How I increased the AOV of a client by 27%
When i first started the clients AOV was £33. They needed a larger AOV because the costs of advertising were eating away at their profit per order. We had to fix it!
The majority of sales in the store were coming from single low cost items, great for turnover and gaining new customers. But it wasn't sustainable!
Below are the four changes we made which led to a 27% increase.
1. Bundles
We created a bundle collection of products that allowed the customer to purchase all of the matching items with one click and with a slight built in discount.
The AOV of these orders were around £100. Obviously they weren't ordered as much but when they did they have a real impact on the revenue for that day.
2. Free-Shipping & Shipping Cost
The free shipping value was at £30, we increased that to £40 which meant the customer had to purchase either two items or a more expensive item to make the free shipping. The shipping cost was also too low, this is why customers were ordering one low cost item and placing an order, so quite simply we increased the shipping cost to make the customer think just a little bit more about 'shall i order that second item?' To measure the changes workout what % profit you want to increase vs the amount of sales you might lose.
3. Cross-Selling
Offer the matching items on the product page. The idea here is to make it easy for the customer to see the whole collection on one page. This was very successful for helping the customer choose that second item to get free shipping.
4. Increasing number of expensive items in the store
This was a simple one, they had to sell more expensive items to combat the rising costs of online advertising.
Final Thoughts
The combined uplift of these four moves took AOV from £33 → £42 (+27%). The common thread: make higher-value outcomes the easy, obvious choice—without adding friction. This increase in AOV was necessary for the company to maintain profitability.
An important reminder for your next ecommerce business, start with a product worth more than £50.