Bubblegum Promotions that are available immediately. These range from IT support sessions, to software for fixing slow or virus-laden PCs, to some of the world's most popular video games. With low unit costs (to qualify as a Bubblegum Promotion, an offer must be priced below $10), they add high-margin potential to each and every sale.

Bubblegum Promotions can be added as actual promotions within the purchase process – but they don't have to be. For merchants concerned that they might reduce the conversion rates on their core offerings by adding new and unfamiliar offers to the purchase page, there is still plenty of opportunity. Ads to Bubblegum Promotions can be added to the Processing Page, allowing the customer to browse recommended promotions while their current purchase is being completed; promotions can be added to the Thank You page post-purchase; and promotions can be added to Sales Confirmation emails – and even follow-up email campaigns.

The opportunities for revenue growth are many, the costs virtually zero and the potential unlimited: which is why Plimus likes to say that a purchase page without a promotion is a crime against business.