Running an online business is hard work if you do not have the right tools to help you. And even after getting the correct tools, you also need to know the right metrics to keep an eye on and understand what they mean for your business. After all, these metrics are a way of gauging your business’ performance. One of the most important parameters to consider is the Average Order Value (AOV). What is this metric? How does it affect your business? And how can sales funnels increase your Average Order Value? These and more are what we will discuss in this post.
Average Order Value
What does AOV mean? When you hear it for the first time, you might be put off, thinking it is just another acronym in a long list of acronyms that you have to remember. However, AOV is very important to keep your business running smoothly. When you know what it is and how to improve it, you would see drastic upticks in your business.
The definition is quite straightforward and easy to remember. In simple terms, AOV is the amount of money a customer spends on average on a single order.
Herein lies the importance as one of the most important metrics to keep an eye on. This metric is so important that you should do it often.
How to Calculate Your AOV
Compared to some other metrics, it is pretty easy to calculate your AOV. The formula used is straightforward.
Simply calculate your total revenue and divide by the number of orders processed.
For example, if in the month of April, you sold a total of $10,000 and had a total of 200 orders, your average order value would be 10000/200. This gives you 50.
So, your AOV for April is 50.
As you can see, it is pretty easy to get. You should note, however, that the average order value is the average for the number of orders you have and not the sales per customer.
Why the distinction?
Well, some customers can put in more than one order during your calculation period. Thus, while that is good for business, you should treat each order independently to get your AOV.
What is the importance of AOV?
Now that you can easily calculate AOV, what is the importance to your business? Let’s see.
First of all, this metric lets you have a solid notion of how much to spend on attracting customers. Once you know this metric, you can subtract operating costs from the total sum. The amount you have left is what you can spend on other aspects of your business.
Thus, it is vital for your advertising campaign.
The second advantage of knowing this metric is that it helps you to know how effective your upsells are. If the metric is low, it is likely an indication that your upsells aren’t effective.
You can now edit and re-strategize to look for ways to make your customers buy more products. With these strategies in place, you will likely see an increase in your AOV.
You can see just how important this metric is.
Now that you know the importance, how can you increase it?
How To Increase Your AOV
As you have seen, AOV is a very important metric. How can you increase it? There are several methods, and we will consider each of them in this section.
Reward Loyal Customers
One way to increase AOV is by rewarding your loyal customers. Repeat customers already contribute plenty to you AOV and you can get them to spend more per order if you reward them for it.
Here is where a sales funnel can help you. Using a sales funnel, you can guide these customers through your store and give them offers that only the most loyal customers will enjoy.
It is a way of saying Thank You that your customers would appreciate. The funnel is only available to them, and this makes them feel special.
When making orders, it then makes it easier for them to increase the amount of stuff that they buy from you, which, in turn, boosts your AOV.
Upselling and Cross-selling
This involves making them buy more of your products that usual. It works in two ways.
In upselling, you are offering the customer another product that complements the product that they originally wanted to buy. You show the customer that these products go great together and the benefits of getting both items.
Cross-selling, on the other hand, involves introducing a totally new product to the customer. It is done when the customer has bought a product and an offer pops up on the Thank You page.
By introducing this, the customer is motivated to buy again.
These two methods are excellent ways to get more orders from customers. It leaves the customer feeling like they got a great deal from your company.
Free Shipping
Everyone loves free shipping, and you can take advantage of that to get more AOV for your business. Reports show that customers buy more if they realize that it would qualify them for free shipping.
You can also try this out with your customers. Set a price target that qualifies them for free shipping, and you’ll see them fill out more orders.
You can start such an offer today, and you’ll see the great results.
A/B (Split) Testing
Split testing is a time-tested way of improving sales and AOV.
You can do this using your sales funnel. To incentivize them to place more orders, you can play around with the sales funnels, changing parts like headers, the colors of buttons, or adding new media.
Split testing allows you to see which of the samples makes customers order more. The sample that yields more orders is obviously the one that you should use.
Providing Discounts
You might think that this goes against the spirit of improving your Average Order Value since the goal is to make each purchase make more money for you.
However, when you provide discounts on certain items, you can still improve AOV – similar to how free shipping can increase AOV.
You can do this by offering discounts based on certain criteria that the customer has to meet. With these criteria, you’ll see your customers buying more of your stock and ultimately making more money for you.
Bundle Selling
Many online and offline businesses have found that they can improve AOV by selling their products or services as a bundle instead of individually. It is simple human psychology to associate bundles as cheaper that singly sold items.
How Clickfunnels can help you
Clickfunnels comes with a plethora of tools and features that can help you to improve sales and AOV. Let’s see some of these ways.
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Opt-in form
With the opt-in form feature, Clickfunnels can assist you in building and growing your list of email subscribers. You can keep in touch with leads and turn them into paying clients.
The squeeze pages on Clickfunnels have the advantage of being really simple to use. It has a pair of stages – the Thank You and Squeeze page. Just like your lead page, the Squeeze page is designed with its opt-in form that asks the visitor for their email address. You can also use this feature to offer rewards to visitors that give their emails.
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Upselling
As we have considered in this post, upselling is one way to make your Average Order Value grow. With this feature, customers are left satisfied and make more orders. You can take advantage of Clickfunnels’ upselling feature to increase AOV.
When you create a page with this tool, it offers you the option to integrate upsell pages for the available products. These come in the form of links to the pages. You can also use Clickfunnels to link high value products to the upsell button and have your customer inclined to make more orders.
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Automating the Sales Process
A sales funnel is vital if you plan to improve customers’ chances of making more orders. Using Clickfunnels, you can guide your customers through the buying process easier. If you are offering certain services, you can streamline the buying process and lead several clients to a sale at the same time.
If what you are offering customers is an automated webinar, Clickfunnels can help you run the presentation to people from anywhere in the world without requiring your presence.
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Boosting AOV
The more products that your clients buy, the more money you make. With the sales funnels found on Clickfunnels, you can give these customers more products in a logical sequence. This in turn will improve sales and your AOV.
Start increasing your AOV today
It might seem a daunting task to improve your AOV, but thankfully Clickfunnels comes with all the features and tools that you require to do so.
Some of the tools you get include Split testing, Upselling, Cross-selling, etc. Overall, target your loyal customers as they are the cheapest way of getting an increase in your Average Order Value.
Conclusion
This post has given insight into the definition and importance of your Average Order Value. We have also considered some proven ways of using a sales funnel to improve AOV. We hope this helps you to grow your online business and get the most value from your existing customer base.
