5 Tips on How to Increase Average Order Value for Fashion and Footwear Retailers in eCommerce


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5 Tips on How to Increase Average Order Value for Fashion and Footwear Retailers in eCommerce Ecommerce businesses should not only focus on best practices when converting visitors but also on techniques helping to increase AOV (average order value).





Reducing the Number of Lost Sales What is AOV and Why Is It Important?

The average order value (AOV) is the average amount of money your online store customers spend when placing an order. AOV is an important benchmark that helps understand customer behavior better. The business owners can identify growth opportunities by analyzing AOV and seeing which store products are best-sellers.

Here are a few reasons why it is important to maximize the average order value:
  • Increasing eCommerce store profitability. Since packing and shipping costs in most cases are similar regardless of the order value;
  • Generating more revenue over a shorter period;
  • Lowering customer acquisition & remarketing costs
  • Increasing CLV (customer lifetime value).

  • How to Calculate Average Order Value

    eCommerce businesses can calculate their AOV by using this formula:

    Total sales revenue / number of orders = average order value.

    However, manual calculations might be time-consuming if the business operates multiple online stores or needs to report on average order value daily.

    To clear up at least one task from the busy store manager's schedule, you can use analytical tools that refresh the data and present the calculations of the vital metrics, including AOV by shopping journey flow. For example, customers who visited your store via Instagram interacted with dynamic product recommendations.

    A vast list of tools can enhance an online store's toolstack, including Bitfiner or third-party analytics integrations to eCommerce platforms like Shopify .

    How to Increase Average Order Value

    There are plenty of techniques, and best practices eCommerce businesses can implement to increase their AOV, but some present better cost-effectiveness and shorter buying decision journey compared to others.

    Create an Order Minimum for Free Shipping and Other Special Offers.

    Although free delivery is a common practice among fashion and footwear retailers, it's still a highly effective way to prompt your store's customers to spend more.

    For example, an online store can offer free delivery from $50 or free-of-charge next-day shipping for orders over $200.

    It is also useful to advertise free delivery through product pages, homepage banners, and once the customer navigates to their cart.

    Implement Upselling & Cross-selling Techniques

    Another great way to increase average order value is to integrate upsells and cross-sells techniques into the eCommerce store.

    Fashion and footwear retailers can create a customized deal for the items that match well with those in the cart, for example — showcasing customers the full outfits from a certain collection.

    It is also possible to deploy more advanced, AI-powered upselling solutions that offer a 15% increase in AOV on average when implementing those solutions.

    Visual search and visually similar product recommendations engine allows customers to save time when finding items in the online store. When the visitor is browsing through the listings, Prime AI analyzes the full product catalog in the background, identifying over 20 product attributes from a single image of the garment that the visitor is viewing and finds other visually similar items. Also, customers can execute a visual search by uploading a wanted product image to find visually similar items. If a shopper chooses to use Prime AI size finder, visual search results will be further enhanced and pre-filtered to show only products that are in the customer's size and stock.

    The AI-enhanced technology understands each garment's SKU specifications and suitable sizes according to the clothing design. Dynamic alternative product recommendations help save customers from bouncing off the store. Because humans are visual beings, showing visually similar items encourages customers to continue browsing until they find what they were looking for.

    Although the recommendations' click-through rate (CTR) differs, on average, retailers see a 10% CTR, while some multi-brand retailers see a massive 40% click-through rate on dynamic product recommendations.

    This technology helps to upsell/cross-sell the customer, increase the average order value and significantly reduce the bounce rate from social media channels.

    Launch Customer Loyalty Program

    According to Markinblog, loyal customers spend 67% more than first-time shoppers. Ultimately, with the rising costs of digital advertising, new customer acquisition costs have inflated to 7 times more compared to retaining an existing client. More fashion retailers are starting to implement loyalty programs that help retain current customers and increase AOV.

    There are various loyalty program solutions that eCommerce stores can implement. However, businesses should identify their current customers' preferences and analyze competitors' loyalty solutions to ensure frequent shoppers widely adopt the new program.

    Here are a few benefits that brands could offer once the customer joins the loyalty program:
  • Birthday discount;
  • Early access to exclusive collection drops or sales;
  • Lower order minimum for free shipping;
  • Discount off every purchase.


  • For example, customers could collect points and level up their loyalty tier for every order placed or dollar spent to get an even bigger discount, free-of-charge next-day delivery, or exclusive gift.

    Provide a More Personalized Shopping Experience

    Fashion and footwear retailers can use accessible data to create a more personalized and targeted shopping experience for their customers and increase their average order value.

    A better shopping experience can be as simple as a remarketing campaign using the data from previous customers' orders. Or, more advanced personalization solutions can be implemented, like Shoe size finder that measures a shopper's foot dimensions from a single picture and matches shoe specifications.

    Shoppers tend to use size recommendation solutions more often when they shop for more expensive items, helping them to gain enough confidence to place their order, eliminate the need to order items in multiple sizes, or return the item to the retailer.

    Average order value increases as the customer receives accurate sizing advice, as they don't need to convert their preferred sizing dimensions to the ones displayed in the retail shop.

    Clothing size finder, equipped with more Prime AI solutions like visual product search and dynamic product recommendations, can create a seamless and interactive shopping experience, welcoming every customer and encouraging them to spend more.

    Combine FOMO & Bundle Deals

    FOMO (fear of missing out) is a powerful marketing technique that urges the customer to make the purchase as soon as possible, or they might miss their chance to get the item.

    Retailers often put a timer on how long they are saving items in a shopper's cart or release fashion & footwear items that are only available for a limited time.

    According to Trust Pulse, 60% of online shoppers purchase items within 24 hours to avoid FOMO. This practice helps shorten the buyer's decision time and drastically reduces the abandoned cart rate.

    Another popular fashion retailer technique is bundle deals. Some familiar examples are: three items for the price of two or receive 50% off a fourth clothing piece when the customer has added three to the cart.

    When FOMO and product bundles are combined, it creates an ultimate combo, helping online stores to increase average order value without spending a fortune on Paid Media, Influencer marketing & other not always cost-effective investments.

    Bottom Line

    Average order value helps businesses understand how well their online store is performing. After the calculations, it's time to execute strategies to help grow the revenue and average order value.

    Whether you launch a new customer loyalty program or implement an sizing recommendation solution, you are on the right track to increasing average order value.

    Don't forget to track and analyze the performance of your online shop, adjust your offerings according to the changing customers' behavior and find the solutions that work the best for your brand