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Join early accessAOV
Average order valueThe average revenue per order over a period.
AOV (average order value) is total revenue divided by the number of orders. Raising AOV — through bundles, upsells or free-shipping thresholds — lifts revenue without needing more traffic, and often improves your ad efficiency because each order is worth more.
In practice
AOV is the cheapest lever in the business, because raising it costs nothing in traffic. Every extra dollar of order value flows straight into the contribution that funds your advertising — which means a 10% lift in AOV raises what you can afford to pay for a customer without winning a single additional visitor. Bundles, thresholds for free shipping and a well-judged upsell all move it.
Read it as an average with suspicion, though. A handful of large orders can lift AOV while the typical customer's basket hasn't changed at all, and a single wholesale order can distort a whole month. If the number jumps, check whether the median moved too — and split it by channel, because paid social and branded search rarely buy the same size basket.
Formula
AOV = Revenue ÷ Orders
Example: $50,000 revenue over 1,000 orders = $50 AOV.
What a good result depends on
Higher is generally better, provided it doesn't hurt conversion rate.
Common mistakes
- Comparing AOV across channels without accounting for product mix.
- Chasing AOV so hard (high thresholds) that conversion drops.
Questions people ask
- How do I increase average order value?
- Bundles, volume discounts, free-shipping thresholds set just above current AOV, and relevant post-purchase upsells. The threshold trick is usually the fastest to test and the easiest to measure.
- Does AOV include shipping and tax?
- It varies by platform, which is why cross-tool comparisons often disagree. Pick a definition — most people use merchandise value excluding tax — and make sure every report you compare uses the same one.
- Why does AOV matter for ad spend?
- Because contribution per order scales with it. A higher AOV raises your break-even CPA, so the same campaign that was losing money can become profitable without its cost per order changing at all.