If you do an internet search, you’ll find lots of tips for increasing order value. Most of what you will read, however, is not going to work on Amazon. Amazon is a very particular beast, and you need to know and apply the strategies that will work specifically on this unique marketplace.
Just in case you aren’t sold on the idea yet, here’s a quick tour of why you should be working on increasing your Amazon order value:
- improve your profitability
- increase your marketing and ad budgets
- improve your return on ad spend
- make higher profits per sale
- generate more revenue per sale (for the same amount of work)
So without further ado, here we have the four main ways that you can use to increase your average Amazon order value to grow your business.
Cross Selling
Cross-selling is basically selling a different product to a customer who has already added another of your products to their cart. Using Amazon product recommendations is a great way to easily cross-sell on the marketplace.
The idea is to offer customers complimentary products. You know that they are already interested in one product because they are about to check out. Offering them something similar or something that goes well with what they’ve added to their cart is a good way to increase your Amazon order value.
As more people buy these products together, Amazon will notice the trend. This will generate a product recommendation that will display for orders of those products, enticing other shoppers to add related products to their orders.
Quantity Discounts
Giving discounts is an excellent way to increase your Amazon order value. One reason why Amazon shoppers are loyal is because of the competitive pricing on the marketplace.
The goal here is to entice your customers to add more items to their cart by offering a discount for orders of a certain size. To implement it, create a percentage off promotion that applies to a larger quantity of one or more items. It doesn’t have to be a huge number of items, just enough to increase your Amazon order value. You don’t want to turn them off completing their purchase with ridiculous promotion requirements.
When people search on Amazon, your promotion will show up on the listings that they apply to so shoppers can see the value they get when purchasing more than one of that item or that item along with another item. When they click through to the listing, they will see a more detailed explanation of what specific products the discount applies to.
Product Bundles
Bundling products is basically selling products together as a single pack. You can sell these items individually, but shipping out single items is more expensive for you than shipping out larger quantities.
The goal here is to make customers buy more in the first place. Bundling items in a multi-pack that you know work well together is a sure way to increase your Amazon order value without having to run any promotions. Just pack them together under a new listing and set the price lower than if a customer added the same items to their cart individually.
You can also do bundling without creating a separate bundle pack. When you cross promote and create discounts for certain items when they are bought together with other items, Amazon learns to bundle them together.
The goal here is to teach Amazon which of your products should be bundled together to show shoppers your great offer. Related items will appear in the Frequently Bought Together section with a price total that customers can compare to the single item prices to encourage them to buy more and get the discount.
Free Shipping Threshold
Free shipping is always a great enticement for online shoppers. Shipping can be costly, and when you offer it to them for free in exchange for a small additional purchase, it makes perfect sense. They would spend almost as much for shipping, so why not get something they can actually use instead?
The goal here is to boost your Amazon order value by offering free shipping for orders of a certain dollar value. Just adjust your free shipping threshold to 15 or 20% higher than it is now, or by the amount that it would take to buy that additional product. Use your current average Amazon order value as a baseline and make a reasonable increase so you don’t set it too high to be attractive or too low to make a significant difference.
Note that playing with your free shipping threshold can have different effects depending on your customer profile. Remember to check your numbers as you start making adjustments so you can see how it affects your conversions versus overall profits. Conversions are very important on Amazon, so you want to be very careful with how you make changes and how far you go.
Final Thoughts
Using these strategies are sure to boost your average Amazon order value, but it will take some time to find the right balance. Your store’s particular formula will not be a one-size-fits-all solution because you carry a different product assortment and cater to a different audience set than other stores do. The best advice we can give you is to crunch some numbers first so you are prepared with real information, proceed with caution as you make changes, check back to evaluate your metrics, and don’t wait too long before making adjustments to improve your results.
