Did you know that the average online shopper spends around $100 per order and over $1,400 per year? That’s a lot of money, especially if you’re trying to improve your store’s performance. Today we will be talking about increasing the average order value for your Bigcommerce store, so let’s delve right in.

Understanding your AOV and improving it is a great way to measure how well your eCommerce store is working and identify areas to make more money by increasing the AOV.

What is AOV?

The average order value (AOV) is the average amount of money your customers spend when ordering from your eCommerce store. 

Your AOV is an important benchmark for understanding customer behavior. By understanding what your AOV is and which products are purchased most frequently, you can figure out the best ways to increase it that would make sense for your customer base.

For example, if you sold a product for $10 and another product for $20 and two customers bought one each, then the total revenue for that sale would be $30, and the AOV for that sale would be $15 (30 / 2 = 15). However, if three customers bought one of each product, then the total revenue for that sale would be $60, and the AOV for that sale would be $20 (60 / 3 = 20). The more people bought, the higher the AOV became.

It’s important to note that many different factors influence your AOV—conversion rate, the average price of your products, the number of items per order, etc. The AOV calculation will vary depending on how many customers respond to various offers on your site. In other words, you should continually experiment with different strategies to see what works best to boost. You can use AOV to:

• Determine which products to add or remove from your store inventory.

• Prioritize which products need better descriptions, images, etc.

• Plan future promotions around high-value product categories.

The more effectively you can use this information, the more successful your BigCommerce store will be. A higher AOV means more revenue and a stronger bottom line. It also reduces your marketing costs. You will spend less money on acquiring new customers if you can get them to spend more money every time they buy from you.

It's a common misconception that the easiest way to increase revenue is by attracting more customers. In reality, it can be much easier and more profitable to increase the average order value (AOV) of your existing customers.

Instead of investing time and money into acquiring new customers, you can put those resources towards increasing your AOV. The best part? You don't need a massive budget to do so. 

In this guide, we break down 9 ways to increase your AOV for your BigCommerce store:

1.  Create free shipping thresholds

Set up free shipping tiers. To get customers to add more products to their carts, you can offer free shipping if their order surpasses a certain amount. For example, you could offer free shipping for orders over $50. This is a common strategy that many online retailers use to increase their average order value. 

If you decide to offer free shipping with a minimum purchase amount, be sure to display this offer throughout your website: on the homepage, on product pages, and at checkout. 

It's also important to determine which products qualify for free shipping and which do not so that customers can make informed decisions. You may want to consider offering free or discounted shipping with specific products that are heavy or expensive to ship. By doing this, you can encourage customers to add more of these items to their carts to qualify for discounted or free shipping.

2. Create tiered discounts

One way to increase Average Order Value (AOV) is by creating tiered discounts. You can group products that go well together as "bundles". This will encourage customers to buy a complete (and more expensive) set. Or, you can offer small discounts for purchasing more than one of the same items.

Offering slight discounts for large orders encourages customers to add more of the same product to their cart, allowing them to see savings for bulk orders. Bundle deals also help you get customers who are only interested in part of a set to buy the whole thing, which increases your average order value.

3. Use upselling techniques.

Upselling is one of the most powerful methods to increase Average Order Value (AOV) for your BigCommerce store. An upsell is when you offer a better version of what they're already interested in buying. As long as it has a higher perceived value, and is not going to break their budget, this can be an effective way to increase AOV.

Let's say your customer is looking for an HD TV, then you might offer them the option of a more expensive but superior 4K TV.

Upselling is one of the most effective ways to boost revenue without spending on ads. You can do so by adding a cross-sell or upsell product to a cart checkout page. 

Like bundle deals and cross-selling, you can achieve this best when you use the related products options in BigCommerce. This is especially true when coupled with a discount or sale on a more expensive item, making it seem more reasonably priced than the cheaper item. 

4.  Offering a gift with purchase

In essence, offering a free gift is a form of incentive marketing to encourage customers to add more items to their cart and spend more money.

You can offer a free gift as an incentive for certain purchases, as an extra bonus for buying certain products, or even for reaching a certain order value. Offering a free gift with purchase is one of the easiest ways to increase AOV and improve your store’s conversion rate.

Giving the customer something for free will make them feel valued. It’s an easy way to thank your customer and boost loyalty. You can use it as a way to introduce new products to existing customers or give them something they already love at no extra cost. You can also use it as an opportunity to cross-sell other products in your store.

For example, you could give away a free pair of socks with every shoe purchase or include a free spa kit with purchases over $100.

5. Highlight related products on product pages.

There are a few ways to maximize the possibility of cross-selling products in your store, such as showing customers related products when they click on an item. BigCommerce has an automatic feature checked for this (showing up to 5 products automatically).

When a customer adds a product to their cart, the next logical step would be to add complimentary items that are tied to what they’re buying. For example, if you sell shoes, you could recommend shoe polish or socks to go with that pair of shoes.

It’s important to understand that these products should be shown only after the customer has added an item to their cart, since these options won’t apply to everyone. This stops people from getting distracted while they're looking around your store. They may not be ready to buy yet.

If you want more control over the product recommendations, you can use a product recommendation app like Recommendify. It will allow you to create cross-selling and upselling rules based on product type, category, or tag and show recommended products on any page.

6. Provide limited-time or time-sensitive promotions

One way to increase your Average Order Value (AOV) for your BigCommerce store is to offer limited or time-sensitive promotions, because no one wants to miss out on a great deal.

For example, if you have a promotion that expires in 48 hours, you’ll get more visitors to place an order because they don’t want to miss out on the deal you’ve offered them. The same goes for promotions with product quantity limits.

Send a personalized email to customers with a coupon code, or add a pop up with a discount code that only appears when they are trying to leave your site. These tactics will help get them to keep browsing your store and hopefully purchase more items.

7.Send abandoned cart emails (and other emails) with URLs that take shoppers right back to where they left off at checkout.

With the help of abandoned cart emails, you can try to win back some of those lost sales.

Abandoned cart emails are sent automatically when your customer abandons their shopping cart without making a purchase. They can be customized to feature different products and promotions, depending on how far along your customer has gotten in the checkout process.

It is better if you can include URLs to the products they purchased or take them directly to their shopping cart. These URLs are great because they eliminate the need for customers to re-add the items they had in their carts when they return to your store. When customers forget to buy something, this can be just the push they need to do so.

Using an email service like MailChimp with BigCommerce allows you to create beautiful emails that are branded for your store and automatically send them based on customer actions like adding a product to a cart. 

8. Provide payment plans

If you want to increase your Average Order Value, one way to do that is to offer flexible payment terms so customers can take their purchase home without paying for it immediately. This is especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic when consumers' financial circumstances and customer behavior have changed.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is growing in popularity because people are more likely to buy something if they can pay for it in installments.

Businesses that provide flexible consumer credit options, such as BNPL, typically see a 15% increase in average order value.For big-ticket items and other large purchases, flexible payment options can be the difference between a low or high cart abandonment rate on large purchases.

So, how can you add BNPL payment options to your checkout? And what are the benefits of doing so? An increasing number of businesses are integrating with Afterpay, Zip Pay and OpenPay to offer their customers flexible payment terms. Employing their checkout processing assists in streamlining your payment process while empowering customers with flexible payment terms. This can be an important consideration when sizing up your competitors’ checkout processes. 

A crucial thing to note upfront is that BNPL providers are not payment gateways. Payments are processed by credit card, and the gateway is responsible for verifying whether a given card can make a payment. This means that if you already accept credit card payments in your checkout, then integration with BNPL providers should be relatively easy. Once that’s completed, you only need to add the Afterpay, Zip Pay or OpenPay button.

9. Have a simple and flexible return policy.

Whether it’s because the product doesn’t match the product photo or they simply changed their mind, one of the biggest reasons customers abandon their carts at checkout is a complicated or confusing return policy. In fact, when asked what frustrates them most about online shopping, 35% of shoppers say it’s because they don’t understand a merchant’s return policy.

Now more than ever, it’s important to be both as transparent and as flexible as possible with your customers.

How to create a flexible returns policy:

• Provide free returns.60% of shoppers say free returns would make them more likely to shop online.

• Allow for extended return windows during the holiday season and for special promotions.

• Make sure your return policy is easy to find and understand so customers know what to expect if they need to make a return.

CONCLUSION

There is no magic bullet to increase your average order price. There are, however, many ways to increase it. This list shows at least nine ways that you can use to improve the value of the orders you’re receiving in your eCommerce business today. We hope they help you succeed!

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