Increase AOV Without Add-to-Basket Hesitation

1. A delicate balance to increase AOV

There’s a delicate balance required to increase AOV. When you spend time and effort building trust with customers, only to lose that trust to aggressive selling at checkout, you’ve ruined that delicate balance. Pushing too hard loses trust, scaring some customers off when they sense you’re taking advantage of them. As the saying goes, “he who hesitates is lost.” When you suddenly push too hard, and the customer hesitates, you provide an opportunity for the customer to re-evaluate their basket. That can result in an abandoned cart.

To reduce the risk of abandoned carts, you want to make the checkout process as simple as possible. If you use pre-checkout pages to sell more on top of things like setting up an account, it’s one more step they have to worry about. As mentioned, it can also make them feel less trustful of your brand if you suddenly put the hard sell on just as they leave.

In fact, you can even devalue their purchase in their own eyes. Trying to sell more items as a customer leaves makes it seem you feel their purchase isn’t worthwhile to seal the deal. Instead, you want to make their shopping experience easier while they shop so they feel they’ve discovered a reputable brand.

Missing the mark on that delicate balance is also more likely to create post-purchase regret that leads to more returns. Therefore, those recommended items you want them to add to their basket have to make sense for your customers, not just increase basket size.

2. Avoid ‘add-to-basket’ hesitation

This online shopping phenomenon is what we like to call “add-to-basket hesitation.” You’ve probably felt it yourself when shopping online. Different things cause add-to-basket hesitation, from delayed delivery dates to high delivery costs. However, you could also lose trust by becoming too aggressive at checkout. So how do you avoid cart abandonment and add-to-basket hesitation?

You need to keep your focus on the individual customer’s experience. Your goal is to continue helping them by following their buyer journey closely to understand their needs. What keywords are they using? This tells you the exact items that have the best chance of making it into the basket before they check out.

Having all your product information centralized with a PIM enables you to be at-the-ready for any turns in the customer journey without scaring customers off. You also have the freedom to experiment with the data at your disposal. Online shopping is visual.

If you use a PIM/DAM to feed high-quality product information and descriptions to your customers throughout their journey, they are less likely to dismiss the products. Instead, the recommendations don’t seem like a last-ditch attempt to sell more but instead are designed to help customers learn more about your products.

You show them you have an assortment of equally high-quality items that they can explore carefully.

You can also use exit offers to show customers you value their business. Your PIM enables you to consider their purchase and provide a complementary offer with discounts and exclusive codes. You can regain their trust and increase AOV.

3. Know what discounts to offer

With a PIM, you can become more strategic with pricing, using price optimization to push overstocked or unpopular items. As long as what you show customers is based on their behavior, you are likely to find the right fit for less popular products.

Customers actually feel catered to when you offer them a good deal as they checkout. Instead of just trying to get them to buy another item, consider the types of discounts that help avoid add-to-basket hesitation such as:

• First-time shopper offers: Being unfamiliar with a brand can cause hesitation. This is easy to overcome with a new customer offer to show appreciation for their purchase.
• Exit-intent offer: Exit-intent offers appear as a visitor is about to leave, with an enticement that helps them complete their purchase.

Increasing AOV without creating add-to-basket hesitation is all about presenting logical offers without coming off as pushy. A PIM enables you to share high-quality product options that make sense to your customers. Along with the right discount offers at checkout, you can strike the perfect balance and increase AOV.