Ok, so you’ve spent some money getting people to your website, you’ve got analytics set up so you have eyes and ears inside your storefront. Now you’re probably sitting there thinking –
“Yes people are buying, things are looking healthy, but how can I actually get them to buy more without spending more?”
The answer is quite simple and require a little intelligence but not hard to execute.
The first thing you need to do is figure out exactly what the current average order value is of your shoppers. Every site will be different. Most basic analytics tools like Google Analytics’ ecommerce plugin can give you this information.
As I’ve outlined below in the screen shot, you probably want to run a three month date range so your golden number is as accurate as possible. This is really important to get right.
As you can see for this particular site, the golden number we have is $108
Once we know what that number is, the next step is to be able to offer a coupon through your site that offers a certain amount of dollars off an order above your AOV. For example, “Free Shipping on all orders over $140” or “Spend above $140 and get $15 off.”
However, there is a fine balancing act here in now figuring out what our second golden number is, which is the “above” or discount off amount.
The goal is to set the discount you offer at a price point that sits above your average order value but not to far above.
You want them to have to add something extra in their basket above what they were already prepared to buy, but you don’t want them to add something to expensive as it might be out of their reach.
Our testing shows that the golden number in most cases across most verticals is usually around 30% of their original purchase price. So if on average they spent $108 you would offer something at the $140.
In addition to figuring out what these numbers and offers are, it would be our suggestion that you also offer a dollar valued discount over a certain amount rather than a % discount based on total order value. At least to start with.
The reason being is that you’ll have a compelling offer to entice people to buy more but at the same time your minimizing your exposure.
If someone takes you up on an offer to get a $15 discount on an order over $140, their basket value might end up being $185, but you still only have to give them a $15 discount. As opposed to a percentage off on all orders over a certain amount, which would certainly end up costing you more than $15 in many occasions.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
Anyway, back to the drawing board. Once you’ve figured out what your AOV and your offer is, then you need to promote it.
Again, not so difficult, once you’ve got your golden numbers.
Below you can see what I like to call a “promo strip” which in this case I’ve pulled from the site FlirtCatalog.com. Every week or two they update their special promo strip to help stimulate sales. As you can see here they are offering a free shipping promo code this week.
Every time I come back to this site, they have a fresh promo and it’s always in the same spot so customers are “trained” to know where to look for special offers and deals.
When you break it down, this strip is really just a very basic jpeg design you could practically design yourself in paint and pay your web-master to upload onto your pages.
My suggestion would be to take this whole concept and test it out for a couple of weeks or months to see which offer gets the best response. It would simply be a matter of creating and uploading a new strip every few weeks along with the creation of the coupon codes.
Every site, product and shopping vertical is going to have a different sweet spot. But the concept outlined above is more or less the formula to use to figure it out.
My suggestion in the beginning would be to start out simple and easy, nothing too complicated, and most of all, make sure you’re coupons have been set up to work as the offer goes live. It sounds very obvious but there is nothing more frustrating for a shopper to use a coupon that doesn’t actually work.
Not good for trust building either.
There are quite a few more ideas around this whole concept and ways to increase average order values in general, but as a starting point, this strategy is quite easy to execute and most of all you’re shoppers will love it because they win as well.
Comment below with your ideas and thoughts on increasing average order values. What have your experiences been with coupons?
Coupons have worked but gift vouchers and card work better in my opnion.
This is a great article… very helpful.. I found the 30% number to be of great help when setting your minimum purchase price to gain the discount.
Thanks so much – can’t wait to read more on your site
Loren
Hi Loren, I’m glad you found the article helpful. Were you able to successfully bump sales up using this technique?
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