What is Average Order Value (AOV)?
Total revenue / Total orders = Average order value

Do you know if your customers typically buy more expensive or less expensive products? How many products do customers order at one time on average?

When coupled with the average conversion rate, AOV is useful in predicting revenue based on future traffic. Even investors are interested in AOV.

Here are 18 tried and true ways to increase your AOV…

1. Free Shipping On Orders Over $X

Consumers are motivated by Free anything and if that means no shipping fees added to their order, even better. X depends on your current AOV and your average shipping cost per order or ASCO:

X = AOV + ASCO + round up to an easy number to remember

2. Discounts With Minimum Order Amount

Similar to free shipping on orders over $X except this is a discount – “Get a 5% coupon for orders over $60”

3. Product Volume Discounts

Encourage purchasing multiples of an item rather than encouraging a minimum order total.

  • Purchase 10 or more price: $9.99
  • Purchase 20 or more price: $7.99

4. Bundle Products Together To Get a Discount

AT&T bundles high speed internet, wireless service and TV together as a promotional discount and people buy it, you can do the same in your ecommerce store. Simply create a new product or SKU by putting 2 or 3 products together as one.

Bundled deals increase AOV
credit: jules

5. Loyalty/Rewards Program

Credit cards like Capital One offer cash rewards or points on purchases that can be redeemed easily. Do something similar to incite your customers to buy more since they feel like they are getting something in return for purchasing on your site. Rewards programs can be ongoing but consider using it for specific weeks, days or events.

Loyalty/Rewards programs increase AOV
credit: Mighty Travels

6. Gift Cards With Purchase

Very similar to a Rewards Program except you are giving customers free credit on their next purchase and it’s easier to manage.

  • “Orders over $100 will receive a $10 gift card on your next visit.”
  • “Create an account and receive a 5% off discount code.”

7. Buy One, Get One-Half Off Everything

You’ll need to segment your customers accordingly and send this offer to customers that purchase often but don’t spend a lot or only buy one item at a time.

8. Upsell Products With One Click

If most people buy the $20 version, offer them a premium $40 upsell version.

9. Cross Sell Products

Offer highly relevant products to complement the current purchase. “Want fries with that burger?” or “Would you like something with that?”

Cross Sell to increase AOV
credit: Alyssa & Colin

10. One-Time Offers

After someone purchases you can make him/her a special, one time offer that complements the initial purchase. And you can make multiple one-time offers as long as they add more value to the initial offer.

11. Downsales

If the customer says no to the one-time offer, you can downsell them with a different product or a payment plan option on the same offer.

12. Order Form Offer Bump

After prospects enter their credit card details for a purchase and before completing the purchase, make an additional one-time offer allowing them to add it to their current order by ticking “Yes, add to my order” box.

credit: Optimized Assets
credit: Optimized Assets

13. Bring Customers Back To Buy

Based on his/her purchase use complimentary and special offers with expiration dates to bring customers back to buy more often.

14. Special Thank You Discounts

Right after completing a purchase, offer a special thank you discount with expiration dates.

credit: Matthew Oliphant
credit: Matthew Oliphant

15. Most Popular Option

Display three options of an item and show the one that is most popular. Show the low, mid-priced and high-priced items together, usually the mid-priced item is most popular. This often prevents people from choosing the low-priced item.

credit: zoho.com
credit: zoho.com

16. Fundraising

Consumers are likely to spend a little more because it feels good that a portion of their purchase is going to fund a good cause or organization. It also gives you an opportunity to get some free PR. Like Toms Shoes.

credit: Toms Shoes
credit: Toms Shoes

17. Raise or Lower Prices

Test pricing with a small segment of your traffic to see what the market will bare while keeping an eye on conversion rates.

18. Display cost savings at the checkout as a line item

Over to You

I hope you seize this opportunity with a few of the above tactics. The key is to keep looking for ways to up your average order value.

Try out this Ecommerce Forecasting Calculator to forecast revenue based on AOV.


Tom Shivers
Tom Shivers

I'm a ecommerce SEO consultant and President of Capture Commerce. I've managed digital marketing campaigns for scores of clients since 2000 and found that every business is unique with its own challenges and opportunities. When I see that I have contributed to the success of a business by helping them grow, it makes me feel awesome! That’s the coolest thing and I’m so thankful for the opportunity to do this.

    4 replies to "18 Proven Ways To Increase Average Order Value"

    • Tina

      The up-selling always works. We recommend it to most of our digital product selling clients. We do it via email marketing (our secret) 🙂 . Anyway thanks for sharing the post, would love to comeback and read others..

    • Tom Shivers

      Tina, thanks for sharing your “secret” got any more?

    • Awen

      Informative post. We’re in the process of setting up an Ecommerce website. We have some data and will be looking to implement some of these techniques to increase AOV(Average order value).
      Thanks!

    • Tom Shivers

      Awesome Awen! Ain’t it fun to test stuff that already works to see if you get similar results with your own audience?

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