AOV a.k.a. Average Order Value is one of the most important ecommerce metrics. It describes the average order total in a given period of time. If this year your WooCommerce website converted 150 orders and made $30,000 in revenue, your AOV for this year is $30,000/150 = $200 (i.e. on average, you can expect each order to be $200).
FYI, the meaning of AOV is the same for any ecommerce platform, but in this article we’ll talk just about WooCommerce. In our opinion WooCommerce is a better, more cost-effective solution than Shopify or other counterparts.
If you don’t know what your WooCommerce store AOV is, immediately go to WordPress Dashboard > WooCommerce > Reports > Orders > Sales by Date > Year and divide “net sales in this period” by the number of “orders placed”. But be careful – those reports are sometimes not correct (I know WooCommerce is working on this at the moment). Mine is giving me AOV = €2… and I know that’s not right.
Your best bet is your Google Analytics account (as long as you’re using the official WooCommerce – Google Analytics integration) and/or your Metorik reports (here’s an article you should read if you need to know how to install reliable WooCommerce tracking, reporting, filtering and segmenting: https://businessbloomer.com/advanced-woocommerce-tracking-analytics-reports-exports-segmentation/). My Metorik dashboard tells me my WooCommerce website AOV for this year is €233 so far – I can trust this one for sure.
So the question is: how can we get our WooCommerce customers to spend more? Well, here’s a list of WooCommerce plugin alternatives you can install right now to boost your AOV.
In fairness, who wouldn’t want some extra revenue? 🙂
WooCommerce AOV Booster #1: Product Recommendations
I hope you’re already using related products, cross-sells and up-sells, which come with WooCommerce out of the box. If not, do that now.
On the other hand, product recommendations can actually be more complex, better AI calibrated and more enticing. It makes no sense to recommend products unless they’re really, really, really (really) relevant to what is currently in your customer’s WooCommerce Cart.
So, here comes the need of a complex functionality – hence a reliable, well-coded, fully supported plugin. Give these a go:
- Recommendation Engine (by WooCommerce)
- Frequently Bought Together (by YITH)
WooCommerce AOV Booster #2: Product Bundles
Alright, we all know the “Just the burger or would you like a meal?” AOV booster trick…
Guess what – it works. And the way to make it work, believe or not, is to simply ASK your customer while they’re about to pay.
You can offer an upgrade (meal), a cross-sell (dessert), an up-sell (bigger burger) or whatever can increase your customer average spend. However, you have to do that nicely and must avoid putting off your customer: be evil, and they’ll never come back.
The same applies to ecommerce and therefore WooCommerce. From today on, consider using these advanced extensions to start selling more:
- Product Bundles (by YITH)
- Product Bundles (by WooCommerce)
WooCommerce AOV Booster #3: Bulk Discounts
You could buy 1 product. Or you could buy 3 in the same order. Problem is, customers have no reason to buy more than 1 product TODAY, unless…
Unless you make them save money. If you enter any shop you’ll see what I’m talking about: “Buy 3 get 1 free”, “Buy 1 get 1 half price”. Besides, if you sell to wholesalers, you know they buy in bulk – the bigger the quantity, the bigger the discount, right?
If you want to increase AOV, a good way to achieve this is to increase the average product quantity on each order, but you must offer an incentive such as the ones we talked about.
Thankfully, there are plugins for that:
- Dynamic Pricing (by WooCommerce)
- Dynamic Pricing and Discounts (by YITH)
WooCommerce AOV Booster #4: Checkout Deals
Going back to the “Do you want chips with that?” strategy, you should definitely offer an add-on or upgrade right in the checkout.
I was just talking to a client today, and they wanted to display an “Add a €2 donation” checkbox right above the “Place Order” button on the WooCommerce Checkout page. Yes, to increase their AOV.
There are many alternatives: you could offer a premium service, add a donation field, a faster shipping method (hello, Amazon Prime) or even suggest products to add to the order, right there in the checkout.
Here are my top picks:
- Checkout Add-Ons (by WooCommerce)
- Deals for WooCommerce (by YITH)
WooCommerce AOV Booster #5: Wishlist
Wait, what?
Am I saying that if you allow customers to “save products for later” could increase your AOV? Well, that’s right – if Amazon and IKEA do it, then there must be a reason!
Wishlist means enabling customers to save ALL the products they’re interested in in a list, with a simple click. This is not the same as the WooCommerce Cart. The bigger the wishlist, the higher your potential order total. The easier to save, share, manage the wishlist, the more likely to decrease your cart abandonment and increase your conversion rate.
Wishlist plugins are very popular, so you should install one today. It’s better to use a premium version so that you can take advantage of all the features. Here are the top two:
WooCommerce AOV Booster #6: Customer Loyalty
How many times have you been asked at checkout “Do you have our loyalty card?“.
Why do you think stores push to give you their card? Well, in the first place, is to give you rewards. Besides, they want you to come back shopping there and avoid you go to the competition instead. Also, they want to track everything you buy and send you personalized offers. Finally, they want you to spend more: the more you purchase, the more points you get.
If you want to get more repeat business, increase AOV and your revenue, you should launch a loyalty program NOW.
Thankfully, no need for custom coding – a plugin can give you that out of the box:
- Points and Rewards (by WooCommerce)
- Points and Rewards (by YITH)
WooCommerce AOV Booster #7: OTO
OTO (One Time Offer) is something that is offered to the customer upon purchase. They’re usually redirected to a custom “offer page” or a standard WooCommerce product page where there is a time-sensitive-one-time-only-offer right because they purchased product XYZ.
With 1 click and without resubmitting checkout and payment orders, they can add the offer (a discounted product for example) directly to their order.
This is also called “one click upsell” and should be part of your sales funnel. Simple plugins for easy AOV increase:
- UpStroke (by WooFunnels)
- Smart Offers (by StoreApps)
WooCommerce AOV Booster #8: Gift Cards
If a customer is happy to shop on your WooCommerce store, trust me, they’d probably be super happy to get all their friends and relatives to do the same. What’s more, they wish there was an easy way to entice their peers to shop where they shop…
That’s right – gift cards. If you don’t offer them on your WooCommerce store as standalone products, you’re probably leaving lots of money on the table.
Don’t think twice – you’ll possibly get the plugin investment money back in a very short time, given the average percentage of non redeemed gift cards and vouchers (WHY would people not use free money I don’t know…) and the fact many people don’t know what presents to buy (gift cards are very popular for this reason).
Gift cards for WooCommerce are easy to implement, however there are way too many choices out there. Here’s a full tutorial I wrote for you with my top picks and screenshots: https://businessbloomer.com/sell-gift-cards-vouchers-woocommerce/
Wrapping Up
A small plugin purchase can give you a huge return on your investment. AOV is a very important ecommerce / WooCommerce metric and you should definitely work on that from today.
Remember – you don’t need more website traffic, a greater conversion rate, social media, expensive marketing, complicated operations. An easy-to-install plugin can increase your AOV (hence your revenue) without having to worry about the rest. Your goal is simply to increase the money you make, given the same amount of traffic, customers, sales.
Buy an AOV booster plugin, install, activate, tell your customers, sell more, repeat. Sometimes is that easy 🙂
Have fun (and go make more money)!