Entrepreneurship newsletter
I'm talking about Average Order Value (AOV). As solopreneurs, traffic and eyeballs are hard to come by. You're not a huge Big Tech corporation that can just put something out there, and millions of your captive audience will just lap it up. This means the strategy has to be not only maximizing traffic (which can be expensive and/or tedious) but also making the most out of each visitor to your store. And this goes just beyond "converting" the visitor -- that's one part. Not all conversions are equal Guy A converts, spends $20. Guy B converts, spends $200. 1 Guy B is worth 10 Guy As, so clearly we want more visitors to be Guy B, not Guy A. And this is where the concept of Average Order Value (AOV) comes in. How to increase AOV? It's pretty simple really: 1. Sell more stuff The more stuff you list in your store, the more likely you'll sell something that catches the eye of your visitors, and the more revenue you'll make. 2. Increase the price of your stuff At the risk of sounding like Mr Obvious, yes, you should increase your prices, especially if no one has ever complained that your stuff is too expensive. You have no idea what your customers' willingness to spend is, so test it out, push your luck even. 3. Upsell, cross-sell, and bump their offers This is a common strategy in sales, because it works so well. If you use a checkout software like Zylvie, we handle this expertly for you. By the time they're on the checkout page, they're already "sold." The iron is hot, so strike now -- sell them more stuff that will add even more value to their experience. 4. Nag them to come back if they don't buy People abandoned your cart for some reason? Get them to come back, offer them a coupon code for their cart, which might just be enough to push them over the edge and finish their purchase. 5. Nag them to come back after they've bought When they buy something, make sure you take their email and put it into a mailing list (again, Zylvie does this automatically). Blast offers to them from time to time (flash sales are excellent for this if you don't have anything new to offer), and watch your sales grow. It's a lot easier to sell to someone who has bought from you before vs. a completely-new visitor. 6. Give them an outlet to ask questions and quell their concerns This can be a Q&A section, a live-chat widget, a comments section, a Telegram/Discord group, anything. The more they know about your offer, the more they know you, the more they trust you, and the more they spend with you. Pour conclure All these might sound pretty obvious to anyone who has been selling online for years. The biggest paradigm shift I'm trying to impart is this: Not all conversion is equal; it's more important to focus on the magnitude and quality of the conversion than just the overall conversion rate. Focus on maximizing revenue from those who are sold vs. just getting more people through the door. If you do that, you might even realize you don't even need that high of a conversion rate or that much traffic at all to build a sustainable growing business.
With thanks,
Jay
What I've built: Zylvie - High-converting cart software to sell your digital products and subscriptions Zlappo - Automate your tweets across all your Twitter/X accounts to get sales on auto-pilot | 