5 Strategies to Increase Your AOV

One of the main KPI’s of any ecommerce business is profitability and a great way to accomplish this goal is by increasing average order size. Increasing spend can be much more beneficial than spending money on acquiring new customers. If done properly, the approach to an increased AOV can be seen as a great new feature by customers.

What is AOV?

Average order value (AOV) is the average amount of money each customer spends per transaction within your online shop. AOV shouldn’t be confused with similar key metric Average Basket Value which speaks to the number of items sold per transaction. Convincing customers to add items or add more expensive items to their cart can be done in a variety of ways. Let’s look at 5 steps that will get you optimal results.

Targeted product recommendations

Approximately 50% of website visitors immediately start to shop for the item that brought them to the site in the first place. Typically this will result in one or two items added to a cart with a low average spend. By adding targeted product recommendations throughout the user journey, you add an element of personalization to the experience. Adding product recommendations to product pages, cart pages and suggesting complementary products can all add value and help increase AOV.

Free Shipping Incentives

The first draw is to offer free shipping on orders which are marginally more than your current AOV. Completely free shipping is effective but can end up increasing the AOV and cutting into your profits. If a customer’s cart is already close to the free shipping threshold, they may be more likely to add additional items to their cart to get the incentive. It may also be worth adding personalised product recommendations to the shipping page (a la Amazon’s website) to take advantage of showing paired together, recently viewed or price drop notifications.   
 

Time sensitive offers

To avoid customers mulling over their decisions to purchase for days on end, sharing an offer with a very specific end date helps to move them along. It can help create a sense of urgency and encourage visitors to buy more and quite quickly. Companies like Starbucks, eBay and Zalando are skilled at giving their coffee loving clients a bit of a nudge with their campaigns. 
Sending expiring offers via personalised email, text or popups on your site can create a real sense of FOMO in any shopper.

Bundle/package products

If you’re looking to encourage customers to buy more items at once, creating product bundles that cost less than if the same items were purchased individually is an effective way to do it. By creating packages of products, you increase the perception of value a customer has about their purchase. One very lucrative approach is offering a bundle of products that create the all-in-one solution based on the customer’s initial interest. Products that ‘go together’ can surely create a better altogether experience. 
One great example is how Pepperworld Hotshop bundles together a variety of their snacks so the shopper has a chance to try different flavours for an amazingly low price – allowing them to purchase multiple products instead of one. Also, adding a personalised touch based on past browsing history will allow you to connect with the shopper in a memorable way.

Intelligent upselling

The important word here is ‘intelligent’. Upselling has been used in sales practices for decades but now with the technology we have available to us, it’s about understanding the customer instead of pushy selling. Trying to maximise every transaction by suggesting random products just because they’re on your site is equivalent to that that pushy salesperson trying to sell you a car when you came in for a bike. It turns the shopper away and can give your brand a bad reputation. 
Upselling needs to accommodate the visitor, not under them. Understanding the browsing history, relevant products that have been purchased in the past by users like them, or simply showing complementary products after they’ve made their first purchase can all help make the upset seamless and simple for any user. It should feel like they have their own personal shopping assistant available at their fingertips.

Having a solid plan to increase AOV is a key part of uplifting profits but in the ever competitive world of ecommerce, it’s no longer enough. Personalisation across all channels is no longer a ‘nice to have’ with 80% of consumers more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalised experiences. Luxury retailer, Joseph Turner reached 30% AOV increase in two months with Segmentify’s AI-powered personalisation solutions.
If you’re looking to stand out against the competition, book a demo with one of our success team to see if Segmentify is the right solution for your business.