Average Order Value is an important KPI in your business. The more transactional value you can acquire per customer purchase, the better. This is especially true when you are paying to acquire a customer transaction.
For example…
If you pay £/$20.00 for a customer and your AOV is £/$35.00, you can improve this by experimenting with a few ideas I have listed below.
Let’s dive right in.
Increase Your Prices
Kind of an obvious one but can be overlooked. When I have suggested this to clients in the past, they are a little scared of how their sales might drop. That would most likely happen if you are going to increase your prices dramatically.
But what about the idea of increasing prices incrementally? I am talking about increasing by 1-3 dollars/euro or whatever currency you are dealing with. This seems small no doubt, but it does add up across your entire collections and most of the time your customers don’t really take notice of the incremental increase.
You should at least test this out for your own clothing brand. Start by a simple increase of £/$1.00 across your entire collections and see how your conversion rate performs. If it remains the same after a period of time, then you’re onto a winner.
You’ve just increased your AOV by a slight price increase. No software to install or up sell/ cross sells.
Free Shipping Offers
Next up on the list is to test out free shipping offers. This is where you offer customers free shipping when they hit a certain monetary value in their shopping cart.
So for example, if your customers spend $/£70.00 or over, they also qualify for free shipping. This is an added value you are delivering to the customer. Both you and the customer exchange more value. You’re offering free shipping, they are offering more monetary value in their shopping cart.
How do you influence and persuade your customers to spend more with you in order to qualify for free shipping?
If customers have already added items to their basket and are relatively close to the threshold for free shipping, then a good idea is to display this information clearly as it can help to drive up AOV.
An example of this is the use of progress bars. They offer a helpful visual cue to let your consumers know how much they need to spend to qualify.
Product Bundles
Another useful tactic to drive up AOV is by bundling products together. This is where you group complimentary products together to encourage people to add more items to their orders.
So instead of trying to sell that single T-shirt. You can also offer a hoodie, hat etc with the T-shirt as a completed outfit to your customers at a discounted rate.
This type of offer is best displayed on the product page as it helps to pre qualify your prospects into making this type of purchase early on in the buying cycle.
Depending on your margins, you can also stack a free shipping offer if your customers do decide to purchase your product bundle. This can be a great way to drive up your conversion rate too.
Gift Wrapping
This is simply an extra service you can offer on your product and cart page. Your customers might have a motive to purchase your clothing as a gift for a birthday, Christmas or a special occasion.
For a few extra quid, they can have their items gift wrapped. This saves them time and offers more convenience on their shopping journey.
Cross Selling
Definitely a good idea to incorporate this into your clothing store. It’s highly unlikely you are selling just one item of clothing. You probably have several garments for sale and these items may well in fact complement each other to offer a more “completed look”.
Effective cross-selling should create relevant recommendations which complement the product viewed. You can even base it around the customer’s previous browsing and purchasing behaviour.
Up Selling
Another great way to increase your clothing stores AOV is to offer an upsell. This is where you persuade your customers to upgrade to a more expensive product on your store.
You can highlight more benefits to your prospects if they are willing to pay more. An example of this in fashion is to highlight other options relevant to the products viewed, as this can encourage the customer to spend more.
A good example of this is Reebok. Here they show related training shoes on product pages. All of which are more expensive than the one selected.
Conclusion
These are just a few ways to encourage your website visitors to make a purchase with you and help to increase your average order value. AOV is definitely a metric in your sales funnel that you want to improve and maximise as much as possible.
As long as you are offering great value, your customers will spend more on your store. You can create a win-win situation for both you as the brand and they as the customer.
