How to increase average order value without discounting

Traffic costs money, and you have already paid for every visitor who reaches the cart. The cheapest growth left is to make each order a little bigger. The usual shortcut, a discount code, cuts your margin and teaches buyers to wait for the next one.

There are quieter ways to increase average order value, and most of them need only Shopify’s own tools or your theme. For each one below: when it works, when it annoys people, and how to check the result.

Measure first: your average order value today

Average order value is your sales divided by the number of orders. In the Shopify admin, open Analytics. The overview has a card named “Average order value”; set the date range at the top to the last full month and write the number down. Shopify’s help center explains how each figure is calculated.

From the same page, also note the conversion rate and total sales: a change that raises order value while fewer people buy is not a win.

Change one thing at a time, and judge it by order value and conversion rate together.

Give each change a few weeks before you decide. Here is the short version of what follows:

Bundles: sell the set

A bundle is several products sold as one. To pick what goes together, open your past orders and note the pairs that repeat. If you are new, bundle what is used together (the product and its refill, the item and its care kit) or build a starter set for someone who cannot choose.

A set does not need a deep discount to sell. The buyer is paying for convenience and a complete purchase. Price it at the sum of its parts or slightly under, and say plainly what is inside.

In Shopify, the simplest route is a new product that represents the set, or Shopify’s own Bundles app, which keeps the stock of each item correct. To check it, open Analytics > Reports and look at sales by product: is the set selling, and did order value move after it appeared?

Cart upsells and small add-ons

An upsell in the cart works when it finishes the thought the buyer already had: batteries for the lamp, a case for the glasses, the matching refill. It should cost clearly less than what is in the cart and take one tap to add.

It annoys people when it is a pop-up that blocks the checkout button, when it offers something unrelated, or when it appears at every step. One suggestion, in the cart, is enough. Anything more belongs among the reasons in why visitors leave your store without buying.

Gift wrap and other small add-ons follow the same rule. Create gift wrap as its own low-priced product and offer it in the cart; some themes have a setting for it. It suits products bought as presents and is pointless elsewhere.

To check, count in the sales by product report how many orders included the add-on. If almost nobody takes it, change the offer.

A free shipping threshold from your own order data

“Free shipping over a certain amount” gives the buyer a reason to add one more thing, and it deals with a real problem. Baymard Institute’s research finds that extra costs such as shipping appearing late in checkout are the most common reason shoppers give for abandoning a cart.

Do not copy a competitor’s number. Choose yours:

1. In the admin, open Orders, export the last few months, and sort the file by order total.
2. Find where most orders sit. That is your typical order, and it is often lower than the average, which a few large orders pull up.
3. Set the threshold a little above it, close enough that one more small item gets the buyer there.
4. Check that you can afford it: the shipping you give away has to be covered by the margin on what was added.

Set it up under Settings > Shipping and delivery: add a rate, give it a condition based on order price, and set the price to free. Then say it where people see it, in the announcement bar and in the cart, with how much is left to go.

It annoys people when the threshold is far above what anyone spends with you. To check, compare average order value before and after, and see whether orders now cluster just above the line.

Quantity breaks and a sticky add-to-cart

A quantity break is a better price per unit for buying more of the same thing. It is a discount, but one the buyer earns by spending more, and the single-unit price stays where it was. It works for things people use up: coffee, candles, skincare, socks.

In Shopify, open Discounts, create an automatic discount on the product, and set a minimum quantity of items. Show the offer on the product page, next to the quantity selector, or nobody will know. To check, compare units sold with the number of orders in the sales by product report, before and after.

A sticky add-to-cart is a bar with the price and the button that stays on screen while a phone visitor scrolls a long product page. Its result shows in the conversion rate more than in order value: the person who has read past the bundle and the quantity offer can buy without scrolling back up. Some themes include it. Test it on your own phone and make sure it never covers the text.

Did you increase average order value? How to check

Go back to Analytics and set the date range to the period since the change. Use the compare option to put the same length of time before it alongside. Read the same numbers you wrote down at the start.

Keep the change if order value went up and conversion held. Undo it if people buy less often. A store with few orders needs more weeks before a difference means anything.

What to do first, today

Open Analytics and write down your average order value for last month. Then export your orders and find the typical order. Together they tell you where a free shipping threshold belongs, and that is usually the easiest way to increase average order value this week.

Bundles and cart offers take more building and depend on the page they sit on, so read the anatomy of a product page that sells first. And if the store is still being planned: every one we build as the Ecommerce Scaling System has analytics from day one, so these numbers are there from the first order.