Ecommerce 101: Why Average Order Value Matters

Your website traffic may be excellent, with high conversion rates to boot, but if customers are checking out with small baskets, you’re leaving money on the table. To maximise revenue, you need to optimise average order value to increase how much customers spend in your store.

Average order value (AOV) shows you how much customers spend on average per transaction. It’s a powerful yardstick that reveals how efficiently you’re turning demand into revenue, and it’s one of the first ecommerce metrics to improve if you want to grow without relying on more traffic.

The average order value globally sits at around $158, but this varies by industry. What’s important is to benchmark your current AOV and improve it with time. In this guide, we’ll show you how it all works and provide practical strategies to increase AOV sustainably.

• What is average order value (AOV)?
• Why is AOV important for business growth?
• What’s the benchmark for a “good” AOV?
• Strategies to increase average order value
• How to track and analyse AOV
• Common mistakes to avoid when optimising your AOV
• How AI can help businesses improve average order value
• Average order value: what to focus on next
• FAQs

Average order value (AOV) is a metric that measures the typical value of an order placed in your store. It helps you understand how much revenue you’re making on every purchase.

AOV is also useful for evaluating purchasing behaviour at checkout – for instance, whether customers are buying single items or adding complementary products. This makes it an essential metric for evaluating the effectiveness of pricing tactics like bundles, upsells, and cross-sells.

Calculating AOV is easy. Simply divide your total revenue by the number of orders you received over a given time period:

Businesses can also apply the AOV calculation to specific segments of their audience, such as new or returning customers, or specific channels, like PPC, email or social media.

AOV is one of the primary levers behind ecommerce revenue, and it’s often easier to scale than overall sales. When you increase AOV, you earn more from the customers you already have – all without needing more visitors, more impressions, or more ad spend.

However, that’s just the starting point. Here are some of the other ways AOV can help you optimise and scale your business:

• Increasing profitability - AOV also impacts profitability because many costs are fixed per order (such as picking and packing times, customer support effort, and shipping subsidies). When customers spend more at checkout, these costs are easier to absorb.
• Optimising marketing spend - AOV changes the economics of acquisition. When each conversion is worth more, your allowable cost per acquisition rises. This makes a wider range of marketing campaigns viable (without requiring that you increase your budget).
• Improving customer insights - Tracking AOV can reveal a lot about customer behaviour, especially if you segment by channel, product mix or customer type. This lets you refine promotions and site experiences based on what will actually drive value.
• Boosting customer lifetime value - If customers spend more each time they buy, their lifetime value (LTV) increases, even if purchase frequency stays the same. This supports sustainable scaling as it doesn’t necessarily require that you invest more money.
• Reducing reliance on new customers - Relying solely on acquiring new customers leads to unstable growth. AOV helps you scale more consistently by extracting more value from the demand you already have.

In short, AOV acts as a multiplier. Improving it increases revenue efficiency without increasing acquisition costs, helping you grow without needing to constantly rely on finding new customers.

As of January 2026, the average order value in Australia was just over $150 AUD. That said, there’s no single benchmark for what makes the perfect AOV. It all depends on your industry, business model, customers, and pricing.

For instance, a fashion brand selling low-cost accessories will expect a lower AOV with a higher purchase frequency. A luxury retailer selling designer jewellery will often see lower order frequencies but a much higher average order value.

What matters isn’t how your AOV stacks up globally, but how it changes over time. If you’re consistently tweaking your strategies based on data and seeing measurable improvement, you’re on the right track.

AOV isn’t set in stone. There are several factors that can make customers spend more (or less) at checkout, including product pricing, promotions, site experience, and customer intent.

This also means there are various strategies your business can employ to improve AOV over time. Below, we’ve outlined nine that work particularly well:

Bundling products involves packaging complementary items together (often with a discount), so customers feel they’re getting better value, while you increase overall basket size.

Start by grouping natural products together in ‘starter kits’ or ‘bundles’ to encourage first-time buyers to buy a larger quantity of items. As an example, JB-HiFi often bundles its PS5 offer with video games to help customers save on buying items separately, while increasing AOV.

This is a simple yet effective strategy that simplifies the site experience while appearing to users like you’re saving them money, which is ideal for increasing AOV without impacting the end customer.

There are dozens of psychological pricing tactics that will help you increase your AOV. The main goal here is to guide customers to higher-value options without adding friction.

You need to make your pricing clear and easy to compare so that customers feel comfortable spending a little more. Tactics that work well include:

• Price anchoring - Showing a premium option that makes the mid-tier option feel better value by comparison, guiding users away from the lowest tier.
• Decoy pricing - Including an option that’s intentionally less attractive to make your target tier feel like the obvious choice.
• Good/better/best tiering - Offering three options with a clear ‘most popular’ choice to steer customers toward a higher-value selection.

For instance, Atlassian draws the eye to its premium option by highlighting it in a different colour.

This is a subtle but impactful way to shift customer attention towards the more expensive plan you want more people to choose, increasing average order value without relying on discounts.

Cross-selling and upselling are two other ways to convince customers to purchase complementary or upgraded versions of a product they already intend to buy.

Upselling encourages users to buy a better version of what they already want. You’ll often see this with software subscriptions and consumer tech like laptops or computers, where it’s easy to recommend better specs and features that will convince a user to increase their spend.

Cross-selling recommends complementary products that customers might like based on what they’re looking to buy. Think of phone retailers suggesting chargers and screen protectors at checkout. Similarly, fashion retailers often have a “recommended for you” section to help users find complementary accessories or outfits. Here’s an example from Zimmermann:

You can also set up post-purchase cross-sells to recommend complementary products after the sale is complete, often via email. This works particularly well because the customer has already committed to buying. It also reduces friction at checkout, reducing abandoned carts.

Top tip: Make sure your upsells are reasonably priced. Few customers will bite if you want them to double their basket value. An extra 10%-20% that complements their purchase will convince many to spend a little more.

Free shipping can be a powerful way to nudge shoppers to increase their order value. Many will add an extra item to cross a threshold if they feel it’s achievable, such as “spend $15 more to qualify for free shipping”.

As a bonus, free shipping thresholds can also reduce cart abandonments and increase brand loyalty, as customers won’t be greeted with any additional costs once they reach checkout.

Top tip: Calculate your free shipping thresholds based on how much customers currently spend. For instance, if the average customer spends $65 per purchase, set the threshold to $80. This encourages bigger baskets without making free shipping feel out of reach.

Deals like “Buy 5, save 25%” and “3 for $10” work well for increasing the number of products customers buy per order. It’s a particularly powerful strategy when you sell replenishable products like stationery and pantry staples, which is why it’s often used by large retailers.

That said, remember these discounts need to increase revenue, not eat into it. For this reason, it’s best to choose products with a high margin for volume discounts.

It’s no secret that personalisation is critical to business growth, and this extends to improving AOV. AI-personalised recommendations use real-time data to suggest products based on a customer’s browsing behaviour, current checkout and past purchases.

This effectively turns upselling and cross-selling into a one-to-one experience. And it works. Customers who receive personalised marketing have an AOV 26% higher than those who receive generic recommendations.

Wondering where to start? AI solutions like Agentforce Commerce can analyse browsing behaviour and past purchases to recommend items customers are most likely to buy. This helps you increase basket size at scale without relying on manual ecommerce merchandising.

Loyalty schemes increase AOV by giving customers a reason to increase their spending. Vouchers, member-only perks, early access and free shipping can all be used to incentivise spending more per order and returning to make repeat purchases.

To raise AOV, consider implementing tiers that give customers a goal to work toward. These thresholds can lead customers to spend more than they initially planned, with the promise of achieving the next reward.

As an example, Australian stationery brand Milligram reported a 12% year-on-year rise in AOV after switching their loyalty program to include stronger member incentives. When you actively reward customers for consolidating spending with you, they’ll be happy to spend a little extra.

Top tip: While your tiers need to convince customers to spend more, they also need to be achievable. Too expensive to reach, and customers will lose interest quickly.

Abandoned cart notifications are a well-known way to recover revenue, but they can also help you increase AOV if you use them to help customers complete their basket.

When you send an abandoned cart email, include a few genuinely helpful add-ons, bundles, low-friction upgrades, or free shipping offers to convince the customer to finish their order. Doing so can actually increase the value of the recovered order, as well as bring customers back to buy the same items they were already going to purchase.

Top tip: Segment your abandoned cart emails into new and returning customers. New customers often need reassurance, meaning free shipping can be a big incentive. Returning customers want personalised offers, so bundling and upsells work particularly well.

Customer service has transitioned from a business cost into a source of revenue. Offering personalised support, handling complaints proactively and resolving any outstanding queries promptly will help you build trust with customers. This then leads to higher order values, as well as an increased chance of repeat purchases.

Product live chat is particularly important as it helps customers get instant answers to product-related questions. This reduces friction and alleviates doubt, giving customers the confidence they need to spend more money with your business.

Most ecommerce platforms make AOV easy to calculate. You can pull data on total orders and revenue and complete the calculation in minutes. That said, the real value is in assessing AOV weekly or monthly so you can spot trends and evaluate performance over time.

To analyse AOV, segment it by customer, device, channel, or campaign and look for patterns:

• Customers – Try segmenting by new versus returning customers, or high-intent versus low-intent shoppers. Which groups spend more? This can help you tailor your targeting and onsite experiences to the segments that drive the most value.
• Device – Compare mobile versus desktop. If mobile AOV is lower, this can signal that your offerings don’t translate well to smaller screens, preventing customers from building bigger baskets.
• Channels – Break AOV down based on where customers came from (for instance, paid search, organic, email, affiliates). This will show you which channels attract higher-value shopping, helping you prioritise budget and tailor messaging.
• Campaigns – Analyse changes in AOV based on specific promotions and campaigns. A/B testing is one of the fastest ways to determine which tactics have the biggest impact on basket size and overall revenue.

This is where tying AOV to commerce and CRM data becomes valuable. With solutions like Agentforce Commerce, you can connect average order value and shopping behaviour to customer context, helping you understand why AOV shifts, then use those insights to refine merchandising and targeting across every channel.

It’s easy to fixate on average order value, but remember that it’s only one part of your growth. AOV is useful because it shows you how much revenue you generate on every sale, but improving it in isolation will backfire if it harms your conversion rate or customer experience.

Your primary goal should be to increase AOV while keeping the rest of your shopping journey healthy. Here are some common mistakes to look out for:

• Overusing discounts – Discounts might increase basket size, but they can also eat into your margin and encourage customers to wait for new deals. Instead, prioritise value-adding tactics like upsells, cross-sells, bundles, and free shipping.
• Ignoring customer experience – Relying on aggressive upselling and cluttered recommendations can create friction in your sales funnel, leading customers to lose trust, abandon carts, and buy less. Keep tactics relevant and genuinely helpful.
• Forgetting conversion rate – If you raise thresholds too high or push upgrades too hard, this can negatively impact conversions. Even if AOV is increasing, your revenue can still drop if fewer customers complete checkout. Track both key metrics together.

Don’t treat AOV in isolation. The best proven strategies lift basket size while protecting conversion rate and margin, as well as the overall customer experience.

At its core, artificial intelligence (AI) helps businesses improve AOV by optimising the entire shopping experience, from what customers see to what they’re offered and when they’re nudged to add more. This gives AI a wide range of use cases for business, such as:

• Recommendations – Instead of treating every customer the same, AI can use behavioural and transactional signals to predict what a customer will want and then provide it at the moment they’re most likely to act.
• Forecasting – AI can uncover patterns in purchasing behaviour, like demand shifts and seasonality, helping you plan inventory more efficiently and avoid overstocking, so you can target customers with bundles and add-ons when demand is still high.
• Personalisation - AI can personalise experiences at scale, encouraging customers to add additional items. Delivering tailored product recommendations based on browsing history or past purchases can help to increase basket size without appearing “salesy”.
• Pricing – AI can analyse how demand interlinks with pricing and promotions, making it easier to set prices that customers are more likely to respond to. This X while also protecting your margin.
• Segmentation – AI can help you build audience segments based on real behaviour and value (such as high-intent browsers, repeat buyers, or discount-driven shoppers), so your bundles and offers match what each group is likely to want and act on.

Altogether, AI will help you increase AOV by making every touchpoint more relevant, so customers naturally spend more per order without the need for blanket discounts.

AI offers dozens of ways to optimise AOV, but the true power is when you can connect it to real customer behaviour. This is where Salesforce comes into play. Our platform combines commerce data, marketing automation, real-time insights, and AI-driven personalisation to deliver a truly connected customer experience. Here’s how our solutions can help.

Agentforce Commerce helps businesses increase basket size by delivering smarter, smoother on-site experiences. You can use it to surface relevant upsells and cross-sells, create high-performing bundles based on data, and optimise product discovery so customers can find the items they want faster.

Agentforce Marketing helps you personalise offers and messaging across channels using AI and machine learning, ensuring the right product or content reaches your customers at the perfect time. It can promote bundles, offer incentives to specific segments, and promote complementary products via omnichannel marketing.

Together, both solutions turn personalisation and merchandising into a predictable, scalable system that drives AOV growth without the need to rely on site-wide discounts.