How to Increase Average Order Value: 15 Ecommerce Strategies
Average order value is the cheapest revenue lever in ecommerce, because raising it does not require acquiring a single new visitor. Everyone below is already on your site or in your cart, already decided to buy something; the question is how much.
Short answer
AOV and conversion rate can trade off against each other, so raise AOV through mechanics that feel like a favour to the buyer (free shipping, a relevant bundle) rather than pressure (a hard-to-miss upsell popup). The best AOV tactics increase transaction size without adding friction to the purchase decision itself.
The free-shipping threshold formula
Set the threshold slightly above your current AOV, not far above it. If your average order is €62, a threshold at €75 gives most shoppers a concrete, achievable reason to add one more item; a threshold at €120 asks for a jump most will not make and simply costs you free shipping on nobody. As a starting point, threshold = current AOV × 1.15 to 1.3, then adjust based on how many orders actually land just below it, which tells you the threshold is working as intended.
15 ways to increase average order value
- 1. Set a free-shipping threshold using the formula above, and show progress toward it visibly in the cart, not just as a static banner.
- 2. Bundle genuinely complementary products at a small discount versus buying separately. A camera, memory card and case sold together increases transaction size while reading as a convenience, not an upsell.
- 3. Offer quantity breaks on consumables. “Buy 3, save 15%” on anything that gets used up works because it is genuinely useful to the buyer, not just profitable for you.
- 4. Add a cart-page cross-sell tied to what is already in the cart, not a generic “you might also like” pulling from the whole catalogue.
- 5. Use a post-add-to-cart upsell for a directly relevant upgrade, shown once, not on every single interaction, which trains visitors to ignore it.
- 6. Introduce a visible premium tier, even one that rarely sells. It raises the perceived reasonableness of your mid-tier product through simple anchoring.
- 7. Offer a subscription or replenishment option at a small discount versus one-off purchase, which raises the value of the relationship even when it does not raise the value of a single transaction.
- 8. Add a small, low-friction add-on at checkout (gift wrap, an extended warranty, a protective case), priced low enough that it reads as a minor decision rather than a new purchase to reconsider.
- 9. Create starter kits or “complete the look” sets for categories where customers naturally buy multiple related items anyway; you are packaging a decision they were going to make regardless.
- 10. Use a loyalty or points mechanic that rewards larger orders disproportionately, giving a reason to consolidate purchases into one larger order instead of several smaller ones.
- 11. Show “frequently bought together” using real purchase data, not manually guessed pairings, since actual co-purchase data outperforms intuition here consistently.
- 12. Offer a limited-time gift-with-purchase above a spend threshold, which motivates the same behaviour as a discount without training customers to expect lower prices permanently.
- 13. Test a slightly higher default quantity selector where relevant, since a default of 2 rather than 1 on genuinely multi-use products lifts average quantity per order without removing choice.
- 14. Segment your highest-AOV customers and learn what they buy differently, then merchandise more of it to everyone else; your existing best customers are already showing you what a bigger basket looks like.
- 15. Track AOV by channel and campaign separately, not as one blended number, since a channel bringing in smaller baskets is telling you something specific about the audience it attracts.
Raising AOV works best paired with a healthy conversion rate; adding friction to chase a bigger basket while losing buyers at checkout is a net loss. Product page optimization covers the conversion side of the same funnel.
The average order value vs conversion rate trade-off
A hard sell for a bigger basket can cost you the sale entirely. An aggressive upsell popup that interrupts checkout, or a bundle presented as mandatory rather than optional, adds friction at exactly the point where friction is most expensive. The tactics above that work best long-term are the ones that read as genuinely useful to the buyer rather than a tactic being run on them: a relevant bundle, a threshold that is easy to reach, a default quantity that matches how the product is actually used.
Watch total revenue, not just AOV. A tactic that raises AOV by 8% while dropping conversion rate by 15% is a net loss even though the headline metric improved. Measure both together, never one in isolation.
An AOV scorecard worth running quarterly: current AOV against your free-shipping threshold, attach rate on your top cross-sell, and AOV split by channel. Movement in any of these tells you which of the fifteen levers above is worth testing next, rather than trying all of them simultaneously and losing track of what actually worked. For the revenue math behind exactly how much a percentage change in AOV is worth, the free ecommerce conversion rate calculator runs the numbers on your own funnel.