What Is AOV?
AOV is the average amount of revenue generated per order over a defined period. It matters because every extra euro on the average cart can improve contribution margin, support a higher acquisition budget, and make promotions like free shipping viable. It is one of the fastest-moving levers in ecommerce and one of the easiest to misread.
The Formula
AOV = Total Revenue ÷ Total Number of Orders
If a store generates €10,000 from 200 orders in March, AOV is 10,000 ÷ 200 = €50. If that store raises AOV to €58 without hurting conversion, the same traffic can produce 16% more revenue before any extra acquisition spend.
What's a Good AOV?
As a rough directional range, fashion and apparel stores often land around €65 to €85, beauty and skincare around €45 to €65, supplements and health around €55 to €75, home decor around €70 to €110, and electronics and gadgets around €120 to €250. Those ranges move a lot with geography, traffic mix, product quality tier, and whether the store is selling one hero SKU or a broader catalog, so treat them as context rather than targets.
A good AOV is not "high" in isolation. It is high relative to shipping cost, contribution margin, and customer intent. A €45 AOV can be excellent for cosmetics if the average parcel costs €4.80 to ship and the product mix supports 60% margin. A €45 AOV can be weak for heavy home goods where shipping cost eats the order.
AOV also interacts directly with free shipping threshold strategy. If average order value already sits above your free-shipping threshold, the offer is not changing behavior. It is just giving away margin. If the threshold is 25% above current AOV and reachable with one add-on item, the policy can push carts upward efficiently.
The fastest ways to raise AOV are usually bundles, quantity breaks, and accessories that fit naturally with the hero item. The wrong way is pushing irrelevant upsells that add friction. AOV should rise because the cart makes more sense, not because checkout became harder.
How To Improve AOV
- Build bundles that raise cart value without forcing the customer to buy awkward combinations.
- Use quantity breaks when the product has a natural replenishment cycle, such as "buy 2, save 10%."
- Set a free shipping threshold high enough to encourage one more item, but still reachable from the current cart.
- Offer complementary accessory upsells that make the main product more useful instead of distracting from it.
Common Mistakes
- Raising AOV with aggressive upsells that hurt conversion. A 10% lift in AOV paired with a 15% drop in conversion produces less total revenue, not more.
- Setting the free-shipping threshold below AOV. If most orders already qualify, the offer absorbs shipping cost without creating additional basket growth.
- Tracking AOV without profit context. A higher cart built from low-margin products can still be worse than a smaller cart with better contribution margin.
Related Tools
Free Shipping Threshold Calculator helps convert average order behavior into a threshold that lifts carts without destroying margin.
Maximum CAC Calculator shows how much more you can afford to acquire a customer when order value increases.
Related Terms
The next useful references after AOV are LTV, gross margin, and free shipping threshold.