If you can increase the average order value in your e-commerce store, it can be a powerful way to raise revenues without a lot of investment. After all, you’ve already spent the money on marketing to attract these customers – getting them to spend even just a few dollars more every visit can drastically boost your bottom line.

Often, all it takes is a little strategic thinking and experimentation. Consider these four techniques – or any combination of them – in order to help drive additional sales. With WordPress, a variety of plug-ins make implementing these tactics a breeze.

Let’s get started!

How to Increase the Average Order Value

Upselling

Back when I waitressed in a brewpub, I had a rockstar coworker who was insanely good at upselling. It wasn’t because she was pushy or sneaky, it was because she was consistent at offering customers choices they may not have thought about. Do you want to add bacon or avocado to your burger? Would you prefer sweet potato fries? How about some grilled chicken or blackened tofu for the salad? Our nachos are amazing with pulled pork – wanna give it a try?

The result, of course, was increased ticket amounts – which led to a bigger tip for her. There was a reason she was able to buy a house on a waitress’s salary.

How does upselling work in e-commerce? Well, take a look at Vistaprint. As soon as you add business cards to your shopping cart, they offer a whole slew of upgrades, including paper choices and “brilliant finishes.”

Beeketing is one app that lets you upsell – and cross sell – to customers as soon as they add items to their shopping carts.

Cross Selling

Cross selling works by introducing customers to other products that go with what they have just purchased – or are considering purchasing. A great example might be pointing out the earrings that match the necklace in a customer’s cart, or displaying a set of colored pencils alongside an adult coloring book.

Instead of just letting algorithms do the work of recommending products, however, consider that cross selling works best when it adds real value to a customer’s purchase. It’s not just a matter of trying to get them to buy something else on a whim, it’s about recommending products that go along with their existing interests, or would enhance their use of the product they’re already buying.

Take a look at Nest for example. If you’re already interested in home automation and considering their smart thermostat, you may also be interested in their home security products like the smart camera.

There are a couple plugins that make cross-selling on your WordPress site a breeze. CM Product Recommendations lets you display recommended products throughout your site, based on content from your pages or posts. WooCommerce Product Slider lets you add a products carousel, filtered by different categories (newest, featured, related, and more).

P.S. If you want to use this technique to its fullest potential, check out this survey from Marketing Sherpa on the most effective types of personalized product recommendations.

Bundling

Bundling products together is essentially taking cross selling to a new level. It allows you to create custom packages of items that go together, enticing customers to pay more for added value.

Bundling is also a great way to help move slow-moving products by pairing them with bestsellers. Got a stash of custom printed pocket squares that no one seems to love? Slip them into a boxed set with two other more popular patterns and offer the whole thing at a discount.

Forty Acres Coffee Company, for example, offers a tempting bundle that includes two bags of their coffee along with an AeroPress coffee maker.

Free Shipping or Discount Threshold

Another great way to increase the average order value is by offering an incentive to hit a certain price point. Normally this done through offers of free shipping or scale to discount – for example, get 10% off if you spend $50, or 15% off if you spend $75.

This works best if you set the threshold just higher than your current average order value. If your customers are routinely checking out with around $35 in their shopping carts, setting the free shipping threshold at $40 provides a good incentive for people to hunt through your site for another small price take items they might want. If you set it at $60, however, it may be too much of a gap to get many people to take advantage of it.

As with anything, play around with the numbers to find out what works best for you.

Unfortunately for my bank account, as I was searching for a good example for this post I realized that Fabric Mart Fabrics is using just such a tactic to hold the pyramid sale right this very minute.

(Be right back.)

Several plugins have the ability to set a free shipping or discount threshold, such as WooCommerce and Shopp. To alert customers, you can use a service like Hello Bar. You simply set up an account, create your message, and use the Hello Bar plug-in to add the banner to your WordPress site.

What ways have you found to increase the average order value on your e-commerce site? Let us know in the comments.