How to Increase Average Order Value on Shopify

Average order value (AOV) is one of the most impactful metrics in e-commerce. Doubling your conversion rate is hard. Increasing your AOV by 30-40% through smart bundling, upselling, and cross-selling strategies is achievable with the right approach — and it directly improves your margin because your acquisition cost per order stays the same while revenue per order grows.

For food businesses on Shopify, there are specific, practical strategies that consistently increase AOV. This post covers the most effective ones.

Why AOV Matters More Than Traffic

Most food businesses focus on driving more traffic to their store. Traffic matters, but it is expensive to acquire and competitive to maintain. AOV, by contrast, is something you can influence with existing customers who have already decided to buy. Increasing your AOV from £35 to £50 means every existing customer generates 43% more revenue. At scale, this is transformative.

Strategy 1: Product Bundling

Bundles are the single most effective AOV driver for food businesses. A bundle combines multiple products — at a slight discount to individual pricing — into a package that delivers more value per purchase. Customers perceive they are getting a deal; you sell more product per transaction.

Effective bundle types for food businesses:

Tasting bundles — a selection of your best-selling products at a discount to individual pricing, presented as an introduction to your range
Meal prep bundles — a week's worth of meals at a bundled price
Hampers and gift sets — curated selections for gifting occasions, with premium presentation
Refill bundles — a subscription-style bundle where customers stock up on their favourites at a volume discount

BundleBox, our Shopify app for food businesses, makes building and selling bundles straightforward. You define which products go into a bundle, set the bundle price and configuration rules, and BundleBox manages the inventory logic and checkout flow. Customers can configure their own bundle from a defined range or purchase a preset bundle with one click.

Strategy 2: Upselling at Product Level

When a customer views a product page, you have an opportunity to suggest a premium version or addition. This is product-level upselling:

A customer viewing your standard cheddar sees a recommendation for your reserve aged cheddar at a price premium
A customer viewing a single meal prep box sees a recommendation for the 5-meal package
A customer viewing a standard hamper sees a premium hamper with additional items

Keep upsell recommendations relevant and clearly priced. The value proposition of the upgrade should be obvious.

Strategy 3: Cross-Selling at Cart

Cross-selling at cart — suggesting complementary products when a customer is about to check out — is one of the most effective moments for additional purchases. The customer has already committed to buying; the question is just whether they add more to their order.

Effective cross-sells for food businesses:

A customer with a main dish in their cart is shown sauce, condiment, or side options that pair with it
A customer with perishable items is shown non-perishable pantry items that complement their order
A customer ordering a gift hamper is shown a gift card option

Keep cross-sells contextual — items that genuinely complement what is already in the cart, not random products.

Strategy 4: Free Shipping Thresholds

A free shipping threshold encourages customers to add more to their order to unlock free delivery. The threshold should be set at a level that meaningfully increases AOV without being so high it feels unachievable.

For most food businesses, setting the free shipping threshold at approximately 20-30% above your current AOV is optimal — it is achievable for most customers with a small addition to their order, but not so easy that customers who would have spent more don't bother.

Display the free shipping threshold clearly in the cart — "Add £12.50 more for free delivery" is one of the most effective cart prompts in e-commerce.

Strategy 5: Volume Discounts

Volume discounts incentivise customers to buy more units of a product. "Buy 3, get 10% off" or "Buy 6, save 15%" are simple prompts that increase order size for customers who are already interested in the product.

For food businesses, volume discounts work particularly well for:

Shelf-stable products that customers use regularly
Products with long shelf life that customers can stock up on
Products where consumption frequency means customers will use a larger quantity (condiments, snacks, coffee)

BundleBox handles volume discount configuration within Shopify.

Strategy 6: Add-On Products at Checkout

Present low-value, high-relevance add-on products at checkout — items that are easy to add without overthinking. For food businesses:

A greeting card for gift orders
An ice pack upgrade for perishable delivery
A complementary sauce or seasoning
A small extra item to round up to the free shipping threshold

Keep the price point low enough that it's an easy yes — £3-8 is a typical sweet spot for checkout add-ons.

Measuring AOV Improvement

Track your AOV in Shopify Analytics before and after implementing any of these strategies. Use A/B testing where possible to isolate the impact of each change. AOV improvements compound — each successful strategy increases the base from which the next strategy builds.

Try BundleBox free on the Shopify App Store and start building food bundles that increase your average order value today.

Using Seasonal and Occasion-Based Offers to Lift AOV

Seasonal moments — Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, Mother's Day — are among the highest-AOV periods for food businesses, and they are opportunities that many merchants underuse. During gifting seasons, customers arrive with a higher spend intention than at any other point in the year. The question is whether your store is structured to capture that intent with appropriately priced bundles, gift sets, and premium options. A customer who might spend £35 on a regular order will readily spend £65 on a well-presented gift hamper in December if the product page, imagery, and packaging communicate quality effectively.

The key to maximising seasonal AOV is preparation well ahead of the date. Build your seasonal bundles at least six weeks in advance, give them dedicated collection pages, and merchandise your homepage around those offers from the moment the season becomes relevant for shoppers. Customers planning Christmas gifts in early November do not want to see your standard product range — they want clear gift options, clear pricing, and reassurance on delivery timelines. Stores that build this infrastructure consistently outperform those that add a seasonal label to an existing product at the last minute.

Beyond the major calendar events, consider smaller occasion-based offers that are relevant to your specific product range. A coffee brand might create a "World Coffee Day" bundle. A hot sauce business might build a "BBQ season" pack in May. These smaller seasonal moments attract lower volume but can be promoted effectively through email and social with minimal marketing spend. They also give you a reason to contact your existing customer base with a compelling offer, which is one of the most cost-effective AOV-driving tactics available to any Shopify merchant.

Building a Content Strategy That Supports AOV

Content is not just a traffic acquisition tool — it is an AOV driver when it is built correctly. Recipe content, pairing guides, and usage inspiration all increase the likelihood that a customer buys multiple products rather than a single item. A customer who arrives on your site looking for a specific sauce and reads a recipe that requires two other products from your range is a customer who is primed to increase their order size before they even reach the product page. This is the commercial case for investing in content that is genuinely useful rather than purely promotional.

BlogFlow is built specifically to help Shopify merchants publish and manage content that converts. A well-structured blog post that pairs products together, explains how to use a range, or showcases a seasonal recipe creates a natural path from content to cart that increases both the number of products added and the overall order value. The difference between a content strategy that drives AOV and one that simply generates traffic is specificity — posts that are built around product combinations, seasonal occasions, or specific use cases perform far better commercially than generic brand content.

The practical implementation is straightforward. For each of your core product categories, plan two to three content pieces that naturally feature multiple products from your range. A "weeknight dinner" post for a meal prep brand, a "cheese board guide" for a cheese retailer, a "coffee morning at home" piece for a specialty coffee business — each of these creates a context in which multiple products make obvious sense together. Pair this content with clear in-post links to relevant product pages and bundle options, and you create a content funnel that reliably increases AOV among readers who convert.

Loyalty and Repeat Purchase as an AOV Lever

Repeat customers consistently outspend first-time buyers, and the AOV gap between the two groups tends to widen over time. A customer on their fourth order with your brand has more trust, more familiarity with your range, and more confidence in your quality than a first-time buyer cautiously spending the minimum. Building a loyalty structure that rewards repeat purchase — and that specifically incentivises higher spend per order — is one of the most durable AOV strategies available to food businesses on Shopify.

Points-based loyalty programmes work well when the earn rate is calibrated to reward meaningful spend rather than minimal purchases. A programme that gives customers 1 point per £1 spent and requires 200 points for a £10 reward is quietly encouraging customers to think about their cumulative spend across orders. Customers who are close to a reward threshold will often add a small amount to their cart to reach it — a behaviour that functions similarly to a free shipping threshold but compounds over multiple orders rather than just one.

Beyond formal loyalty programmes, post-purchase communication is an underused AOV lever. An email sent three to five days after an order — timed to when a customer might be using or finishing a product — with a genuinely relevant recommendation or a returning customer discount creates a repurchase moment at exactly the right time. The customer has a positive association with your brand from their recent order; the email converts at significantly higher rates than cold acquisition campaigns and typically generates higher AOV because the recipient is a familiar buyer with established trust in your range.

Try BlogFlow free at saltai.app — no credit card required.

How to Increase Average Order Value on Shopify