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Regardless of the size and type, every business organization has one goal, i.e., to boost its sales and increase revenue. Profit maximization is the primary purpose of establishing and running the business.
People dream of earning a hefty revenue by selling goods and services online. With the advent of the latest technology, it has become pretty easy for entrepreneurs to grab the prospects’ attention, lure them to visit the website, encourage signups, and make a sale to them.
However, the competition in the market has made it difficult for entrepreneurs to broaden their customer base and sell their products to numerous people.
Ecommerce businesses often underestimate or overlook the importance of increasing the amount customers spend on each order. That’s right! If a company increases its average order value, it can earn more profit on each order even if it has fewer customers.
In today’s article, we have listed ten simple and effective ways to increase the average order value for your Shopify store.
But, before we proceed, let us throw light on what the average order value is.
What Is Average Order Value?
AOV or average order value is the average amount spent by the customer when ordering from your store.
To calculate your Shopify store’s average value order, you need to divide the total revenue by the total number of orders received.
AOV= Total Revenue / Total Orders Received
The most important benefit that a business derives from increasing its average order value is, it makes more profit from every transaction. Hence, it makes your Shopify store more profitable even with the limited customers that you have.
When visitors or customers come to your store, they often explore the website or buy the things they need. But, by implementing the following strategies, you can tempt your customers to add more products to their carts to increase the average order value of the business.
Let’s begin…
10 Simple and Effective Ways to Increase the Average Order Value For Your Shopify Store
1. Offer Free Shipping
Customers love to shop from a store that offers free shipping. It makes them want to revisit the store to purchase their desired articles as they don’t have to pay for the shipment.
Offering free shipping can increase the average order value on your website, but here is a little twist. Offering 100% free shipping might not increase the order value as the customers who want one item will place their orders and checkout from the store.
However, if you set a limit or threshold for availing of free shipping, your customers will try to reach the limit to enjoy free delivery.
For instance, you can offer free shipping on orders above $100. If your customers have bought goods worth $85, they will add more products to their carts to reach the free shipping threshold. You can also notify the customer if their total amount doesn’t reach the limit to free shipping. The notification will make the customer add more products to his cart.
Are you wondering about setting the free shipping threshold? No problem, it’s pretty simple. Calculate your average order value and add 30% to it. For example, if your order value is $200, adding 30% will make it $260. This amount can be set as your delivery limit.
2. Give Product Discounts
You might be wondering how offering discounts can increase the average order value. It sounds counter-intuitive, but trust us, it works perfectly to entice the customer to spend more or to a specific limit to get some discount.
Here is how you can make it work on your Shopify store.
You can display a popup on your website and inform the visitors that they can enjoy discounts if they spend a certain amount on your store. For instance, if the customer pays $50, he will get a discount of $8 on his final bill, or on spending $100, he will receive a discount of $10, etc.
Or you can offer your customers discount coupons or codes that can only be redeemed if they buy expensive items or goods from a particular range. For instance, you can send a discount coupon for buying a perfume from an exclusive range or a limited edition.
Offering a little discount or setting a discount threshold, your customers won’t mind spending extra to avail discount; it sounds contradictory, but it works!
3. Offer Deals to New Visitors
This method works amazingly well for startups and businesses not very old in the market. If an eCommerce store offers special deals or discounts to new visitors, its website’s traffic will increase, visitors will explore the website, and they might add a few things to their carts because of the reduced prices.
First-time buyers will hesitate less to spend on your website if you give them a good reason to. Create offers that will entice them to buy your goods and return to your website for future retail therapy.
You can also ask new visitors to sign up for the newsletter to get amazing discounts. This way, you will increase your average order value and use email marketing to promote your brand and products.
4. Deals and Bundles
Offering deals and bundles is an effective way to elevate your average order value. Customers also love to avail themselves of deals when they buy goods in deals. It costs them less than buying them individually.
Some entrepreneurs also apply the famous Shopify marketing strategy of buying one getting one free, buying two, and getting the third free, etc., to clear their stock and increase the average order value.
You can create bundles of your bestsellers with your less-selling items. The customers will prefer to buy the goods in the bundle as compared to individually. For example, if an item is priced at $10, you can sell three similar items for $24 instead of $30 in a bundle.
Moreover, you can also create deals where your customer can get one item free on buying three similar items.
However, make sure that the price of the free item is covered in the cost of the other three items purchased by the customer. Or you can also send a gift to your customer if he spends a certain amount set by you on the Shopify store.
Again, ensure that the cost of the gift item is covered in the items bought by the consumers.
5. Gift Cards
Gift cards and vouchers can be of immense help for increasing average order value. Even a small value gift card can work wonders to make the customer revisit your Shopify store and add goods to the cart.
Send the customers a gift card when checking out from the website to lure them to revisit your website and avail it on their next shopping spree. Since the gift cards are not applicable on the current bill, neither can waive off the delivery charges; the customer will look forward to using it at their earliest.
To make it more effective, you can put a time limit on it, i.e., the gift card or code will become invalid after two weeks. It will make your customer hurry up and return to your website.
Now, don’t worry, the customer won’t be able to take anything from your website for free! Make sure to keep the value of gift cards less than the least priced item in your store. In this way, customers will have to spend a certain amount to redeem their gift cards.
6. Cross-sell and Up-sell Items
Cross-selling and upselling products are the most common tactics used by eCommerce giants to boost sales and increase the average order value, such as Amazon.
Let us first understand the difference between the two. Cross-selling is to sell those goods to customers that complement their purchase; for example, if the customer has purchased a sundress from your store, you can suggest to them a pair of sunglasses, hat, bracelet, etc. That would go with their purchased dress. On the other hand, upselling makes customers buy an expensive version of the product they are interested in.
For example, if the customer has added a $10 item to his cart, you can suggest the pricier version of the same article and highlight its key features. The customer will not mind spending some extra money to get an upgraded or more helpful article.
Keep track of the items purchased by the customer and suggest different goods to make him spend more on your Shopify store.
7. Start Loyalty Program
If you are on a tight budget and cannot afford to invest in attracting new customers, don’t worry. You can increase your average order value by luring your existing buyers to purchase more from you.
Did you know that only 8% of the total visitors are repeat buyers?
According to a report, 40% of the store’s revenue is generated from repeat customers. Hence, introduce the loyalty program to make your existing customers shop from you and increase your average order value.
Whenever customers shop from your website, reward them with loyalty points which they later can redeem to pay for their shopping bills, receive discounts or gifts. Customers would love to shop from a brand that rewards them for their loyalty.
8. Show Savings
People feel great when they save money and feel guilty when they overspend it. When customers see their final bill at the checkout, they cut down a few items or abandon the cart if they feel they have spent too much.
To stop your customer from cutting down the items in his cart and make him feel good about his purchases, always display the amount your customer has saved on each purchase. When the customers see that they have purchased the goods at discounted prices and saved money, they don’t feel guilty and continue their shopping spree at your Shopify store.
9. Lucky Draws
Let customers try their luck by entering the lucky draw or contest by spending a certain amount on your Shopify store. Display it on your website, and social media handles that customers can enter the lucky draw by shopping for $250 on the website.
Tempt the customers to enter the lucky draw to win exciting and expensive prizes. Customers would love to win expensive or unique gifts and won’t mind spending the amount to try their luck.
However, if you keep a cheap price, do not expect the same response.
If you cannot afford an expensive prize, give out cash vouchers or some of the bestselling items of your store.
10. Create Emergency
Introducing time-sensitive deals and offers is a perfect way to create emergencies and make people add goods to their carts.
You can introduce a limited-time offer such as a flat discount on new arrivals or best-selling items. By putting a limit to enjoy the deal or discount, customers act faster and purchase the goods before the time runs out, and they miss out on fabulous discounts.
When you are holding a sale, ensure to inform your buyers about it on your social networking channels and website. To make this trick more effective, display a timer on your homepage. Watching the clock ticking will make the buyer act faster.
Wrapping Up
Calculating the average order value is crucial for an online business to understand the store’s performance and the revenue generated by it. Once you have calculated the value of your average orders, you can implement the above-listed strategies to raise it to your desired value.
Remember, no matter what tactics and Shopify marketing strategies you use, the average order value will not increase overnight. Stay consistent and keep experimenting to see which techniques work the best for your store and bring fruitful results to elevate the average value of the orders.
Author Bio:
Ricky Hayes is the Co-Founder and Head of Marketing at Debutify – a free Shopify theme, helping drop shippers build high-converting stores in minutes. He is a passionate entrepreneur running multiple businesses, marketing agencies, and mentoring programs.
