How Can Ecommerce Businesses Increase Their Average Order Value (AOV)?

If you are in the business of selling, your Average Order Value (AOV) is an important metric to track as a key performance indicator. It takes a lot of SEO and marketing effort these days to get customers to your website. Once a customer has landed on your site, you can offer incentives to increase the average order value at checkout, which can maximize the results for the effort you put forth in getting them there in the first place.

There are many ways to encourage your customers to purchase more and increase your average order value. Here are just a few ideas:

1) Create a Kit Builder

Can your products function as a bundle? If so, you have a great opportunity to sell more by offering your products as a kit or a bundle. Here are some advantages of selling kits:

• A kit can include a discount that the shopper would not see if they purchased each item separately. 
• A kit can also include special items not available as stand-alone items in your store, which can give the shopper an incentive to purchase.
• A kit can be customized to meet the shopper’s needs and still provide the advantage of the price or offerings. For example: color options, sizes, flavors, or style.

To make buying a kit even more fun for the shopper, you can offer an interactive experience to allow the customer to build their own bundle in a step-by-step process. A hands-on, interactive experience can greatly incentivize your shoppers to purchase from your site, therefore increasing your average order value.

Check out this fun “Car Designer and Speed Simulator” that we created for the Pinewood Pro brand!

In the simulator, the shopper is guided through a series of options to design their car. They’ll be able to see the resulting speed rating based on the items they select. If their goal is to build the fastest car possible, the shopper can easily swap out the car’s base model, axels, wheels, and weights to get the best results. Once the shopper has made all of their selections, they have the opportunity to “add all products to cart”. By adding this car design simulator to the site, Pinewood Pro saw an increase in AOV of 7.8% over the previous year!

2) Offer an Upsale

When your shopper is about to checkout, use a smart upsell feature to show them one more item that would be a great addition to their cart. For example: At MagneShade.com, a customer is buying a windshield shade for their RV. The shopper didn’t realize that they could also buy tire or additional window shades at the same time. A gentle reminder to include the additional items during the checkout process can help increase the average order value. Magne Shade saw an increase in AOV of 21% during the first six months after the launch of their new website in Nov of 2021. Read more about this project in our Magne Shade case study.

3) Use Discount Incentives

There are many ways to offer discount incentives. Discounts can greatly motivate your customers to purchase more from your site, therefore increasing your average order value. Here are some examples:

• Volume price discounts
• Coupons
• Price tiers for wholesale businesses
• Free Shipping

For aroma-burner.com we created two special Mix & Match price groups that allowed shoppers to save money by buying more items in each category. Aroma-Burner.com also offers volume discounts for their fragrant oils giving shoppers incentive to buy more and save.

Coupons can be used in marketing to drive sales up. Scanmyphotos.com offers deep promotions to new customers using coupons. They use the coupons on social media, PPC ads, and on the site itself to make it super easy for customers to take advantage of. 

For B2B customers like arkon.com and colmanandcompany.com, price tiers for high volume purchases give their retailers incentive to buy at a discounted price.

Free shipping is a must for most businesses. With increases in shipping costs due to supply chain issues and inflation, free shipping is not always an option. But if you price it right for your business, you can offer free shipping with a minimum purchase, like carefreestuff.com. Free shipping in the USA is a great option for your shoppers when you are selling higher-priced items.

In summary, there are many ways to encourage larger order totals and increase your average order value. You just need to find the right offerings for your business model. The cost of customer acquisition is high, so don’t miss your opportunity to get a higher ROI for your business!

Want to speak to us about increasing your AOV?