How to Increase Average Order Value (AOV) in Ecommerce

Increasing the average order value is one of the most effective ways to increase revenues from your ecommerce website.

Good news is that there are plenty of excellent ways to do so.

The ways to improve AOV can be unique to your industry and products, but it's important to experiment with different strategies. For example, your strategy for engaging new visitors can differ from the one for returning customers.

In this post:

• Average order value definition

• Factors that influence AOV in ecommerce

• 12 ways to increase average order value

What is average order value?

Average order value (AOV) is the average dollar value of sales for the items sold through an ecommerce website during a certain period. AOV is one of the key ecommerce performance indicators that directly impact revenue.

Apart from the most common meaning, you can also calculate AOV for other performance dimensions. For example, you can define AOV for product categories to reveal customer buying habits and find the biggest spenders.

Here are other, less common AOV dimensions:

Factors affecting AOV in ecommerce

These are the most important factors that cause AOV to increase or decrease.

Ways to increase average order value

• Offer personalized product recommendations

• Try "Buy one get one free" (BOGO) offers

• Target customer segments with personalized offers in popups

• Experiment with limited-time offers

• Set a free shipping threshold

• Share your mission and values

• Create a gift guide

• Display customer reviews

• Use upselling and cross-selling

• Engage with a product quiz

• Add conversion elements to the checkout

• Offer special deals for customers' birthdays

Offer personalized product recommendations

Product suggestions based on browsing history let shoppers circle back to items they've checked out before, so they're highly relevant. This method cuts down on the “decision fatigue” that comes from too many choices.

There are two ways to go about this way to improve AOV: traditional recommendations and AI Wishlist recommendations.

First—

Traditional product recommendations.

They can take many forms ("Customers also bought," "You might like," "Complete the look," etc.) and generally look like this:

Such sections can be automatically created with product recommendation software. If you'd like to learn more, see these product recommendation examples.

The second way—

AI-powered recommendations.

Let me show how they work using AI Wishlist. This AI product recommender shows related and viewed products based on browsing data and sales performance in a neat feed for websites.

The feed is available by clicking a "bell" in a website's header. Here's me opening the notification with recommendations after visiting four products:

This way, you can share recently viewed items as well as recommendations to the visitors who left product pages but might need an extra nudge to buy.

The feed looks like this (the notification at the top is the "product recommender," and the rest are manually made campaigns:)

When visitors open that notification, they will see the list of the items they've viewed (because it's automatically saved even if they leave the website). AI not only lists items but also analyzes visitors' browsing data and sales to display items in the order each customer is most likely to buy.

From here, they can either go check out the products or add them to the cart right away:

AI Wishlist is an effective way to increase average order value—stores like Dusk and OddBalls improved their sales by 5%.

Besides, AI Wishlist works on autopilot, so you don't have to do anything to start getting more orders.

You can try AI Wishlist on your Shopify store:

No cc needed, free beta testing. Learn more about AI Wishlist

Try "Buy one get one free" (BOGO) offers

BOGO offers help increase average order value by incentivizing customers to purchase more items. This can be done by offering a free product with the purchase of another one, or giving a discount on a second item when two are purchased.

Examples of BOGO offers:

• Buy one, get one half-price

• Buy two get one free

• Buy one, get a free item from another category

• Buy one, get X% off the second item

• Buy one, get a free sample

Trying BOGO is a good tactic to try for businesses selling replenishable items or products that go well with others (clothing, skincare, beauty, etc.).

Example of this strategy to increase AOV in action:

Émoi émoi, a clothing store, promoted a special B2GO ("Buy-two-get-one-free") offer.

To get free socks, customers had to select a size and apply a promo code to their cart. émoi émoi made this easy by adding embeds (embedded forms) on eligible product pages like this:

According to Lucie Poirier, the digital marketing manager at émoi émoi, 7,282 visitors saw this campaign in just 18 days. Of them, 145 applied the promo code to the cart, resulting in a nice 30% conversion rate:

Target customer segments with personalized offers in popups

Website popups can help you increase average order value in many ways.

Most popup tools have built-in targeting options, allowing you to create campaigns that appear only under specific conditions.

Examples—

You can make a campaign with...

• B2GO offer displayed only to those who spent over $100

• upsell offer shown only to those who add a specific item to the cart

• birthday gift displayed only to registered customers five days before their birthdays

• BOGO offer that triggers only when a customer adds something to the cart

• promo code SHOES20 that appears only to those who visit the "shoes" product category

• discount displayed to your Klaviyo segment of customers who started checkout at least once in the last 30 days

• limited-time discount for the first five meal boxes displayed only to customers who visit a service subscription page for the second time

These are all real campaigns, by the way.

Take a look—this one is from Sunbasket, a food subscription service:

Next—

This one has an upsell offer:

Next—

I found this birthday deal on Pura Vida Bracelets:

Next—

This one with an upsell is from Black Ember:

And—

This one with a gift comes from Art of Play:

The best thing about these campaigns is that they appear based on different criteria, including browsing history, amount spent in your store, shopping cart content and value, and the number of previous visits.

You can also create similar campaigns using display rules in popup software and have them run on autopilot.

Example—

These are the settings for a discount campaign shown only to the highest-spending customers who made the last order within the last 30 days:

Learn more about this tactic to increase average order value:

• Audience targeting

• Ecommerce properties

• Shopify-specific properties

If you'd like to get an app with targeting, consider Wisepops.

With this easy-to-use popup tool, you can create campaigns that appear on all possible criteria in terms of browsing history, audience segments, custom events, and even Klaviyo segments.

Get started for free:

No cc needed, unlimited free trial. Learn more about Wisepops popup builder

Experiment with limited-time offers

Limited-time offers increase the sense of urgency, so they can be very effective at increasing the average order value.

The most common limited-time offer examples include:

• Flash sales

• Daily deals

• Sitewide sales

• Subscriber-only sales

• First-time purchase special deals

• Special offers on selected products

• Holiday sales (Black Friday, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving, etc.)

Let me give you a few examples of how ecommerce stores successfully used some of these ideas to increase AOV.

First—

Charlotte Bio, an organic cosmetics store, had a six-hour flash sale and generated 17% of monthly sales. They promoted the sale with emails and ads to drive shoppers to their website, where a 40% discount was waiting:

To increase the sense of urgency, Charlotte Bio also added a sticky bar with a countdown and a code applicator:

The results were quite impressive, as 1,107 customers applied the discount code to the shopping cart within six hours. According to Marilou Bertrand, the campaign helped boost sales:

We won't go into details of this limited-time campaign, but—

Check out Charlotte Bio case study if you'd like to find out more.

Next example—

The Knitting Network, a popular yarn retailer from the UK, had a three-day special offer for products of a specific brand (Sunflower Yarns).

The store promoted the deal with this onsite notification on the homepage...

...which, when clicked, led shoppers directly to the product collection by Sunflower Yarns:

Within just three days, 677 visitors opened the notification and 444 of them went to check out the deal:

Using onsite notifications to promote limited-time deals helped The Knitting Network improve marketing results:

And the third example of increasing AOV with limited-time deals—

Ideal of Sweden extended their Black Friday offer by one hour only their registered visitors.

The offer was communicated with this popup message:

Thanks to this campaign, the store was able to collect almost 10,000 emails during the holiday week as well as increase sales.

Thanks to display rules, that popup was displayed only for a few hours. So Christoffer could easily track offer activations (as well as the AOV of this strategy) in his popup software, Wisepops.

Consider these guides for increasing AOV with limited-time offers:

Guide to flash sales with examples

Guide to limited time offers [examples + tips]

18 discount and coupon code ideas

Or—

Read the Knitting Network case study for more details about how they engaged visitors.

Set a free shipping threshold

Free shipping isn't anything new, but it could be an effective way to increase the average order value. Research says that 53% of abandoned carts are shipping-related + free shipping is seen as a risk-reducing factor in case of returns.

Here's how this strategy works:

1. Define costs. Calculate your shipping expenses and profit margins

2. Set up the threshold. For average orders of $50, offer free shipping on orders above $75

3. Adjust prices. If necessary, revise product prices to cover shipping costs

4. Implement the offer. Use your platform's (here's for Shopify) settings to define free shipping rules

5. Communicate. Try ecommerce popups, banners, or dedicated Shopify apps to share the offer

6. Monitor and improve. Track metrics and adjust strategy accordingly.

Here are examples of how ecommerce stores communicate free shipping.

Blume does so with a sticky bar at the top of the website...

...And Lulu & Georgia uses a homepage popup:

Besides sticky bars and popups that let visitors know about the offer right away, consider showing the free shipping promo when a customer adds something to the cart.

Share your mission and values

The link between a brand's mission and AOV might seem unclear initially, but customers prefer buying from brands with meaningful values that match their actions.

Take Asphalte for example.

This brand manufactures only the products chosen by its customers, so there's little to no overproduction. Furthermore, Asphalte has a fully transparent supply chain and gives detailed reports on its environmental impact.

Being an environmentally friendly business benefits everyone, including the business itself.

After measuring average order values and customer lifetime values, Asphalte's team discovered one important thing:

That's why the brand is now laser-focused on promoting their mission and values among both new and returning visitors.

Specifically, they drive traffic to the product survey page, where everyone can choose what clothing items Asphalte will produce:

To give you an idea of how effective this tactic can be, here are the results of one popup campaign with a link to the survey (30 days):

• 60,000 visitors viewed the campaign

• 15,000 clicked to go to the survey

• 4,000+ completed the survey and converted into leads

Find out more about Asphalte's project: Asphalte case study

You also can (and should) raise awareness of your brand's mission, values, and, as Asphalte's example shows, even an eco-friendly business model.

Create a gift guide

A gift guide simplifies shopping around holidays and other meaningful dates, so it has the potential to increase the average order value.

That's why 37% of Shopify websites have gift guides, including this one from Art of Play:

Consider these best practices for gift guides:

• Make room for all wallets: Set up sections with gifts at various prices to fit everyone's budget (eg "gifts for $50 and under")

• Add good-quality visuals: Add some awesome photos or videos of the products so people can really see what they’re getting.

• Help with ideas: Throw out some suggestions for all the different folks in your life, like "gifts for her" or "gifts for dad."

• Update regularly: Keep updating your gift guide with the latest and seasonal products to keep people coming back for more.

Display customer reviews

If you have some customer reviews, it's time to put them to good use. When your potential customers see positive reviews, they're more likely to confidently make larger purchases, boosting AOV.

In terms of increasing AOV, consider adding reviews to:

The homepage, like Blume does here (below Shop Now)...

Or—

To exit intent popups, like that:

Or—

To checkout pages:

Or—

Product category menus (star ratings below the product names):

Or—

To dedicated review pages:

Use upselling and cross-selling

Upselling and cross-selling are two popular marketing tactics to increase average order value in retail and ecommerce.

With upselling, you suggest a pricier version of the product the customer is viewing or about to buy.

With cross-selling, you recommend additional and recommended products related to the item a customer is viewing or has added to the cart.

Examples—

Magic Spoon offers to switch from one-time purchase to a subscription after the customer adds the item to the cart:

Also—

WP Standard suggests additional items to complement a tote bag:

Launching the first upsell campaign can be as easy as publishing one popup campaign (as Magic Spoon did).

Learn more: upsell popup examples

Use a product quiz

Some of your customers may not be sure what specific product meets their needs the best, so you might help them with choose with product quizzes.

In terms of increasing AOV, you can recommend:

• extra products with quiz results

• related items to the ones recommended

• bundles or kits for a more comprehensive solution

For example, Blume, a skincare brand, created a quiz to help customers identify their skin care needs and then recommend a tailored regimen, including a face wash, acne patches, and a gel cream as a bundle.

Note the 20% discount (a good incentive to buy) and a button to add everything to the cart (to make buying as easy as possible):

Add conversion elements to the checkout

Having conversion elements at the checkout page is a clever move to improve aov in ecommerce. The trick is to recommend items that complement what's already in the shopping cart.

Conversion elements worth considering include:

• upsell messages

• cross-sell offers

• exit-intent popups

• countdown timers

• small extra discounts

Let's see a couple of examples.

Taylor Stitch throws in a suggestion for a crew sweater (the Top it Off" section) to go with the jeans in my shopping cart here:

Or—

You can even make one final offer: a special price for a popular item paired with the one already in the cart, like here:

Offer special deals for customers' birthdays

Your registered customers are your best bet to increase the average order value, and birthday deals are great to do that.

Ways to use birthday deals to boost AOV:

• 24-hour personalized discount

• Free shipping for buying over $50

• Free service (such as virtual styling sessions)

• Free product for buying over $50

• Double loyalty points and more perks for buying within 24 hours

Example—

Another option to improve AOV—

Offer deals on your brand's birthday.

Blume, for example, launched a B2GO (buy two get one free) offer:

If you don't have the birthday data for some of your leads (say, they signed up for your newsletter but never bought anything), consider asking them.

TOMS does so with emails like this one...

And Steve Madden, one of the top Shopify stores, uses multi-step popups to collect both emails and birthdays from visitors:

How you can collect birthdays like Steve Madden:

Create multistep popups [step-by-step guide]

Summary

Ecommerce strategies that boost average order value (AOV) are key to increasing revenue for your ecommerce store. Thankfully, there's a lot of ways to do so, and I hope the ones listed in this article were helpful.

For more tips on boosting your sales, check out our guides:

• 10 ways to collect emails [with examples]

• Ecommerce website design examples [learn best UX and conversion practices]

• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Best practices & tools

• Guide to website conversion funnel

• Ecommerce case studies