Hi guys.  Over the past 1.5 years of running this brand I’ve been able to take the AOV on a $60 product from $63 → $78.  Here are some strategies I used to make this happen.

AOV Tip #1: Add more products to your website.

A lot of people hype up the concept of “one product store” but oftentimes it’s not quite optimal from an AOV perspective.  It can potentially work out fine if it makes sense for people to buy multiple units so you can upsell higher quantities.  But for any store where it only makes sense for the customer to purchase one unit of the flagship product, it’s important to add more products to utilize product upselling.  

When the store launched there was only 1 product in the catalog.  Over time, I just kept adding more and more synergistic products that people started adding to their carts.  The AOV started growing month over month and I believe it highly correlated with the quantity of relevant products I had in the store.

Here are 2 pro-tips for finding synergistic products to add and upsell:

1. Add a few random products that may work onto the store and over a period of a few weeks, see which products people are adding to their cart the most.  Delete any product that isn’t being bought with the main product and start pushing the successful product(s) more aggressively.
2. Go on Amazon and add your type of product to your cart.  See what Amazon upsells to you.  These are the products that most people are likely buying in addition to your product (real life data!)

AOV Tip #2: Create bundle SKUs on your website.

Once you’ve identified the winning secondary-product upsells, group the products up into a bundle.  I’ve had success with a 2-product bundle and a 4-product bundle.  These are simply 1 product listing that includes all of these synergistic products.  This alone will increase AOV by a decent chunk.  It works even better if you have a “recommended for you” section on your product page and you include the bundles in that section.  People will be naturally drawn to purchasing more items – especially if it’s great value.

Keep in mind that it’s okay for you to offer these bundles for a sick deal, because you’re not paying CPA on the purchase of upsells.  The original product might be breakeven at a $20 CPA, but once that cost is captured and they are willing to purchase, any other upsell can have as low as even a $5 profit margin (buy for $10 and sell for $15), simply because the CPA is not applied to that product.  They are already a customer of the main product… all other purchases are just icing on the cake!

AOV Tip #3: Pre-purchase Upsell Apps

These apps allow you to upsell your secondary products all throughout the funnel.  Here are spots you can utilize these apps:

1. On the product page
2. In the view cart pop-out after clicking add to cart
3. Below the actual cart on the cart page

For a great example of some of these apps in use, check out Native (nativecos.com).  They literally have upsells in every single part of the funnel – it’s beautiful.

AOV Tip #4: Post-purchase Upsell Apps

These apps (I use Zipify OCU) allow you to sell to a customer when they least expect it… after the sale has been completed.  They are already in a dopamine rush and buying mood after purchasing that first item, so why not keep selling to them?

I personally recommend that you should always have a post-purchase upsell app because they have a high-take rate and without them you’re leaving money on the table.  

Until next time,
– Dave Nash