How to easily increase the average order value of your store

More and more businesses are making the transition from stacking their shelves with stock, to selling online. As the years go by, ecommerce is undertaking some serious growth - in the United States alone the market topped over $500B in 2019. In this blog we are going to show you some growth hacks, so you can get your fair share of the $500B + market.

There’s an assortment of different reasons for starting your online business such as wanting to have more freedom in a professional environment, or craving a better work life balance but ultimately everyone starts a business to make money, right?

Bundle offers

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an ecommerce giant or a new start-up company, all customers are suckers for a freebie! It’s been proven both in physical and online sales that customers are more likely to purchase more with an incentive, which in this case is the bundle offer.

Here’s a fantastic example of 'myvaporstore.com', who’ve created a relevant, cheap and consumer focused bundle offer. The performance of this bundle offer will be amazing, as you can see it’s nearly $30.00 cheaper than if the customer were to purchase all the contents individually and also, the products compliment each other - you cannot use the vape without the vape liquid.

Customer loyalty reward schemes

If appropriate, your store can create a loyalty scheme by which customers will receive a discounted product after X amount of purchases. As the name suggests, this technique encourages and promotes customer loyalty through repeat sales.

This technique will only work on appropriate stores, so what makes an appropriate store? If your product / service is a lifestyle requirement or a consumable product such as toothpaste, food or clothing then this technique will work.

So how do you increase AOV with customer loyalty schemes?

It’s pretty simple, you modify your loyalty scheme so that the more the customer spends in one order, the larger the percentage discount from the order value becomes.

Smile.io found that the majority of brands experienced a 13.71% increase in order values from members of their customer loyalty program compared to non members.

In the example above, you can see that Starbucks’ customer loyalty scheme offers free drinks and exclusive offers. I think that this is a great example of what a good one looks like and Starbucks has set an example. It not only has created an incentive to buy but it creates the illusion that the brand has fantastic customer care at the forefront of their businesses values, which is a bonus!

Cross selling & up selling

Have you ever gone to check-out online and then you’ll be recommended a product that compliments one you’ve just added to your basket, so you add it in there too? This is called cross-selling. The store is aware that you are interested in the product and so they suggest ones that are similar to try and get you to increase your average order value. If done correctly , this can be a very profitable technique for your business. You can also try and up-sell products, this is the exact same but you offer them a better version, or a more expensive version of the product they’ve added to their baskets.

Free shipping on order over

It’s known that customers fall for free shipping online, so why not utilise that fact and let your customers know they won’t be hit with any surprise fees. This has the added bonus of increasing the trust between you and the customer and lowering the cart abandonment rates.

Here you can see that JD has successfully broadcasted that they offer free standard shipping with orders over £70, which is a working example of free shipping increasing AOV. If the customer can get free shipping for orders over £70.00, and they purchase a product for £55.00, they are likely to choose a cheap product as-well as the one they’ve added to their baskets for the free shipping. This then increases the basket value from £55.00 to +£70.00.

Retarget your active customers

There’s a famous saying in west yorkshire, where we are from that goes, ‘If it ain't broke, don’t fix it’ and the same logic can be applied to increasing your average order value too. Have you ever thought to re-target your already paying customers? If a customer has previously purchased with your business, you know that they are more likely to do it again, and again and again - so utilise this and prompt them via an email campaign or a targeted Facebook campaign to come back and check out your collection.

If your product is a very high ticket, you could perhaps send a personalised video message via email or arrange a phone call to respire your working relationship.

How are you going to increase your AOV in 2020? - We would love to know, reach out to us on LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter! - We look forward to seeing your responses.

Read more:

https://www.springbot.com/2017/03/7-ways-increase-average-order-value/

https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/10/customer-retention-statistics.html

https://sumo.com/stories/ecommerce-upselling

https://www.shopify.co.uk/blog/average-order-value

https://www.salecycle.com/blog/featured/11-best-ecommerce-stats-2018-far/