Increase the profit of an online store several times, increasing the average bill (AOV), increasing the value of the average bill

How to increase the average check (AOV)?

To increase the profit of an online store in several ways. For example, by increasing the customer life cycle (LTV) or increasing the average bill (AOV). Today we will talk about the second option.

Average Check or AOV (Average Order Value) is an important business indicator that directly affects the return on investment. And its increase is directly related to the amount of revenue and net profit.

Before we start talking about increasing the average bill, let's remember how to count it.

So, how to calculate the average check?

To measure AOV, as a rule, consider the ratio of revenue ( Revenue) to the number of orders ( Transactions) :

AOV = Revenue / Transactions

This is the easiest way and it works. But there is another option.

AOV is the product of the number of items in an order (Average Number of Items - ANI) and the average cost of a single item (Average Item Price - AIP):

AOV = ANI x AIP

Both formulas are correct and do not contradict each other. You can count as you like. The main thing - do not forget to do it. And now let's look at how you can influence the increase in this indicator.

In order for a client to buy more, you just need to offer him additional goods or services. How to do it?

AOV magnification methods

Cross-sell (related sales)

When a visitor puts a thing in the basket, he is offered goods that can complement his order and eliminate the need to buy something extra. For example, for toys on the radio, you can offer AA batteries and a charger, and in the clothing store to show accessories. Blocks of additional sales can be placed on the product card and on the cart page. Cross-sell, first of all, increases the quantity of goods in an order (ANI).

Up-sell (increase order value).

Visitors are offered to purchase more expensive goods or order additional services. For example, in an electronics store, a more expensive and powerful laptop model can be shown on an item card, or an extended warranty can be offered at checkout. Up-sell, in turn, increases the average commodity price (AIP).

By combining these approaches, you can get a synergistic effect and further increase the effectiveness of each.

Based on the actual experience of successful online stores and Internet marketing experts, the following recommendations can be derived.

7 practical tips to increase the average check

1. Advertise more expensive products.

With limited budget, you can choose more expensive products for advertising. In this case, the conversion rate, as a rule, decreases, and AOV increases.

2. Advertise bestsellers.

Pay special attention to popular products that usually have the best value for money or are fashionable new items. Offer to buy them to your visitors, increasing revenue and conversion rate.

3. Use the thank you page.

Blocks additional sales work fine on the pages of gratitude that appear after the target action. A significant part of the people who have made the order is included in the “shopping mode” and makes the decision on purchasing additional goods much easier.

4. Offer a discount on quantity.

The opportunity to save is always pleasant, and it gives a real reason to purchase several products at the same time. Special offers work well with a time limit, giving the impression of urgency and the possibility of missing a profitable offer.

5. Sell sets.

Help the customer to purchase several things at once. This is similar to cross-sell, but you yourself make the choice for the user. These options work fine in the shops of flowers, gifts, cosmetics. In specialized stores often there are kits for beginners. The store helps the buyer to save time and effort by offering everything he needs in one order. By the way, a great addition would be a tutorial or detailed instructions.

6. Offer a loyalty program.

Again, it's nice to save, but with monetary motivation you need to be careful. A regular discount to a regular customer always reduces the average bill and is applied at the time of each order. Instead, give customers bonus points or virtual money. They are much more efficient because they are applied at the time of the next order and, in most cases, increase the average purchase. Unused money includes a feeling of greed and literally makes the client return to you again and use this money in the next order, increasing LTV in the same order.

7. Use special services.

Technologies are developing rapidly and allow online shopping owners to increase efficiency automatically or semi-automatically. Personal recommendation scripts will show the user products that he will be more likely to purchase. And A / B testing services will allow you to easily evaluate the result of changes made to the site and choose the best options for special offers, the location of the main blocks, headlines of product cards, etc. Also help automate contextual advertising, advanced web analytics, competitor analysis, etc.

There are many successful cases describing the use of the above tips. However, each case is individual. And directing your efforts to increase AOV, you must always take into account the specifics of the business, budget and other business KPIs.

Case to increase the average check from the practice of CubeLine Agency

Task: A large online store of children's goods had the task of increasing the average check to 10,000 rubles in a limited budget and maintaining a ROI of more than 200%.

Solution: CubeLine Agency specialists have developed a number of actions that were aimed at solving this problem.

1. To determine the optimal landing pages, an analysis of product offers on the site was carried out and the categories of popular high-priced products were highlighted. In particular, children's car seats and strollers of famous manufacturers.
2. Then an advertising campaign was developed. Ad texts included the brand name of the manufacturer, the price of the product and delivery terms.
3. Since expensive goods have a longer decision time, an additional remarketing campaign was developed that reminded of the “abandoned shopping cart”. It contained the bestseller images from the categories that the visitor viewed, but did not buy anything.
4. To personalize ads, additional goals were set in the Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics systems, which allowed us to collect individual remarketing audience for visitors to certain categories of goods.

Result: The CTR of remarketing campaigns increased as a result of the personalization of ads, and the search CTR decreased due to the inclusion of prices in the ads.

Conversion on the landing pages and on the whole site also decreased relative to the general indicators of the site due to the redistribution of traffic towards expensive products.

However, the ultimate goal was achieved - AOV managed to increase from 4 to 10 thousand rubles, and ROI was 230%.

The company's net profit grew 5 times, the client was satisfied and increased the advertising budget of the developed campaigns.

What is it for?

Your customers want to buy more. Maybe even dream about it, just have not realized this fact. Help them, tell me, act strategically. Follow the tips, count the average check, take comprehensive measures within the specified KPI and increase your profit.

Consider the questions:

How to increase the turnover of the online store several times?

How to redistribute the marketing budget without raising the CPO and maintaining the ROI at the same level?

And how to attract an audience that can make expensive purchases?

Affect the profit can be either by increasing the life cycle of customers or by increasing the average bill.

The first method takes a lot of time, so now we will tell about the second.

And consider the example of the case.

For reference, the average check (AOV) is an important business indicator that has a direct impact on ROI. And its increase is directly related to the amount of revenue and the size of net profit.

Case: the increase in AOV for the online supermarket of children's goods Babadu

Babadu’s marketing department was tasked with increasing turnover and increasing profits over the course of one quarter.

Most of the advertising activities at that time were aimed at attracting new customers. They provided high ROI, but net profit growth showed more modest results. Therefore, it was decided to deliberately increase AOV using paid traffic.

As a rule, two methods are used to increase AOV: cross-sell and up-sell.

Cross-sell (related sales) implies the implementation of recommendations on the site, for example: “They buy this product”. Usually such an algorithm works on the basis of accumulated data on conversions, and its implementation takes time. For up-sell (increase in the value of the order), you can adjust the advertising strategy for the sale of more expensive goods. These changes are implemented faster.

After comparing possible prospects, development options and terms, it was decided to redistribute advertising expenses into categories of more expensive goods.

For this, the following actions were taken:

Stage 1. Analysis

1. Determine optimal landing pages

We analyze product offers on the website of an online store and highlight categories of popular products, the price of which is 3-4 times higher than the average store check (baby car seats and strollers of famous manufacturers, baby furniture).

2. Collect data

Upload the XML-feed (full description of commodity items) to Excel: photos, price, specifications, URL of the page, etc. Uploading traffic, conversion, and landing page earnings from Google Analytics.

To reduce the seasonality factor, it is better to take statistics for several years. We chose the maximum period - a little less than a year. From this data, we calculate the conversion rate (the ratio of transactions to visits) and the average bill (the ratio of incomes to transactions) for each category of goods.

3. Predict the result

Based on the data obtained, it is possible to predict the income from each category for this period. Multiplying visits by conversion rate, we get the estimated number of transactions. And by multiplying the transaction by the average check, we can find out the projected income.

From the total estimated income you can get a share of income from each category of goods. Add to the data obtained from the advertising systems (Google Adwords and Yandex Direct) impressions, clicks and expenses.

Now the picture becomes more complete: costs and incomes are visible. And for each category, you can calculate CTR (clicks / impressions), click price (expense / clicks) and CPO (expense / transaction).

Stage 2. Reduced rates

In conditions of a limited budget, the redistribution of funds from cheap to expensive goods will allow the store to get more revenue for a certain time period.

Therefore, we are beginning to gradually reduce the rates for product categories with a low average check (AOV) and income of less than 15% of the total.

We do not touch the categories with a high share of total income (we try to find a balance). And the categories with low AOV and order value (CPO) are higher and equal to the average check - we disable it, in favor of more profitable products.

In this situation, you should not get excited and turn off all cheap goods. Often, they give the store a major profit. Therefore, we closely monitor the statistics, studying the dynamics after the change in rates and checking whether the total income is not critically reduced.

Stage 3. Redistribution of budgets

For expensive products, we make separate campaigns and indicate in the ads the price of the goods. Thus, we cut off irrelevant traffic at the stage of impressions. We specify free shipping as an additional advantage (for expensive goods this is the standard offer of the online store).

Then we increase the rates to the entrance to the special placement of Yandex and shows at the top of the first page in Google.

Stage 4. Addition

Expensive items are not usually bought from the first visit. Users take time out to consider the benefits of the purchase. Therefore, it was decided to supplement the account with remarketing campaigns.

In them we make different ad groups for each product category that we promote.

1. Choose an audience

We create separate audiences: users who viewed products but did not make a purchase, and visitors who put the goods in the basket but did not buy. To do this, you need to connect Google Analytics and Google AdWords with each other.

An audience is created in Google Analytics with the following conditions: the visitor came to one of the pages of expensive products.

When we get access to the necessary audiences in Google AdWords, separate advertising campaigns are created for them, and the target audience is indicated as targeting. Only targeted users see these ads.

2. Set goals

We set additional goals in Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics, which will allow us to collect individual audiences of visitors to certain categories of goods and get personalized remarketing.

Now, visitors who viewed strollers on the website of the online store, but did not make a purchase, see ads with wheelchairs on other sites, when they click on them, they again fall into this category.

And to visitors who left the basket after moving from the announcement, we offer a discount on those goods that were left, and set the validity period of the action.

Such offers, as a rule, additionally stimulate the user to make a purchase. Typically, campaigns of this type are significantly lower cost of attraction (up to 2%), and the conversion is 2 times higher than on paid search traffic.

The use of this mechanics in remarketing, in our case, allowed us to obtain a result 2-3 times better than with the help of traditional systems (Criteo or Sociomantic).

What is the result?

After the second stage of work, we saw an increase in the average check (AOV) from 3 to 6 thousand rubles. And after the redistribution of budgets and access to special placement - from 6 to 10 thousand rubles with a ROI of 230%. Thus, we have increased the average check more than 3 times.

Due to the fact that we have redistributed the budget and increased the share of expensive products with a long purchase cycle, the conversion of paid traffic on the landing pages relative to the total indicators has decreased. However, the total profit of the online hypermarket has increased 5 times due to an increase in the average check.

The goal of increasing turnover was achieved and further work is underway in the chosen direction.