Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Average Order Value on Shopify

What’s your average order value (AOV) like for your Shopify store? Do you not have a clue what it is?

If not – strive to change that as soon as you can. Your AOV is one of your core metrics for success. It’s crucial to know what it is and take steps to improve it.

Your average order value refers to the average amount of money spent on each sale. When you increase your AOV – you add to the overall profitability of your store.

If you’re a newbie to tracking and improving your AOV – don’t worry; you’ve come to the right place. We’ve prepared the ultimate guide to increasing your average order value on Shopify. Stay tuned to learn how you can make your Shopify store more profitable.

Understanding Your AOV

If you’ve never calculated your AOV before, you’ll need to learn the formula. You take your total revenue and divide it by your total number of orders. As an example, let’s say that your total revenue is $30,000, and your total number of orders is 500. Calculating your AOV would look like this:

AOV = 30,000/500

AOV = $60.00

It’s likely that your AOV won’t be a nice even number like that – but it’s beside the point. Beyond manually calculating your AOV – you can do so automatically through Shopify. You see – the Shopify platform keeps track of every sale that you make. Naturally, it then calculates your AOV for you.

Here’s how to find it in your Shopify account:

On the sidebar – click on Analytics. From the drop-down menu, select Dashboards.

You’ll see the Overview Dashboard. In the middle, there will be your Average Order Value. It contains a graph and the numerical value for your AOV. Beyond that – it will let you know if your AOV has gone up or down periodically.

That’s a helpful way of knowing that your efforts to raise your AOV are taking effect. If you didn’t have Shopify – you’d be relegated to using Google Analytics. While that’s a powerful tool too – it’s far more convenient to track your AOV using Shopify.

Ways to Increase Your AOV for Your Shopify Store

Now that you know how to track your success – it’s time to learn how you can start boosting your AOV. Remember, it’s not just about increasing sales.

It’s about increasing the average amount of money each customer spends at your store. The two are vastly different – and they require unique marketing strategies as such. Since this is the ultimate guide – we’ve included every approach we could find to boost your AOV.

Start a Minimum Order Value to Qualify for Free Shipping or Discounts

A great way to increase your AOV is to set a minimum order value to qualify for a perk. It could be free shipping or a discounted price on a product. Let’s say that your AOV is hovering around $10.

To increase it, you decide to offer free shipping for everyone willing to spend $20.

Customers now have a real incentive to spend more than they would to qualify for that free shipping. You could offer other perks as well – such as getting a freebie or a chance to enter in sweepstakes.

After a few months of implementing this – you should see a steady rise in your AOV. It’s a great way to boost your average order value by using customer incentives.

Use Upselling, Cross-Selling, and Downselling

There are three distinct ‘selling’ techniques that you can use to improve your AOV. They are the upsell, the cross-sell, and the down-sell. Here’s a breakdown of each type.

Upselling

Probably the most widely used AOV-boosting strategy is the upsell. What’s that? It’s the art of convincing a customer to upgrade to a more expensive or premium product. You can also upsell a customer by persuading them to add additional items to their cart.

There are lots of different ways to go about this. Upsell pop-ups are a common technique as of late.

They work by popping up when a customer is about to check out. The pop-up lets them know that they can upgrade to a more premium product for just a little bit more.

You can also upsell when selling memberships. It’s common to list a free option next to the paid option. As a side-by-side comparison – you list all the robust features you get when you pay. That will incentivize your customers to upgrade to a paid membership. A free trial is another great way to push customers into the upsell.

Cross-Selling

Cross-selling is a bit different in that you don’t look for an upgrade – you promote other products. What does that mean? It means recommending complementary products during checkout. A great example of this in practice is on Amazon. Their Frequently Bought Together section is all about cross-selling.

The good news is that you can mimic this model on your Shopify store.

Yet – many merchants don’t do cross-selling properly. They randomly recommend products that don’t go together for the sake of cross-selling.

It’s not about forcing random products on your customer at checkout. Instead – cross-selling is all about linking complementary products together.

Once again, you can look to Amazon for a perfect example of this technique. The products it recommends are ALWAYS related to the primary product.

To visualize this, here are a few examples:

A BAD cross-sell: A customer is buying a leash for their dog, and you recommend buying a hairdryer with it. The two products don’t complement one another – so the cross-sell doesn’t work.

A GOOD cross-sell: That same customer is buying a leash for their dog. Instead of a hairdryer – you recommend buying a dog toy. Now the cross-sell makes perfect sense, as the two are directly related and complementary.

Other cross-sell examples include:

An ethernet cable to go with a wireless router

A hairdryer and a hairbrush

Guitar strings and guitar picks

As long as you remember to cross-sell related products, you’ll do great.

Down-selling

The last ‘selling’ technique we’ll look at is down-selling. The core philosophy here is that it’s better to sell something than sell nothing. It’s also the complete opposite of upselling. Let’s say that a customer has a product in their cart – but decides to cancel it and leave.

Before they exit your store – a pop-up appears. It offers a similar product to the one they had in their cart. The catch is that it’s at a lower price and may have lesser features. Yet – the customer is still likely to buy it due to its reduced cost.

In that sense, down-selling is all about eliminating customers’ reasons not to buy something. Is it too expensive? Here’s a more affordable version of the same thing. Is it too loud? Here’s a quieter performance.

While it may seem counter-intuitive to down-sell, it’s better to have some revenue than none. A down-sell can help you salvage a total loss and turn it into a bit of profit.

Down-selling will increase your AOV because it will add to the number of customers that bought something. Once again – selling something is far better than selling nothing at all. That’s why you should leverage the power of down-selling, cross-selling, and upselling. If you’re only using one – you’re missing out on a lot of potential revenue.

Bundling Products

Another tried, and true AOV booster is to bundle products together. That means selling a few products together at a discount. As a result – customers will end up buying more than they usually would.

Creating bundles is similar to cross-selling in that the products MUST go together. You don’t want to bundle together products that don’t make sense.

Continuing an example from before, a bundle could be a hairbrush, hairdryer, and some hairspray. The total cost needs to be less than buying them individually to make the bundle worth it. That will provide a real incentive for your customers to buy the bundle instead of standalone goods.

Do you sell grooming products on your Shopify store? If so – then your niche is built for bundles. Try including a few different types of beard oil and a comb as a bundle. That’s a fantastic way to increase your AOV while attracting new customers.

That’s another benefit of bundles – they’re great for advertising your store. Include your bundles in your ads if you want to make a great first impression on new customers. That way – customers will know that they will get a lot of value from shopping at your store.

Create a Customer Loyalty Program

This strategy is excellent because it achieves two things. For one – it will improve your AOV – which is the whole point of this article. An added benefit is that it will improve your customer retention.

Do you have a hard time retaining your customers? Do you notice that they usually buy once and then never show up again?

If so, then a customer loyalty program can be what you need to keep them coming back.

Bear in mind – not all customer loyalty programs are created equal. It’s important not to get lazy here. Instead of offering random incentives – pay attention to your audience.

The most successful loyalty programs are ones that listen to their fans. In doing so – they effectively create communities for their brand. That’s highly beneficial – as it helps you retain customers for the long-term.

If you offer truly appealing incentives to your customers – they will keep returning. It’s crucial to make it worth their while. A meager discount that’s not less than your competitors won’t cut it.

Offer Premium Shipping Services

A sly way to add to your AOV is to upgrade shipping services. That means offering expedited services such as next-day air. Customers will jump at the chance to get their items sooner than later. As such – they will pay the extra amount for the premium shipping.

And the good news?

The extra money will count toward your AOV. We recommend using a combination of the minimum order amount and this technique. That way – customers have to pay a certain amount to get free shipping. If not – they have the option of expedited shipping at checkout. Both will grant you the chance to add to the order value.

Leverage Your Customer Support to Boost Your AOV

Do customers have a reliable way to contact you should they experience issues? If not – you’re missing out on a great way to improve your AOV and UX.

Customers may leave your site if they run into an issue and have no way to resolve it. That means you’re leaving revenue on the table if you don’t have a live chat feature.

Your customers will appreciate that they can get in touch with you if something should go wrong. That way – you’ll be able to salvage the sale and add to your overall AOV.

Beyond using your live chats to support customers, you can also use them for marketing purposes. When engaging in customer chat – you can suggest products to customers. Not only that, but you can upsell, cross-sell, and down-sell through customer support.

The next time you’re chatting with a customer – try to think of ways to boost revenue. Do they seem interested in one of your premium products? If so, jump at the opportunity to increase their ticket size. The same goes if they seem interested in related products.

If the customer seems frustrated and is getting ready to leave – you can hit them with the down-sell as a last resort. Remember, it’s crucial to take every step that you can to ensure a sale takes place. Even selling a lower-priced product is better than losing the business altogether.

Download Debutify to Boost Your AOV, Scale Your Store, and Generate More Revenue

Lastly, we highly recommend downloading Debutify. It’s a handy e-commerce theme that specializes in boosting conversions. Yet – it’s so much more than that. Debutify contains 54 unique add-ons that you can use to enhance your store.

Each add-on is essentially an app of its own. That means downloading Debutify is like installing 54 different apps.

If you’re currently spending a boatload on app subscriptions – Debutify will put an end to that. With it – you can get rid of dozens of third-party apps that are likely slowing down your store.

You’ll save hundreds of dollars each month by getting rid of your other apps.

Let’s take a look at Debutify’s top add-ons that will help you boost your AOV. Bear in mind – these are by no means all the add-ons that you get when you download Debutify. Instead – we’re focusing on the ones that benefit AOV specifically.

Facebook Messenger. Do you currently not have a way to engage in live chat with your customers? Then you’ll want to enable this add-on as soon as you can. It grants you the ability to integrate your Facebook account on Shopify seamlessly. From there – you can add a Messenger widget to your store. That way – your customers can chat with you on the fly if they have issues. Remember – you should use your live chat to upsell, cross-sell, and down-sell.

Infinite Scroll. Social media platforms use an infinite scroll – and that’s why they’re so addicting. You can mimic that tactic with this add-on from Debutify. When users browse your product collections – they can continue to scroll indefinitely. That will show them more products than they would have looked at otherwise – increasing the probability of a sale.

Upsell Pop-Ups. You’ve already learned about the effectiveness of upselling for boosting your AOV. With Debutify – you can easily add pop-ups that show up at checkout to upsell customers. You can recommend premium products, upgraded memberships, and related products. Debutify allows you to customize your pop-ups to reflect your brand entirely.

Upsell Bundles. With Debutify – you can start selling product bundles in no time. If you’re already using an app for bundles – you can get rid of it once you download Debutify. The add-on lets you quickly create product bundles and then sell them through your store. You can fully customize the look and feel of the bundles too.

Sales Countdown. Running a sale or special promotion is a great way to increase your revenue. Yet – sometimes customers won’t know about a deal unless you have a way to put it in front of their face. The sales countdown timer from Debutify does just that. It will add a timer next to products on sale, letting your customers know they have a limited time to act.

If you want to try out Debutify visit this link here.

Key Takeaways: Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Average Order Value on Shopify

We’ve gone over a lot so far – so it’s time for a recap. By now, you should know some candid techniques for raising your AOV. Boosting sales and boosting your AOV are two different things. To increase your AOV – you need to add to the number of products your customers buy. You can do that by upselling, cross-selling, using customer support, and more. Also, don’t forget to download Debutify to take advantage of its robust add-ons. If you want to see our article on how to upsell on Shopify visit this link here.

For more great content to help you develop your Shopify strategies, check out the rest of the merchant posts on the site. If you want to see a list of our top recommended Shopify apps visit this link here.