Building your e-commerce website is the first step toward building a successful online store, but you also have to advertise your products and your store online.

Digital marketing is key for online visibility, but it’s not free. Getting the most out of your digital marketing budget for e-commerce stores often means maximizing the average order value. If your average purchase consists of one product, that’s great, but if you can maximize it to two or three products, that’s even better.

There are many things you can do to encourage your customers to buy more products or place a bigger order, and some of them have to do with the design of the site itself. Here are a few of them.

9 tips for increasing the average order value for your online store

 

#1. Recommend more products

Encourage your customers to buy more by providing good product recommendations. Build product recommendations into your product page and highlight them in the product description as well! It’s also a good idea to build automated email journeys with cross-sell recommendations and coupons!

#2. Give discounts for order minimums

Entice your customers to order more by offering discounts on minimums. These minimums could be a certain dollar amount or even a certain amount of one product. For example, you could offer a 20% discount on orders of $100 or more, or a 20% discount when a customer orders 5 books or 10 pairs of socks. If someone is already planning on placing an $85 order or an order for four books, it’s a no-brainer for them to add to their order to get the discount.

Advertise your minimum discounts with a leaderboard banner, alongside product recommendations and on the checkout/cart page of your site.

#3. Bundle your products

Make it easy for your customers to buy complementary products by bundling them into packages, and make these packages enticing by offering a discount for customers to buy the package instead of buying each product individually. Alternatively, buy two get one free sales can also increase the size of your average orders.

#4. Get your customers to come back

One incredibly effective way to increase the lifetime value of your customers is to go above and beyond — just a little — to get them to come back. This can be something as simple as including a product care package with your products, which could include coupons, product recommendations and referral cards.

#5. Hire a salesperson

Hire a salesperson or appoint someone to call and thank each customer who makes a purchase. They should also make sure they got it OK, ask for a review, tell them about other related products and follow up to turn them into a loyal customer! You can also add live chat to your website and have your salesperson manage that.

#6. Create a loyalty program

Encourage loyalty by creating a loyalty program for your customers. With this type of program, you can reward your top customers with great deals. Not only will this keep your customers coming back again and again, but it will encourage them to refer their friends.

#7. Stay top of mind with email marketing and retargeting campaigns

If someone has already come to your website and viewed your product or added it to the cart, the push they need to actually make a purchase may just be a reminder. Email marketing and retargeting campaigns are both effective ways to keep your product at the top of your customers’ minds.

#8. Market your products on social media

Social media marketing is a great channel for marketing your products because it’s a channel where you can highlight product bundles and how multiple products go together in a single post. For example, if you sell apparel, you could bundle an entire outfit. Or, if you sell furniture, you could bundle a bedroom or living room set.

Make sure to include professional photos of your products. From there, you can link directly to the landing page you’ve created for that bundle!

#9. Further your knowledge

There’s always more to learn when it comes to increasing your average order size and making the most of your e-commerce store. Even experienced e-commerce marketing professionals need to continuously learn in order to hone their skills and stay up to date on e-commerce marketing. 

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If your online store isn’t what it needs to be, then there’s not much point in trying to increase the average order value on your site. These days, a successful e-commerce store is one that’s optimized for mobile users and search engines alike, as well as fast-loading and easy to search and navigate.

The Marketing 360® Websites App has a library of website design templates that are customizable, mobile-friendly and designed to rank. Best of all, the website builder is so easy to use that anyone can do it, no matter how much or how little design experience they may have.

Take the first step toward building your own e-commerce website by finding the right design template online today, and learn about how we can help you market your e-commerce store.

Originally published on 4/17/20