9 Ways To Increase Your Online Order Value

Would you like to increase the value of your online orders? There are easy to implement methods that you may not have already considered including cross selling techniques and promotional opportunities that will have a dramatic impact on the value of your sales. I have listed 9 of the most powerful methods to consider:

1. Including “We also Love” or “Related Items”

Products that “We also Love” or Related items” usually appears on the product page and shows your customers other products that may appeal to them.  The main key to success for any online retailer is that the products appeal to the customer and encourage them to buy in addition to the main featured product on screen.

2. Showcasing products that customers also bought

This is usually displayed on the product page and is normally automatically generated by the system from previous orders. It saves a lot of the work involved in manually selecting related items and provides customers with comfort that like minded people are also buying products in addition to what is on screen.

3.  Implementing a “bundles” system

Please consider offering product bundles, as they are one of the most powerful methods of up-selling. Bundles encourage customers to buy a number of different items that go together for a discounted rate. For example “buy this laptop, carrying case and pack of CD’s for only £400, saving 20%.” Prior to implementing this feature consider how a bundle will be displayed to your customers. It is very easy to put bundles together if products do not contain any variables, such as size or colour.  However, careful thought and planning is required on clothing retail sites when the bundle contains size variables. For example a bundle ca contain a shirt, shoes and trousers. Once customers select the bundle they must be presented with the opportunity to select their sizes in all of these items.

4. Carrying out promotions

Promotions should encourage customers to buy more. For example a buy 2, get one free offer is very useful if your customers normally only buy one item. Another promotion to consider is spend over a certain amount (e.g. £75) and get a % off (e.g. 20%).

5. Including multi-buy discounts

This is also known as volume discounts, and the idea here is to encourage customers to buy more. The more of one item you buy, the more you save. For example if you buy 1 bottle of wine is £10, 3 bottles for £25, and 6 bottles for £50.

6. Highlighting limited stock

Showing that there is limited stock available for sought after items will encourage customers to buy now so that they don’t miss out. Products that are nearly out of stock ideally should contain a label indicating that there are only a few products remaining so that customers are inclined to grab it while they can.

7. Activating free shipping over a certain amount

Offering free shipping for orders over a certain value will encourage customers to buy a little bit more than they initially planned. For example, if you offer free delivery on orders over £50, and a visitor has only has £40 worth of items in their basket, they are likely to prefer spending more on additional items than on delivery costs.

8. Showcasing your high value items

It sounds like an obvious thing to say, but please ensure that your high value items get the prominence they deserve on your website, rather than your cheapest products . You could even offer your low value items as part of a bundle deal or free with a purchase over a certain amount.

9. Encouraging add-ons at the checkout

We are firm belivers in an isolated checkout process, void of distractions. However, there are ways still ways to encourage people to buy more as a natural part of this process. Popular additional items to consider for retailers include gift wrapping or product insurance.

Most of these techniques include functionality that is already available in any modern ecommerce system. For just a small amount of additional time and investment you should be able to implement a mix of promotions, bundles and add-ons to deliver a dramatic improvement in your average order value.