How to get your customers spending more

There are 3 key metrics you can increase to sell more on your online store.

You can get more people to your website (traffic), you can get more of those people to buy (conversion rate), or you can get them to spend more (average order value).

If you have an online store that gets 10,000 visitors a month, your conversion rate is 3% and your average order value is $100 your store would make $30,000 revenue a month. If you could increase that average order value to $120 by getting each customer to spend an average of $20 more your revenue would increase by $6,000 to $36,000 a month. 

That’s an extra $72,000 a year without extra overheads as you’re already using a shipping bag, already packing and shipping their order, already writing the thank you card and providing that person customer service – they are just buying more.

So how do you encourage your customers to spend more?

Bundles Baby

Product bundles are a great way to encourage customers to buy more than one item. You can bundle the same product together and provide a small discount for buying in bulk.

Or you can bundle complementary products together to help people get everything they need. This is perfect for a starter pack if they are new to your brand.

You can also name your bundles to make it super easy for people to choose like Three Warriors “Summer Essentials Pack” and “The Glow Get ‘Em Pack”.

You can choose to discount slightly when people buy a pack, but it’s not compulsory as for some it’s just the convenience of getting everything they need. If you do discount make sure you point it out! 

Offer Bigger Quantities

Some customers, particularly those who may have purchased before, or know exactly what they want don’t want to have to buy regularly, they want to just purchase in bulk. Make it easy for your customers to select how much of your product they want. You can make it cheaper, the more they buy to encourage them to choose the higher quantity.

Suggest Add On Products

You know your product collection better than any customer. Do the hard work for them and let them know which products would be a great addition to the one they are looking at. This works great with an app that helps them add it to their cart at the same time.

Taccac do this really well by suggesting people purchase their bag along with the patches and carabiner. The bundle app allows users to select the patches and colour of their carabiner and add all to cart from the bag page rather than having to search all over the website and add individually. It also includes a discounted bundle price.

Upsell

McDonald’s line “would you like fries with that?” adds millions to their bottom line every year. So how can you offer your customer fries? What have you go that is the perfect add on to your products? If you sell sunglasses you can add on a cleaner or cloth. If you sell dog collars, suggest they add on the matching lead.

Earrings are the perfect upsell to clothing and earring backs or earring storage are the perfect upsell to earrings.

You can also upsell to multiple of the same product like Pure Peony does.

After Purchase Add Ons

The moment someone has just placed an order, they are a super hot audience. They have just gone through your funnel and decided to take action and purchase, unless you sell anti fungal cream they are likely pretty excited about their purchase. This makes it the perfect opportunity to sell to them again – yes already! 

I recently purchased a T-shirt from Kind is Cool, on the confirmation page they offered me a special deal on a kids tee for 10 minutes. Did it work? Bub and I are going to look so cute in our matching tees! 

These kind of add on offers work best if they create urgency (the timer) and are incentivised with a decent discount. Remember you’re already going to be shipping this person something so if you have shipping built into your pricing you can afford to give a discount to someone you’re already sending to. 

Give Them A Chance To Add to Their Order

Have you ever made a purchase online only to click buy and then find something else you wished you had added to the order? I have.. more than once but usually I don’t purchase again as I don’t want to pay for a second lot of shipping. 

If you do this and I do this, chances are your customers do this too. So what if you offer them the chance to add to their order and get free shipping? You can set a time limit based on the average time it takes you to pack and send an order after it’s placed.

Increase your free shipping threshold

A free shipping threshold is a great way to encourage your customers to spend more, while still providing free shipping.

Read: Should I charge for shipping

Your free shipping threshold should always sit above the average cost of your products so they need to buy at least 2 to qualify (unless your products are over $150).

You also want to make it above your average order value to try and increase it. Experiment with increasing your shipping threshold by $5-10 to increase the average order. 

Clearly state your free shipping threshold on your website and gamily it by showing them how much more they need to spend to qualify.

There you have 7 ways to start getting your customers to spend more on your online store. Which one will you try first?

Written by Karyn Parkinson

Karyn (“with a Y!”) Parkinson is an eCommerce marketing specialist with a knack for high-converting Facebook ad funnels and website optimisation.

Through her eCommerce marketing agency Unstoppable eCommerce and on-the-pulse membership eComm Club, Karyn’s helped hundreds of eCommerce store owners across the globe boost profits, generate more revenue, and achieve an ad-spend ROI of their dreams.