To increase average order value without hurting conversion rate, test bundles and quantity breaks, free-shipping thresholds set from your own order data, relevant upsells, and threshold-based free gifts. Then judge each test on revenue per visitor (RPV), not AOV alone. AOV can rise while total revenue falls, and our database has tests where that kind of offer lost.
Below, each tactic comes with real results from LiftArchive's database of ecommerce A/B tests, credited to the practitioners who ran them.
AOV vs RPV: why both matter
Average order value is total revenue divided by number of orders. Shopify defines it as the average amount customers spend per transaction. If you made $50,000 from 1,000 orders last month, your AOV is $50.
Revenue per visitor is total revenue divided by visitors. It equals conversion rate times AOV, so it captures both at once. A store with a 2% conversion rate and a $50 AOV makes $1.00 per visitor.
That is why AOV alone can mislead you. Say an offer pushes AOV to $60 but conversion drops to 1.6%. RPV falls to $0.96, and the store earns less even though each order is bigger.
Dave Diederen saw +25% AOV after introducing a BOGO offer for a deal-driven audience. That is a strong number, but the useful question for any AOV test is what happened to conversion at the same time. Track AOV, conversion rate and RPV together, and treat RPV (or profit per visitor, if you can measure it) as the deciding metric.
To see where your number sits against other stores, check our average order value benchmarks.
Bundles and quantity breaks
Bundles raise AOV by making the bigger purchase the easy default. They work best on products people use up or buy in sets: supplements, coffee, skincare, socks, accessories that pair with a main item.
Alex Stoykov saw +10.87% RPV after adding a one-click "Frequently Bought Together" bundle (tape and solvent) near the add-to-cart button. The pairing was obvious: one product is hard to use without the other.
Order matters in a quantity selector. Elevate A/B Testing reports +8.47% RPV from listing the biggest pack first in the bundle selector. Shoppers anchor on the first option they see.
Oliver Kenyon saw +$182k monthly revenue after adding bundle options directly on the product page. Small presentation changes count too: Dave Diederen saw +11.26% CVR from adding a "You're saving $X on this order" line to the bundle selector.
@oliverkenyon@oliverkenyon
@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen
@kasper_dolk
@elevate_abThings to test in a bundle offer:
- Which pack is shown first or preselected. Leading with the largest pack worked in the test above.
- How savings are shown. A dollar amount saved is easier to read than a percentage on a multi-pack.
- Per-unit or per-day pricing. Dave Diederen saw +9.45% RPV from a selector that asked who the product was for, then showed supply options with per-day pricing.
- Layout. A compact buy box with less padding gave Dave Diederen +10.74% CVR on a bundle page.
More examples are on our bundles element page. If you need an app to build the offer, our roundup of Shopify bundle apps compares the options.
Free-shipping thresholds
A free-shipping threshold asks shoppers to add items to reach a minimum order. It is one of the most common AOV levers, and our tests show the right setting varies a lot from store to store.
Dave Diederen saw +6.27% profit per visitor after raising the free-shipping threshold to $165. Note the metric: profit per visitor, which accounts for the shipping cost the store absorbs.
Other stores did better with no threshold at all. Dave Diederen saw +9.17% RPV after removing the free-shipping threshold and charging shipping on every order, and +7.90% RPV in a separate test that replaced the threshold with a flat fee.
So test the threshold level instead of copying a number. A common starting point is somewhat above your current AOV, so a typical order needs one more item to qualify. Then test higher and lower levels, and a version with paid shipping on every order.
How you present the threshold matters as well:
- Dave Diederen saw +11.08% CVR from changing cart copy to "Congrats! You unlocked FREE shipping!"
- Oliver Kenyon saw +$57k/month from tiered spend rewards in the cart (free shipping plus bonus items).
- Dave Diederen saw +$15,242/month from showing free shipping as a line-item discount next to a crossed-out original price.
@oliverkenyon@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederenSee all threshold results on the free-shipping thresholds page.
Upsells and cross-sells
An upsell offers a better or larger version of the product. A cross-sell offers something that goes with it. Both can appear on the product page, in the cart drawer, in checkout or after purchase.
Upsells usually help, but often by a modest amount. Kasper Dolk saw +1.86% revenue per visitor (est. +$26,471/month) from upsells vs no upsells. That is a real gain, but it is smaller than many vendor case studies suggest, so plan sample sizes with a small effect in mind.
Which product you offer matters more than whether you offer one. Milos tested a leather strap against a mystery box as the cart drawer upsell and saw +15.26% RPV (+$28,912/month). Dave Diederen saw +7.80% RPV from testing two different upsell products in the same add-to-cart popup.
After checkout is lower risk, because the first order is already placed. Dave Diederen measured a 16.64% upsell conversion rate on a one-click complementary post-purchase upsell. Kasper Dolk reports a 15-20% take rate for a custom AOV order bump across other stores.
@oliverkenyon
@CROguy_@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@kasper_dolk@kasper_dolkPractical rules from these results:
- Offer a product that completes the first one, not a random best-seller.
- Price the add-on well below the main item, so it feels like a small extra decision.
- Test one or two offers, not a carousel of six.
- Put the riskiest offers after purchase, where they cannot cost you the first order.
Our upsells element page collects every upsell test in the database.
For tooling, Rebuy is an upsell, cross-sell and smart cart app for Shopify. As of November 2026, its pricing page lists a free Monetize plan and a build-your-own plan from $25/month per package, priced by monthly orders, with a 14-day trial. Because cost scales with orders, it suits stores with enough volume to test offers properly. A store with a handful of orders a day may be better off with a simpler upsell app or native Shopify features.
If you want to build a custom bundle or offer page without code, PageFly is a Shopify page builder. As of November 2026, its pricing page lists a free plan with one published page and paid plans from $24/month. It builds pages; it does not run A/B tests or recommend products by itself, so it is not for teams who want those features in one tool.
Free gifts
A free gift with purchase can lift both conversion and order size, especially when the gift is unlocked at a spend level. It also costs less than a straight discount when the gift has low unit cost.
Digital gifts can work well. Oliver Kenyon saw +48.71% revenue per visitor from adding a free BBQ recipe e-book to knife purchases. The gift fit the product and cost almost nothing to deliver. A related test, a free Summer BBQ recipe e-book with product bundles, added +$68,000/month.
Gifts also work as a second threshold above free shipping. Kasper Dolk saw a +€30,578 revenue lift at 99% confidence from a mystery gift unlocked at a second cart threshold.
Gifts do not always win, though. Oliver Kenyon saw +$43k/month from lowering the price and removing the free gift ($82 vs $85 plus gift). Some shoppers value a lower price more than an extra item.
@oliverkenyon@oliverkenyon@oliverkenyon@kasper_dolkMore gift results are on our free gifts page.
Tests where AOV rose but revenue fell
Most results in our database report RPV or monthly revenue rather than AOV, so we cannot always show the AOV number. But several tests show an offer designed to raise order size losing to a simpler option. Those are the cases to learn from.
The clearest loss: Milos changed a 2-pack offer to "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" at the same price and saw -52.38% RPV (a loss of $104,679/month). Shoppers got more units per order, but the store earned far less per visitor.
Removing AOV features sometimes wins:
- Oliver Kenyon saw +€38k/month after removing a 1/2/3-bag bundle selector from the product page.
- Oliver Kenyon saw +$31,000/month after a slide-cart redesign that removed a $25 pre-checkout upsell and added trust elements.
- Oliver Kenyon saw +$43k/month after removing a free gift and lowering the price, as covered above.
@oliverkenyon@oliverkenyon@CROguy_The pattern across these tests: an AOV tactic adds a decision, a distraction or a cost to the margin. If it does not add enough value to cover that, total revenue or profit drops. Three habits protect you:
- Set RPV or profit per visitor as the primary metric before the test starts.
- Check conversion rate alongside AOV. A bigger basket from fewer buyers is often a loss.
- Count the cost of the offer. Free units, free shipping and gifts all come out of margin, which revenue metrics do not show.