How to Increase Average Order Value on Shopify: 6 Strategies

How to Increase Average Order Value on Shopify (6 Strategies That Actually Work)

Your Shopify store's average order value probably sits somewhere between $55 and $85. You've read the same AOV playbook everyone else has: bundle products, add upsells, set a free shipping threshold. Those tactics work. They're also table stakes at this point. Every brand does them.

The brands pulling AOVs north of $120 are doing something the standard playbook doesn't cover. They're changing the purchase psychology itself, not just rearranging products on the page.

This guide breaks down six AOV strategies ranked by impact for beauty, wellness, and supplement brands on Shopify. The ranking might surprise you, because the single most effective strategy is the one that appears in almost zero AOV guides.

What Is Average Order Value and Why Does It Matter?

Quick math for anyone who needs it. AOV is your total revenue divided by your total number of orders. If you did $100,000 in revenue last month on 1,250 orders, your AOV is $80.

AOV matters because it directly affects your unit economics. A $60 AOV means you need more customers (and more ad spend) to hit the same revenue target as a brand running a $120 AOV. When your Meta CPAs are climbing, increasing AOV is often a faster path to profitability than finding cheaper traffic.

But here's what most guides get wrong: they treat AOV as a merchandising problem. "Put more stuff in front of the customer and hope they buy more." That works to a point. The real AOV gains come from removing the psychological barriers that stop customers from adding more items in the first place.

1. Try-Before-You-Buy (The Strategy Most Guides Miss Entirely)

This is the highest-impact AOV lever for beauty and wellness brands on Shopify, and almost nobody talks about it in the context of average order value.

Here's why it works. When a customer is paying $0 upfront and only pays for what they keep, the decision to add a second or third product to their cart changes completely. Instead of "should I risk another $45 on a moisturizer I've never tried," the question becomes "do I want to try this moisturizer for free while I'm at it."

The answer is usually yes.

TryNow merchants see customers add 2-3x more items to their try-before-you-buy orders compared to standard checkout orders. A skincare brand that normally sells one serum per order sees TBYB customers checking out with a serum, a moisturizer, and an eye cream. More items tried means more items kept, and kept items are full-price revenue.

62.42% of shoppers who use try-before-you-buy say they would not have purchased without it. That number comes from 17,866 survey responses. These aren't customers you would have gotten through a better bundle page or a cleverer upsell widget. These are customers who needed the risk removed before they'd commit to anything, let alone multiple products.