Average Order Value (AOV): 10 Practical Ways to Increase Cart Size

By Lauren Wallace, Product Marketing Senior Lead

When it comes to ecommerce, every conversion is a win — but bigger orders are always an added bonus. High average order value (AOV) is an ecommerce metric that involves more than just getting shoppers to buy from your brand. It’s all about getting them to buy more. Here’s everything you need to know about increasing average order value — and 10 practical tips to get started today.

Average order value (AOV) is the average amount a customer spends per transaction on your website or app. It’s calculated by dividing total revenue by the number of orders placed — not by the number of customers or sessions. It's a core ecommerce metric that sits at the intersection of pricing, merchandising, and customer behavior, giving you a clear picture of how much revenue each completed purchase generates for your business.

A high AOV signals that customers are buying more per visit, through larger carts, premium products, or effective upsells. While a low AOV may indicate missed opportunities in pricing, bundling, or cross-sell strategy.

Customer acquisition comes with a real cost — ads, campaigns, retargeting — and those expenses compound quickly. Increasing AOV, on the other hand, works with shoppers who are already on your site, already engaged, and already in a buying mindset. Encouraging them to add another item or upgrade their order doesn't require additional acquisition spend. And since fulfillment, shipping, and operational costs remain relatively fixed, larger order sizes mean a greater share of that revenue flows directly to your margins.

That said, don’t track AOV in isolation. Consider measuring it with your conversion rates and revenue per visitor (RPV) to get a holistic picture of store performance. For instance, if your conversion rates are dipping despite a high AOV, you may be gaining on order size while losing on transaction volume. When all three metrics trend in the right direction together, that's a strong indicator that your store is growing efficiently.

Calculating AOV is pretty straightforward. Divide your total revenue by the total number of orders placed within a given time period.

AOV = Total Revenue ÷ Number of Orders

For example, if your ecommerce store generates $200,000 in revenue from 8,000 orders in a month, your AOV is $25. To get the most out of this metric, track AOV consistently, either weekly or every 30 days. Weekly tracking helps you respond quickly to shifts driven by promotions, seasonal demand, or merchandising changes. And a rolling monthly average smooths out short-term fluctuations, giving you a cleaner baseline for strategic decisions.

Ecommerce platforms like Agentforce Commerce help calculate AOV in the analytics dashboards. You can track AOV alongside other key metrics like conversion rate, RPV, and order volume — all in one place. It also allows you to segment AOV by storefront, region, customer group, or promotional period, giving you a more granular view of where order value is strongest and where there's room to grow. If you're running a multi-store commerce business or operating across global markets, this segmentation capability makes it easy to benchmark AOV performance across storefronts without losing sight of the big picture.

Increasing AOV is about creating experiences that make spending more feel natural. Here are ten proven ways to increase AOV and get more value from every order:

Free shipping works because it taps into a simple psychological trigger: customers will actively add items to their cart just to avoid shipping costs, making it one of the easiest and most effective AOV levers available. The key is setting the threshold at the right level: high enough to boost order value, but attainable enough to feel worth it.

💡 Pro tip: Set your free shipping threshold at roughly 30% above your current AOV. It's the sweet spot between aspirational and achievable, giving customers a nudge to add one more item.

A well-structured loyalty program does more than encourage repeat visits. When tiers are tied to order size rather than purchase frequency, it incentivizes customers to spend more per transaction to unlock the next level. That shift from frequency-based to value-based progression is what separates loyalty programs that drive AOV from ones that simply reward habit.

💡 Pro tip: Don't make customers work for it. If sign-up is complicated or rewards are hard to redeem, shoppers will disengage fast. Keep the structure simple, the benefits visible, and the path to the next tier clear.

62% of consumers say discounts and deals are their top priority while shopping. That’s why you should craft product bundles to create perceived value by presenting complementary items together at a discount. This makes it easier for customers to say yes to a larger purchase they might not have made otherwise. Curate your bundles around items that customers already buy together, as identified by purchase history data. This significantly improves your ecommerce customer experience (CX).

💡 Pro tip: Make the value obvious at a glance. Use prominent badges and banners to highlight savings and any additional perks, such as free shipping, to boost convenience and customer satisfaction.

Upselling and cross-selling are two distinct but complementary tactics. Upselling works best on product detail pages where customers are already in a comparison mindset, while cross-selling is most effective on product pages and at checkout, where the primary decision has already been made. Together, they give you multiple touchpoints to increase order value without interrupting the buying experience.

💡 Pro tip: For upsells, offer a side-by-side comparison of the base product and its higher-value alternative. Make the feature differences and added value immediately clear. The easier you make the decision, the more likely customers are to upgrade.

73% of consumers today believe companies treat them as a unique individual, instead of a number. So, having personalization as a core part of your ecommerce strategy will help you increase the AOV. Using a unified commerce platform like Agentforce Commerce to connect transactional, behavioral, and engagement data. This allows you to show the right recommendations at the right moment — and that relevance directly drives higher order values. Plus, autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents like Agentforce can identify and recommend products that your customers will likely purchase.

💡 Pro tip: Start small. Identify one or two clear use cases that stitch together your customer data before scaling. Immediate, focused wins build the foundation for a comprehensive personalization strategy over time.

Customers who feel informed and confident are more likely to buy premium products, so the quality of your product page directly impacts AOV. High-resolution images, comparison tables, and verified buyer reviews that validate premium pricing usually contribute to higher order values. And because page speed directly affects conversion, ensuring that content-heavy pages load quickly is just as important as the content itself.

💡 Pro tip: Implement lazy loading on image-heavy product pages. When images load only as they come into view, you keep page speeds fast without sacrificing rich visual content. This small technical change can have a meaningful impact on both experience and order value.

Poorly structured discounts can do more harm than good. When customers learn to wait for sales, your baseline AOV breaks over time. The most effective promotions are built around minimum-order mechanics that reward customers for spending more, creating genuine perceived value rather than conditioning them to expect a lower price.

💡 Pro tip: Look beyond the discount itself. Value-based and dynamic pricing strategies focused on what the customer gains — rather than what they save — tend to resonate more with price-sensitive shoppers than a blanket percentage off.

A whopping 71% of users make purchasing decisions based on customer service. A business that proactively recommends complementary products, sends Pay Now links, and engages shoppers on their preferred channels contributes meaningfully to per-order revenue. Offer 24/7 customer service by implementing AI agents like Agentforce. From addressing common concerns to helping customers clear the hurdles while shopping, it can make your customers’ (and yours) lives easier.

💡 Pro tip: Equip your team with the right data and tools to cross-sell and upsell effectively. The ability to order on behalf of customers and offer omnichannel support turns every service interaction into a revenue opportunity.

A/B testing removes the guesswork from AOV optimization, but only when it's done right. Change one variable at a time so you can clearly attribute results, and always evaluate AOV lift alongside conversion rate. A higher AOV accompanied by a meaningful drop in conversions may be a net negative for overall revenue, even if the per-order number looks promising.

💡 Pro tip: Track AOV from multiple angles — by customer group, product category, traffic source, and time period. The more granular your view, the easier it is to identify which strategies are working and where the biggest opportunities still exist.

AI gives merchandising and marketing teams the ability to analyze customer behavior at scale. This includes identifying patterns, predicting preferences, or showing personalized recommendations and dynamic pricing opportunities. Think of it as having a copilot that can change a simple question like "How do I improve AOV?" into a set of actionable, data-backed suggestions in seconds.

💡 Pro tip: Start in one area. Product recommendations or dynamic pricing are good entry points. Once you see results, expand AI across more touchpoints in the customer journey rather than trying to do everything at once.

According to Salesforce’s State of Commerce, 65% of employees are being asked to do more with less. This is exactly where AI steps in. It goes beyond supporting your AOV tactics, making them adaptive, scalable, and smarter over time. That’s because it can provide valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and patterns — all of which help you increase AOV.

Here’s how you can use AI to make more items end up in more carts:

Get AI-powered insights for growth strategies: AI continuously analyzes store performance, customer behavior, and purchasing patterns to discover AOV opportunities that would be impossible to spot manually. Instead of waiting for quarterly reviews, your teams get real-time signals about which products, categories, or customer segments have the highest order-value potential — and where revenue is being left on the table. For example, a business-to-business (B2B) commerce can use AI to identify that procurement managers who purchase industrial cleaning equipment rarely add replacement parts or maintenance supplies to the same order. It’s a clear bundling opportunity that can be addressed through targeted recommendations or a follow-up outreach campaign.

Provide intelligent product recommendations: AI recommendation engines go beyond "customers also bought" to deliver hyper-relevant suggestions based on individual browse history, purchase behavior, and intent signals — at exactly the right moment in the shopping journey. The result is a more personalized experience that naturally encourages customers to add higher-value items to their cart. For instance, a customer browsing running shoes might be shown a performance sock bundle and a foam roller based on their previous purchases. This improves the likelihood of a multi-item order without any manual merchandising effort.

Win more sales with dynamic pricing: AI enables pricing that responds in real time to demand, inventory levels, competitor activity, and customer segments, ensuring your prices are always optimized to maximize order value without sacrificing conversion. Rather than applying blanket discounts, dynamic pricing targets the right offer to the right shopper at the right time. A retailer might automatically offer a loyal, high-spending customer a premium product at a slight discount during low-demand periods, protecting margin while incentivizing a larger purchase.

Boost product discovery with AI shopping assistants: Conversational AI assistants guide shoppers through product discovery, barriers, and recommendations. Every interaction becomes an opportunity to increase basket size before checkout. A shopper asking "what laptop should I buy for video editing?" can be guided toward a higher-spec model, a compatible external drive, and a carrying case — all within a single conversation.

Segment and communicate more effectively: AI segments your customer base based on spending patterns, product affinity, lifecycle stage, and predicted customer lifetime value (CLV). These segments allow tailoring promotions, bundles, and recommendations rather than broadcasting the same offer to everyone. A fashion retailer might identify a segment of customers who consistently buy full-priced, premium items and target them with early access to new collections, thereby driving higher-value orders without relying on discounts.

Perform quick analysis of large data sets: The sheer volume of data generated by a modern commerce operation — transactions, sessions, clicks, returns, service interactions — is too large for any team to analyze effectively without AI. Machine learning (ML) models can process this data continuously, identifying the combinations of products, pricing, and messaging that consistently drive the highest order values across different customer groups and contexts. For example, AI might note that customers who engage with video content on a product page spend significantly more per order. This gives you a clear insight on where to invest next.

Improving AOV is an ongoing discipline, not a one-time fix. If you get it right and treat every transaction as an opportunity to deliver more value, you’ll capture more revenue. As you optimize, keep three metrics close: conversion rate, RPV, and CLV. They'll tell you whether your AOV gains are translating into real, sustainable growth, or just shifting numbers around. And since AOV benchmarks vary by industry, always measure against your own baseline first.

Ready to put these strategies into action? Agentforce Commerce gives you the AI-powered tools, personalization capabilities, and real-time insights needed to grow AOV at scale — across every channel, every storefront, and every customer interaction.