Average order value on Shopify

By the Bondi team at TechnoBrains · September 8, 2026 · 7 min read

The formula, where Shopify hides the real number, and an honest look at which levers move it.

Average order value is what a customer spends per order. It is the cheapest of the three growth levers — traffic, conversion rate, order value — because raising it costs no advertising and no new customers.

The formula

AOV = total revenue ÷ number of orders

Over the same period, using the same revenue definition every time. Two decisions change the number, so make them once and stick to them:

• Before or after discounts? Use net revenue, after discounts. It is the money you actually received. Using gross means a promotion appears to raise AOV while your bank balance disagrees.
• Include shipping and tax? Exclude both. Neither says anything about what a customer chose to buy.

Try it

Where to find it in Shopify

Analytics → Reports → Average order value over time gives you the trend. Two cautions when reading it:

• Shopify's figure includes every order, including $0 test orders and heavily discounted ones. A handful of tests can move a small store's average noticeably.
• Look at the median too, if you can. One wholesale order lifts a month's average while nothing about typical shopper behaviour has changed.

What actually moves it

Roughly in order of return against effort:

1. Quantity breaks. Buy more, pay less per unit. Cheap to run, because shoppers who only wanted one still pay full price — you discount only the larger basket you would not otherwise have had.
2. A free gift over a threshold. Set the threshold above your current AOV, not below it. Below, and you are giving gifts away on orders you already had.
3. Bundles and mix-and-match sets. They raise items per order, and a curated set removes the decision that stops people adding a second item.
4. Free shipping thresholds. Effective and often mispriced. If shipping costs you $8 and the threshold adds $10 of margin, you bought the increase.
5. Post-purchase offers. They add revenue without touching the pre-purchase experience, so they cannot hurt conversion.

Setting a threshold properly

The common mistake is a round number. If your AOV is $47, a $50 threshold is nearly free money — most qualifying orders were going to qualify anyway. Somewhere around 20-30% above your current AOV asks for a genuine extra item without being out of reach. Then watch the distribution: if orders start bunching just above the threshold, it is working.

One warning

AOV is easy to raise and easy to raise badly. Discount deeply enough and it climbs while margin falls. Track revenue per order and gross margin per order together, or you can win the metric and lose money doing it.