53 Proven Techniques to Boost Your Average Order Value & Increase Profit

Average Order Value is one of those often overlooked (by us non-growth hackers) metrics that can take a run of the mill business to an industry power house.

A high AOV compared to your competitors provides some pretty amazing benefits:

• More revenue and more profit from the same number of clients
• Higher Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
• You can out market the competition by profitably spending more on ads
• You can reinvest profits back into the product or business
• You will provide more value to the client by providing a better overall solution

You probably have already implemented a few of the more popular strategies such as upsells and cross sells, or even a Minimum Spend Technique.

The simplest way to increase AOV is to increase your price. After that, I break down the strategies into 5 categories:

• Building Trust & Authority in Your Target Market
• Pricing Psychology
• Presentation
• Value Drivers
• Sales Supported AOV

Building Trust & Authority

Building trust and authority is most commonly thought of as a conversion technique. We all know people will buy from those they trust.

Even better, they will buy more from those they trust at premium prices. Why? Because they know you are not going to rip them off and will offer the best service or have the best product.

There are several techniques we can utilize to build trust and authority that will help increase AOV:

1. Crafting a Hero Story
2. Creating a USP
3. Teaching / Sharing Knowledge
4. Communicating Clearly in Your Copy
5. Being Fully Transparent and Honest
6. Showing off Reviews & Testimonials
7. Having a Super Easy Return Policy
8. Providing an Amazing Guarantee
9. Instituting a Referral Program
10. Utilizing Strategic Alliances and Endorsements
11. Building out a Customer Loyalty Program
12. Pricing Psychology

Pricing Psychology

There are a few pricing tricks you can utilize to bump up your AOV.

These techniques play on how the brain perceives value but can and should provide actual value and benefit to the client while bringing in more money per order.

To be fair, these techniques are quite simple in practice, but can bring in very large returns.

Here are a few Pricing Psychology techniques you can implement:

1. Minimum Spend Techniques (MST's) with added qualifiers
   • Free Shipping
   • Free Gift
   • Discount
   • Coupon
   • Gift card
2. Price Anchoring
   • Good, Better, Best
   • Price Anchored Merchandising
   • Decoy Price Anchoring (Asymmetric Dominance)
   • Price Anchored Fire Sales
   • Competitor Price Anchoring
3. Urgency & Time Sensitive Order Bumps
4. BOGO's
5. Free Trials

Presentation

Presentation is a way to influence buying behavior through how the product or service is presented.

Presentation is a broad term encompassing a product or service’s description, how it is displayed or merchandised, how it is perceived by others, or even the physical or mental journey the client takes when purchasing your product.

How your product is presented can easily move the needle from "me too" product to the premium product in the market.

Here's a few techniques to up your presentation game:

1. The Buyer's Journey
2. Highlight Reel Techniques
   • Higher Priced Highlighter
   • Best Seller Highlighter
   • Popularity Sorting
   • Trending Products Highlighter
   • Sales/Discount Highlighter
   • Featured Product Highlighter
3. Product-Level Customer Recs/Testimonials
4. Beautifully Amazing Detailed Descriptions
5. Awesome Photography
6. Product Videos & Demos
7. UGC

Value Drivers

Value drivers are what most people think of when it comes to AOV boosting techniques - your upsells, cross sells, and down sells.

Value drivers are techniques that truly provide more value to the client. How you can provide a more complete, better version, or better service to the client for a true win-win.

1. Upselling a better value
   • The Better Solution Upsell
   • The Quantity Based Upsell
   • The Customization Upsell
2. Cross Selling a complimentary product or Product Recommendations
3. Data Based Upsells and Cross Sells
4. Order Bumps
5. Down Sells
6. Product Bundles
7. Payment Plans & Financing
8. Mix & Match Offers

Sales Supported AOV

Sales Supported AOV is probably one of the most underutilized methods to increase AOV.

Except for email, it is not as scaleable, and it takes a lot of work to set up. But once in place, you'll be amazed at the results.

These techniques employ greater control over your sales process and can span several channels, such as:

1. Training Every Customer Facing Employee in Consultative Sales
2. Utilize Phone Support, Especially for Higher Ticket
3. Implement Live Chat
4. Set up those Email Flows

This post was too massive for me to post all the techniques and examples, but if you'd like to see these strategies in more detail, here is the original post.

Hope you find this useful, and happy to chat about any of these techniques!