8 Easy Ways to Increase Average Order Value (AOV) Of Your Online Store

Whether you have a big or small budget for customer acquisition, you’ll always want to make the most of every dollar you spend on marketing to generate the highest revenue for your business.

Imagine spending $10 to acquire a customer through a Facebook ad and that customer only buy a $5 product on your online store and leave never to return. If this scenario sounds familiar, then there’s something wrong with your store. 

It doesn’t matter if you acquire customers through paid promotions, via influencer marketing, or even organically with search engine optimization, you should always optimize to get the most out of each visitor that lands on your store.

This is where AOV play a role. With proper AOV optimization, even getting 1000 visitors to your online store would be enough to generate a profitable revenue stream for your business.

In this guide, we share some of the best methods for boosting AOV and increasing your sales like never before.

What Is Average Order Value (AOV)?

Average Order Value (AOV) is the metric that allows you to measure how much a customer spends per order. It allows you to figure out how much revenue an average order generates on your store.

By measuring AOV, you can also learn how well your store is performing at generating more sales. For example, if you sell smartphones you can measure to see if customers are also buying smartphone cases and other accessories with them. This is the basic concept of increasing average order value.

If you have a store selling multiple products, optimizing your AOV is an important part you shouldn’t neglect to get the most out of your promotions and to overall make a more successful store.

How To Calculate Average Order Value

There are several different ways to calculate your average order value. And, of course, it will always differ from one store to another depending on what type of products you’re selling and where you promote them.

One of the popular methods you can use to calculate AOV is by using Google Analytics. The platform’s Ecommerce Overview report gives you all the information you need to track these metrics and more.

Keep in mind, for this measurement to work, you’ll need to fully integrate your store with Google Analytics and create campaigns to track and measure both average order value and conversion rate. You can learn more about it here.

How To Increase Average Order Value

You can use several different strategies to increase AOV and generate more revenue from each sale. Below we share some of the tactics successful eCommerce businesses use to boost their AOV. Hopefully, you’ll be able able to adopt at least a few of these strategies to optimize your own store’s AOV.

01. Offer Product Recommendations

Setting up a product recommendations system is the most popular and the easiest way to boost AOV and generate high-value transactions. Almost every online store has recommendations sections and it’s also one of the most effective ways to get customers to buy more products.

There are a few ways you can approach to creating an effective recommended products section. If your store has a membership platform that allows users to create an account and have their own wishlists, you can utilize the data you collect from user behavior and browsing habits to create more personalized recommendations.

Or, if you have a smaller or a new store, you can create a system that offers recommendations based on previous customer browsing data and offering more accurate related product recommendations.

AI Product Recommendations is a powerful WooCommerce plugin you can use to setup such a system for your WordPress eCommerce store.

02. Upsell With Add-On Products

Upselling is one of the best strategies for boosting AOV for online stores. While some stores take this strategy to extreme levels, like offering products for free and only charging for shipping, there are much better ways to approach this tactic.

The best way to upsell products is to suggest add-ons and extensions for products. For example, if you’re selling a lifetime membership to a stock photos website at a discounted price, you can also include a monthly subscription to your stock videos website to create recurring revenue from the customers.

This strategy is also heavily practiced by massive online retailers like Amazon and eBay. Every time you view a product, Amazon will always suggest you to buy other products that go together.

If you have a WordPress WooCommerce online store, you can use the Frequently Bought Together plugin to setup a similar recommendations system on your store.

03. Sell Additional Services With Products

Selling services with products is one of the oldest tricks that improve the average order value. This trick is often used by the local retail stores in the forms of extended warranties and part replacement services.

Many online stores also use this same strategy to boost transaction value. A great example is how popular WordPress theme marketplace ThemeForest sells additional customer support with each product sold.

WooCommerce Extra Product Options is a great WordPress plugin that allows you to add additional options to your product pages.

04. Create Product Bundles

Bundling product together at a discounted price is another great way to not only generate high-value transactions but also to empty the stocks of unpopular products.

There are also eCommerce stores that have their entire business model based around selling bundles as well as selling packages of discounted products and subscriptions. For example, the Dollar Shave Club uses a similar business model and the company was recently acquired by Unilever for $1 billion.

eCommerce platforms like Shopify have useful apps like Bold Bundles to help you easily create product bundles with ease.

05. Use Deal Countdown Timers

Creating a sense of urgency is an effective strategy that allows you to tap into the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in your customers. No one likes to miss out on a great deal and a chance to save money.

Many online stores use countdown timers on websites to promote products that are on sale. Even the customers who visit your store looking for other products will want to grab a deal that’s on a limited-time offer.

You can use this same strategy on your WordPress online store using a plugin like WooCommerce Sales Countdown.

06. Setup An Email Marketing Funnel

If you don’t have an email marketing funnel setup for your online store, you’re missing out on many great opportunities for generating more sales.

With a properly setup email marketing funnel, you’ll be able to convert abandoning visitors into leads and eventually turn them into customers.

For example, many people who visit an online store come for the sole purpose of browsing products and don’t buy a product on the first day.

You can ask these visitors to subscribe to your email list to get notified about upcoming sales and deals. Then you can follow up on these customers with an email packaging a coupon code to finally get that item they wanted to buy in the first place.

Email optin plugins such as OptinMonster has powerful tools made for creating similar email popup messages and more.

7. Create Minimum Order Values For Free Shipping

Amazon has a very interesting system in place to increase their average order values. The retailer offers free shipping when your shopping cart has over $25 worth of products.

This is a strategy mostly used by online retailers to get a higher average order value by establishing a minimum order threshold. This encourages users to buy more to save money on shipping or sometimes even get a discount.

You can use this same strategy on your own online store. For example, you can offer a discount for orders that reach your minimum order threshold. WooCommerce Free Shipping Bar is a great plugin that allows you to add this feature to your WordPress-powered eCommerce store.

08. Suggest Products At Checkout

Even if your customers skip past all your promotional banners, coupon codes, countdown timers, and free shipping offers, you can still capture their attention at the checkout page or even after purchasing the product by including product suggestions in the shopping cart.

Suggesting products in the shopping cart and even recommending products after checkout can also help improve your chances of upselling products and increasing AOV.

Shopify has an incredible app made just for this purpose called In Cart Upsell that allows you to upsell and recommend products at checkout.

In Conclusion

Optimizing an online store for AOV is the first step you can take to maximize customer acquisition and boost sales. There are many steps to building a successful online store, like upgrading your store with shopping cart plugins and enhancing eCommerce SEO.

If you’re new to building online stores, you should start by checking out our guide on the top eCommece platforms for building an online store.