Boost Average Order Value: Position Your Site As A One Stop Gift Shop

One of the tips I shared in my interview with Shawna Fennell of eComExperts last week was to position yourself as a one-stop-shop this Christmas to boost your AOV (Average Order Value). The idea is to sell the customer on the idea that he or she can shop for everyone on the Christmas list (or as many as possible) in your store. The problem is not everyone has figured out what gifts they should get - a lot need some help. Gift finders by gender, age, recipient type and interests are a great help to customers, and can certainly help convert browsers into satisfied (and relieved) buyers.

Gift finders can be interactive tools (think of a stepped-survey or wizard) or simply special categories like "Gifts for Him" or "Gifts for Her."

Toys R Us stepped gift finder

Target.com Gift Categories

Most sites that offer these do a great job showing them off on home pages and in navigation menus, but they fail to carry the message through to the cart summary. Instead of a vanilla "Continue Shopping" link, why not link back to gifting tools? Remind your customer about your one-stop value proposition!

Test

Testing Hypothesis: Including a call-to-action for the gift finder or gift categories in the cart summary will remind customers to keep shopping for other gifts.

I've never seen this tactic in practice, so let's mock up what a test could look like for Target.com:

Control: Target's actual cart summary page

Treatment A: Continue Shopping link below item details

Treatment B: Continue Shopping links above item details

Treatment C: Link to gift finder (button) with text "Gifts for everyone on your list!"

Images too small? Quick tip: hit CTRL+ to zoom to enlarge the images a bit...

What to measure?

To determine success, don't just measure conversion rate improvement. Track clicks on the each call-to-action, items per sale, average order value and profit per sale.