Drive and Convert

Announcer:
You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better e-commerce growth engine with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

Ryan:
Hi Jon. Thanks for making some time today to connect on this wonderful topic you've outlined. Pretty excited about it. We haven't talked a lot about average order value before. Surprisingly, it is a very large piece of e-comm where we both spend a lot of time, but it definitely lies more on your side of the equation. If you want to increase average order value with traffic, just increase your prices, but that might decrease your conversion rate, but your AOV side, hey.
But in talking through this with you, and one of the things you've mentioned, I think in a lot of presentations is a great analogy to AOV to kind of kick people's brains off and thinking through average order value. Is the advice you've heard before growing up, or maybe not, but I've heard it a lot. Never shop hungry, and when I do, it's not pretty.
If I go to the store hungry, in Costco, I just eat everything and then I end up buying everything as well. But tell us how you're bringing that analogy into AOV and into customer experiences on the website.

Jon:
Fair enough. Yeah. I have this bad habit of going to the grocery store hungry. I don't know why. It's, I dislike grocery shopping completely, but if I get hungry and I go, then maybe there's some value. Like you said, if you're going to Costco you get all the free samples.
But really, I think the idea here is people who go with an empty stomach and they're hungry end up leaving with a lot more, right? And they just load up their cart with everything that looks good and it's a store owner's dream. You can do the same for your e-commerce store, and this is what I want people to get out of today's episode.
You can identify these things that will make your shoppers, I'll put it in air quotes, you can't see it, but "hungry" for your products so that they abandon their lists while they're on your site. Why wouldn't you do that? So there are tactics that you can deploy. Some of these are psychological, some of them are just plain easy to implement, but really most e-commerce marketers just ignore this. They ignore the metric.
Number one, you hear about it from some e-commerce managers, perhaps folks do typically know their AOV, but you'd be surprised how many times I ask folks what their AOV is and they have to go look it up. They just don't know. But I think the idea of this is really, instead of just driving more traffic and new visitors and increasing your customer acquisition costs, you really can draw more value out of the traffic you're already delivering by increasing your AOV and you don't even have to touch your conversion. I know... That's the other thing. I mean, this is a metric that's on top of conversion rate improvement. So I want to share a few tactics, nine to be exact.

Ryan:
Nine, I like it.

Jon:
That you can utilize to motivate customers to buy more.

Ryan:
This is quite a few options just from a high-level. Nine options. There's got to be something for almost every single website out there for e-commerce-

Jon:
That's it. Yeah.

Ryan:
... in your list here. So I'm excited to chew through some of these, but other than when you say hungry, I'm like, "Well, I would just sell food and then I would get more aggressive on my bits on Google the hour before lunch and the hour before dinner."

Jon:
I love that idea.

Ryan:
To get more traffic when they're hungry. But how do you equate hungry on a site where they're actually not likely buying food or actually shopping with pains in their stomach from hunger?

Jon:
Yeah. Well, great. So we can put that analogy aside for now because this is where it starts to maybe get a little muddy. But the reality is, what I mean is by you're considering your audience's needs, when they're in the grocery store and they're hungry, you're meeting their needs where they're at, they want food, right then you're meeting that need.
So how do you consider the needs of an online shopper? What are their purchase motivators? What is going to motivate them? It's probably not a hungry stomach unless, well, even if you're e-comm or unlikely to get it quickly, maybe if you're Instacart or something, but why should they be hungry for what you're selling? Why should they really want that product? How can you satisfy that specific need that they have right then? And once you're able to pinpoint these, you're going to have a much better understanding of how to tailor your messaging, and that's what a lot of this is about.
Some of it's influence through psychologic tactics. Some of it's just changing your messaging. So the first thing you really want to do is just get started by talking to your customers. I tout this. I feel like every episode I'm talking about, "Go talk to your customers, go talk to your customers." But you never have any idea about why they're interested in your products, what their motivators are unless you talk to them. So you really want to open up that direct line of communication and you should run a focus group perhaps and just ask them. "Why are you interested in this product?" "What makes you interested?" "What are you considering as alternatives?" There's a lot of questions like that that you can consider that will help you tailor the rest of the tips that we'll talk about today.
User testing is a great way. So send people to your site who match your ideal customer profiles, ask them to complete some tasks, record their screen and their audio and ask them to talk out loud about the experience they're having. You'll get a lot of great information. And we have a product that's The Good, UserInput, userinput.io that you can go to and get this user testing done. And that I think is really valuable to just talk to your customers. So much so that we launched a product.

Ryan:
Oh, yeah. That has been taking off like wildfire inside Logical Position. Not to tout a product of yours that much, but it is very popular.

Jon:
Yeah. You get a lot of great info out of it, right?

Ryan:
Yeah. I think through, when you're talking about why somebody's buying a product, I think often in e-commerce, outside of the basic needs, if I'm buying Band-Aid, I'm kind mean obvious there's something there. But my wife is a good example of this because she just enjoys shopping, so she's different than me. I shop when I need something and I just get in, get out, I'm the weird one online.
But Hunter Boots for her, those are rain boots, and guess what? She's not there because she needs rain boots. She's there because she wants the status of a hunter, or she likes the look and she doesn't go walk in the rain. She drives kids to school, drops them off, doesn't get out of the car.

Jon:
Hey, now she might step in a puddle.

Ryan:
Nah, doubtful. But I go buy rain boots, she'll buy them in the summer just because that she found one she liked or wanted it, but that was there satisfying a very different need for her than just the actual use of the product. I think that's where many brands can get confused.
Hunter's big enough, fashion brand, they're probably beyond some of that. "We sell rain boots to keep people's feet dry." But growing up or starting that brand, you would've maybe thought you were selling rain boots to keep people's feet dry. Maybe that's where you started, but you became more than that and there's different needs on your site then. So most brands, I think if you're not doing that already, even if you're not even thinking about AOV, talk to your customers and a conversation, not just an email, I think, pick it up.

Jon:
Yeah. Oh, for sure. You need to understand. You need to see them. And that's why we love the video portion, right? Really helps you understand what they're thinking and that's important.

Ryan:
Okay, got it. So we understand hopefully at this point what they're satisfying when they're on your side or trying to satisfy, what's the next thing we need to be considering when increasing AOV.

Jon:
Well, the next thing is cross-selling complimentary products. So you just talked about rain boots. So I think here you're thinking someone who's interested in rain boots might be interested in a jacket or a waterproof hat or a pair of rain pants, they may. Hunter may be selling for be to your wife because she loves the look, but it rains a lot in Oregon. She probably also needs something to keep her dry.
So this cross-sell opportunity is one I don't see used enough. And it really you want to use cross-selling throughout the entire site where it makes sense. So many people focus just on the product page or checkout and use it in those two areas.
I like people to think of it as a service that they're providing, right? This is not an upsell technique. It is, in a sense. But if you treat it just like an upsell technique, you're going to throw whatever products you think are best on that page. Instead, you want it, think of it as a service you're providing. This is complimentary. This is something that I'm trying to be helpful for the visitor. If you do it consistently, you can watch your AOV, just really respond to that being helpfulness.
So how do you do this? Well, in addition to having it throughout your site, you also want to create bundles of items that really just make sense together. So if you know they'll need a reel fishing line in bait to go with that new pole, just don't let them forget it. Put all of those products together in a bundle.
Now, a nice thing about bundles is it makes it easy. So that's being helpful. But you can also then kind of deploy another tactic, which don't often recommend, but you can sell a bundle at a bit of a discount over the products individually.

Ryan:
The discount came out of Jon's mouth.

Jon:
I know. So what I'm saying here is you don't overtly say it's 20% off. You say it's a better deal if you buy all of these together right now, and that will increase your AOV. One way to find these is to look for trends in your order history. What are people already buying together that you hadn't thought about? What are their connections that you're missing? And let consumer actions tell you what bundles to put together.
I guarantee you there's product combinations that you haven't thought of, but your target audience is buying together. So just look through that order history, identify the buying patterns, and use that to inform your cross-selling efforts.

Ryan:
Now, one of the things you've talked about quite a bit before is reducing friction to check out. They're there to check out or do something, so do that. So where's that fine line that you generally want people to be aware of? In like, "I'm trying to cross-sell, cross-sell, cross-sell to get an AOV." And I could muddy the water too far to conversion that it just doesn't happen.

Jon:
Yeah, I think that's a great point. Obviously, if the more helpful it is, the less it's going to be an annoyance to the shopper. So really that's why I focus there first and I said, "Hey, you really need to be helpful with this." And that's how you should be thinking about it as a service.
If you're thinking about it as a service, your intentions will be correct and your customers will notice that. But if you think of it as, "I need to stuff the cart as much as I can." They're going to be annoyed by that. And this is unfortunately, the poor implementations I see most, where brands are just like, "Oh, you like these shoes? You probably want another pair of shoes." It's like, "No, no, no, no, no." An upsell would be, "Oh, I see you're looking at a pair of shoes. We have these socks that are matching the same color. It goes well with this belt." Et cetera. So that's really how you want to be thinking about this, is how can you be helpful?

Ryan:
So just check your motivation to a degree. Yes, you want a higher AOV. Yes, you want higher conversion rate, et cetera. But if you start with, "I just need to help people, they may say no, that's great but I'm going to make sure they understand what looks good together, because people like me don't understand which socks go with which suits or which belt. So you've got to help me."

Jon:
Yeah. It's a service. Providing a service for the Ryan Garrow of the world who can't match.

Ryan:
Yep.

Jon:
Clothing.

Ryan:
We need help.

Announcer:
You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast focused on e-commerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with e-commerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers. And Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, the digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization, and website design services to brands of all sizes.
If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you.

Ryan:
Got it. Okay. We're satisfying a need. We're going to be helpful in that process in making sure they understand what else could go with that in an upsell scenario. Are there other ways we can upsell? Just trying to be, I guess, helpful.

Jon:
Yeah. The next on the list is upselling an upgraded item. Upgraded version. What I mean by that is when you're buying coffee filters, you could offer the 50 pack and next to it you could say there's 150 pack, right? So I use this example because I got hit up with this and fell victim to it, and I say fell victim, but they got me because it made sense.
I make coffee almost every day at the office. I need coffee filters. 50, yeah, sure. Okay, great. That's what I went there for. But I saw for $5 more, I could get 150. So now mind you, that the 50 pack was 10 bucks. So I was getting three times the amount for $5 more, and it just made sense financially for me to do it. But also it was a convenience factor because now I was like, "You know what? I'm not going to come back here and order this in 50 days. I, now, 150 days." That's more time savings for me. I'm saving money and I just don't have to think about it again. Done.
So a lot of people think an upsell needs to be a bundle, et cetera. What I'm here to say is an upsell could be an upgraded version of the item. So you could also upsell a premium support, something of that sort, depending on your product.

Ryan:
Now, in the coffee filter scenario though, you now don't have to come back and buy again. So your lifetime value changes, and there could be in theory, a risk that you forgot who you bought from three months because you were buying a 1-month supply, and then three months later you're like, "I don't remember who I bought. I got to go search coffee filters again."

Jon:
Right. And that the solution to that, a lot of people will use subscriptions, right?

Ryan:
Okay.

Jon:
So that, I think that's a good opportunity, but it does not increase your AOV necessarily to have a subscription. That's what we're talking about here. So if you're a product that is a recurring use product, then you probably want to go the subscription route or make sure that your email's dialed in so you're getting back in touch with them.
Or what I love to see lately is a lot of even Amazon sellers are doing this somehow that are fulfilling their own orders. They're putting in a little flyer or business card size thing that's like, "Hey, when you're ready to reorder, here's how you do it. Here's a QR code."

Ryan:
To our website.

Jon:
Yeah. Right.

Ryan:
It's illegal per Amazon's terms.

Jon:
From Amazon's perspective, I agree. But I actually appreciate it because, and I even brought that up because the filter company did that. And so not to, I'm not going to name any names, I don't want to go and kicked off Amazon, but what I say is, what I'm going to say is they did that and I actually just left a little business card size thing with the filters, and when I needed more, I can just snap the QR code and be right there.

Ryan:
Yup. I like it. Okay, so upsell a better version or different version, more expensive version of the product. All right.

Jon:
Yeah. Next is to amplify social proof throughout the entire customer experience. So everybody knows social proof works, right? It's not a secret, but there are ways to use it to increase AOV. Obviously we tend to trust our peers more. When Ryan has ice cream and it's like, "You got to try this flavor of ice cream." I'm inclined to try it more than just seeing it on TV in a commercial. All right?

Ryan:
Or maybe wine.

Jon:
So, maybe wine-

Ryan:
That's were my palate, might be better.

Jon:
Yeah, we're [inaudible 00:15:19] these wine as examples. Yeah, that's fair. So which we need to get that wine tasting on the calendar soon.

Ryan:
We do.

Jon:
So really, here's some ways to think about this. First of all, highlight customer reviews and testimonials. Pretty simple. Get the social proof on your site, okay? Include earned media from recognizable brands. Now, this is more than just putting the logo of the morning show or whatever you want to call it on your website. Actually include the clip of when you were on that morning show with you talking about the product.
What happens we found, is that a lot of brands will just include the logo of the magazine they were in or the TV show they were on, whatever. And then everyone just assumes without any proof that you advertised during that show or in that magazine. So if you are truly featured, prove it. Show me a snippet, show me the quote from it, show me a video of you on the show, et cetera.
This is really common with Shark Tank. A lot of companies who are on Shark Tank will inevitably use social proofs that they were on Shark Tank, and it does increase conversions and average order value. So another thing you can look at here is certifications and trust badges. So I know we've talked about this quite a bit, but social proof throughout that customer experience, not just in the checkout, will help increase AOV.

Ryan:
Now, do you just put that social proof next to a bundle or an upgraded one to get them to consider a different product or add more stuff to it?

Jon:
That's fair. I think really what we've seen is the correlation, just between having social proof and having a higher average order value, because people are going to feel more comfortable spending more with you because they're willing to take more of a risk because of the social proof.

Ryan:
So it kind of sits alongside the upsell, cross-sell stuff and allows those to work more effectively to that.

Jon:
Exactly.

Ryan:
Okay.

Jon:
Exactly. And it reduces the barrier of me saying, "Wow, should I spend $50 with these folks?" Or, "Should I spend a thousand dollars with these folks? Well, I'm going to start with the $50 because I don't really know and trust the product. I want to see how that $50 product is. If it's a quality product, then maybe I'll come back and spend a thousand dollars." So really what you're trying to do is lower the objections and that helps increase AOV.

Ryan:
Got it. Okay. I bet DJ takes that from you and leverages that. DJ, if you're listening, social proof buddy. Okay. And you've mentioned discounting carefully, which is an incentive, and that's your next point here is incentivizing without devaluing, which just means you have to be careful about your incentives.

Jon:
Yes. You really have to be smart about it. So if you just rely on an offer that promises a massive 25% discount, honestly you're just going to hurt your AOV in the long term. You may get people to come in, but it's just not going to work. So there's some good examples out there of this though, how to incentivize.
Nordstrom is known for doing this amazingly well. They're known for not just their pricing strategies but their free gifts. I don't know how many times I've bought something at Nordstrom, I get a free gift, or every single time my wife buys any cosmetics at Nordstrom, she comes home with free gifts. And it's interesting because we all know what Nordstrom's doing is they're giving away samples that they already would receive for free from their distributors, but they're packaging it up and they're making it a cool message around how they're going out of their way to give you something special, and it works.
So there's a few ways that you can do this. So you can incentivize without devaluing your brand by offering a free gift with purchase at a certain threshold. You're not doing a discount, you're adding value. Again, it's the old adage, I say all the time, add something, don't subtract. So the first step, the easy button, everybody subtracts a dollars or percentage. If you can't do that, let's play the game of constraints. You no longer can subtract to add value. You have to add, actually add to add value.
So what do you do? Free gift with purchase. And you set a threshold, if you spend over $99 or over a hundred dollars, and maybe the best thing to look at here is what is your current AOV? If your current AOV is $90 and you want to get it to a hundred, set that threshold at a hundred and watch you reach that pretty quickly.
Set up a loyalty program. This is a good one where you build points, people can come back and use those, but you're gaming the system. This is what airlines do all the time. I'm Diamond on Delta because I flew so much last year, but here's the thing.
I know, I'm going to get bumped up, if I buy an economy class ticket, a hundred percent of the time I'm going to get bumped up to Comfort Plus. But if I get bumped up, I don't get the extra miles for doing that, so I'm going to lose my status. So instead I just pay for the Comfort Plus, even though I know I'm going to get it because I want the extra miles and et cetera that come with me paying a little bit extra for it.
And so that loyalty program aspect just works, and I now I'm locked in. I only fly Delta because of the status. So you know the program works in multiple ways, and then even giving a buy one get one free deal on certain products, it can work extremely well.
So again, it probably costs you less to give a product away than it does to discount, and it certainly costs less in the mental aspect for your visitors around how they think about your brand, because now they're not going to think of you as a discount brand. They're going to think of you as, "Oh, I'm getting something free. This is cool."

Ryan:
On the BOGO, you would do something like, I'm looking at product A, it's 50 bucks. Would it be like a banner? Like, "Hey, right now there's a BOGO on our $75 products where you buy a $75 version of that 50 and you're going to get something free."

Jon:
Yeah. And again, Nordstrom does this all the time where they offer maybe a 25 milliliter size of lotion and then they offer a 75 and they say, "If you buy the 75, you get a 25 for free." Or, "If you buy the 75, we'll give you another 75 for free." So then you end up getting double. But if you just buy the 25, you don't get anything, right? So they're really incentivizing you to step up.
Now, the margins on those products have to be high for this to work for the retailer, but when you have a high margin product, especially a consumable, this can work really, really well.

Ryan:
No, I agree. I think that's a good way to present that.

Jon:
All right. Number six, elevate your personalization. So this is product recommendations, typically, I know we talked a little bit about this, but a personalized experience for your customers is just so effective. This is something that you really need to be thinking about. Now, it goes in line with what we talked about earlier. This is something that plays along the other ones and it has the influence factor. So personalized offers based on their order history. This is an easy one.
If somebody you know purchased organic dog food from you, they're probably going to love you notifying them about organic dog treats. So you know they want organic products, give them more organic products. But if you're going to recommend new products, you have to make sure they're relevant to the individual needs. And I think that's what's really important here is again, you're doing a service. You're not just trying to sell more products. So think of it that way.
Display frequently bought together recommendations. This one, I see happen a lot. It's easy to automate this. And the reality is there's usually a really good reason why certain items are bought together. So play that, right? Play it up. Maybe people love almond milk with their coffee, so throw a box of almond milk in if you buy coffee beans. These type of recommendations can work out really, really well.
So also use these to personalize email campaigns. This is one I see not happening often enough. If I buy a product, you know what I bought, and Klaviyo, et cetera, make this so easy. So utilize the tools that are out there and take that extra step and personalize your email campaigns. Integrate these product recommendations into your email marketing strategy, and you will be helpful for consumers. And they will come back and buy more and buy a larger bundle.
They're like, "Oh yeah, I need to go back and buy more of those coffee filters, but while I'm there, I see that they also have an offer for beans that I might like. Okay, I'm buying filters. It's obvious I'm going to need more beans eventually." So that's something that you could market.

Ryan:
And this technology is advanced enough that it's become very good. And I would think maybe five years ago it was a little younger, it may not have worked as well, but now you can get the same system to populate your site product suggestions as well as populate your email.
Listrak, I know does an automatic personalization on the site. You go to the site and you're seeing a specialized portal for you on the site. Also plays into CRO, conversion optimization. When you have somebody seeing a personalized site, you're basically taking the Nordstrom example and making the site a personal shopper for you essentially, and think of it, and that's where the service comes into play. You are trying to serve these customers and give them things they're going to be interested in, not ram products down their throat because you have excess inventory.

Jon:
It's so true, and I think that it's as its own tactic works really well, but combined with a lot of these other things, I think you find that it works even better, so. All right, so next is offering free shipping, but setting that to a threshold. And what I mean by that is look again at your average order value it is now, and cite free shipping right above that number and watch your average order value climb up. This is one we see a lot.
Now, it doesn't work in perpetuity, meaning you can't say, "Oh, our average order value is a hundred, I'm going to set it to 110. Oh, we hit 110, let's go to 125." Eventually it does taper off, but it is a good way to juice your average order value and game that a little bit. In fact, according to a survey conducted by return customer, 93% of people prefer free shipping over other types of discounts. 93% would rather have free shipping than anything else.
So how do you do this? Well, a lot of people are just abandoning their carts because they get to the checkout page and they see that added cost of shipping, and they're just like, "Well, that's not what I wanted to pay." And so they leave, but we are able to help push people through that checkout and incentivize them doing so by setting that shipping threshold a little higher than your current AOV.
So a great way to do this is Skims offers free shipping in the US for all orders, every $75. If you go to their site, most of the items are under $70. So what happens is you end up having to buy two items to get free shipping, but then psychologically you look at that and you say, "Oh, well, okay, so really yes, I'm saving $5, but I'm also saving whatever the shipping cost is. I might as well put that to the new product." And then you start doing the math and you're just like, "Yeah, this is, I'm getting basically a deal." And so consumers look at it that way. It kind of psychologically turns from a offer of free shipping to, "Now, I'm getting a value because I'm getting this other product for less because I'm not having to pay for shipping."

Ryan:
That $5 shipping is a sunk cost. I have to pay that if I want the product.

Jon:
Right. And then a survey conducted by comScore and UPS found that 52% of Americans will add items to their cart to meet the required amount out to be eligible for free shipping. 52% will do this.
So if you think 93% prefer free shipping over any other type of discount, and then 52% will actually take advantage of it, that's a hell of a way to boost your AOV.

Ryan:
I get into the shipping conversation a lot, because it's a frustrating thing for e-comm business owners because they're paying for shipping regardless of what the site is doing. There's no way to get around UPS, FedEx, USPS, they're going to get banned. They don't offer free shipping.
And a lot of companies are stuck in the old way of thinking through shipping maybe 10, 15 years ago where, "Hey, I have a really good UPS rate. I am marking up my UPS rate to make that a profit center for my business." And then they get addicted to that and say, "Oh, well, that's our revenue. We can't take it away." That company will likely be drastically smaller three, four years from now.
Because people are not going to accept that they're going to become more and more familiar with how much things cost to ship, and they're going to start shopping you, if you have shipping charges on your site and it gives you the opportunities to pay for a click, get them to the site, get them to go to the cart, get pissed, go back to Google, find a competitor. And when you look at Google shopping, which is still for most of your brands listening, one of the best ways to get new visitors to your site, Google's algorithm favors lowest total cost.
So he doesn't care if your widget is a hundred and your shipping charge is $10, but somebody is selling with free shipping $105 widget, they have a lot of benefits on Google in beating you in shopping because their total cost to purchase, that's 105 versus your 110. And so it's better for you when it comes to shipping, find ways to give free shipping, even if you have to increase your pricing a little bit, be smart about it by doing some research with your competitors, but I am a hundred percent into that 93%.
I hate shipping charges and I have ownership in a shipping company. I know people pay for shipping, but as consumers, we don't want it. And so you have to find how to make that math work for your brand, but show customers free shipping.

Jon:
That's great. That's great. So number eight. The next one is leveraging limited time offers to create a sense of urgency. So there's a great study out there by Psychology Today, and it found that people's fear of missing out tends to press them to purchase button, more than an immediate need for a product.

Ryan:
FOMO is massive for me too.

Jon:
FOMO is real, but look, I want everybody to keep in mind that limited time offers don't necessarily mean having a flash sale or offering discounts over a period of time. I think the easiest and smartest way to think about this, is fast-food.
Look at how McDonald's and Burger King do this, and it's really interesting. Some items that McDonald's sells that are really popular, the McRib or Burger King has chicken fries when they don't do it year round, they come out at certain times and it makes the news. It's free PR for them. "Oh, McRib's out, better go get it." Or, "Hey, we have our Shamrock Shake." And you're just like, "What is going on here? Why do I care that they have this special? And why is it such a big deal every year?" But customers tend to flock to the store to get it before it runs out.
And so I think, that that's something to keep in mind that limited time offers just, they're not intended to increase order values for long durations, but they do work. So if executed correctly, align it with your low season and will help give you a boost when you need it. So urgency and FOMO is real. You should use it, but use it in the right way and think about when you want to play that card, because you can't continually play it.

Ryan:
You can't go going out of business every weekend and get that to work.

Jon:
Yeah, unfortunately not.

Ryan:
And if you have to use a pop-up to do it, it's probably not a good limited time offer.

Jon:
Agreed.

Ryan:
Just generally speaking,

Jon:
A pop-up or a countdown timer or any of that is really just reducing trust.

Ryan:
It's going to be a gimmicky and people will see through.

Jon:
Yeah. Exactly. You don't see McDonald's debranding a commercial for the McRib, and they put a countdown timer up, right?

Ryan:
No.

Jon:
They're not doing that.

Ryan:
They say it's a limited time.

Jon:
They're just saying available for a limited time.

Ryan:
Yep.

Jon:
That's right.

Ryan:
Because once, they might sell it out in a month or it might take them a month and a half, but they're not going to put an end date on it.

Jon:
And you have no idea, that's why you want to get there right away and get it, right?

Ryan:
I like it.

Jon:
All right. Number nine, don't ignore the power of a post-purchase offer. I think too many people missed this one, so I want to make sure we call it out, but right when you do a purchase, there's this euphoric moment of like, "Okay, great. I got what I needed. I'm excited about it. Can't wait for it to arrive." The post-purchase regret hasn't set in yet that everyone has. It comes later, not immediately after you purchase.
So take advantage of that high. That happens right away by offering discounts, bundles, incentives to customers who have already made a purchase. You can encourage them to continue shopping with you. There's some great options out there that will say, "Hey, turn this into this bundle and you save money." Or, "Hey, you know what? If you add five more dollars to the cart that you just went through, and we'll throw something else in." Or, "Add this other item and we'll ship it overnight for free." So there's a lot of options there that you can do, but you want to personalize your offers.
So things we've already talked about, make it relevant, you want to make sure you time it up appropriately. So I wouldn't say following up post-purchase right away via email, but doing it on site right away works well. And then maybe you could follow up in a day after the purchase with the email, but probably wouldn't go much more beyond that.
And thirdly, make it easy to redeem. A lot of these post-purchase checkout tools that are out there and plugins that allow people to add onto the order before it's fully been processed, they work really, really well. They make it easy because it's one click to add this extra item in, so it's a great way to increase your AOV.

Ryan:
Yeah. I actually love that one. It's one of my favorites because it's so often overlooked. Again, you're serving with it. You can't just throw something against the wall and get them to do something, but if it's considered and it actually makes me as a customer be like, "That does make a lot of sense. Yeah, I should put that in there."
And have somebody highlighted, "Risk-free, money back. If you don't like it, don't worry. But put this in because we think it's going to complete the look. It's a great easy one in fashion. You bought this, you're going to like this. We know it and you should try it." And I want to remove every vary, that's where you pay attention to Jon's other CRO. Things like all friction gone. If I click a single button and I can have no regret because I can just return it, risk-free, free returns.

Jon:
There you go.

Ryan:
I would have very little reason not to be like, "Okay, that makes sense." Because again, it's that high. Take advantage of it. Okay, so we had-

Jon:
Awesome.

Ryan:
... nine points, Jon and anybody listening here, I guarantee there's something in here you can be putting to work on your site very quickly to see some of these increases in AOV. Started with you've got hungry people on your site, hungry for your product. Maybe not hungry physically, but find out what it does.
So that's just talking to your customer. And if you haven't done that before, just stop the podcast. Go do that now. Just pick up the phone. Go face-to-face with somebody and talk to somebody that's a customer already and find out why they bought and what they like about your stuff. Cross-sell complimentary products. You can upgrade or upsell to a different version of a product on your site that has a higher AOV, hopefully.
Social proof needs to be everywhere through the process, not just in one specific spot, make sure people know that you are a trustworthy brand. People like your products. Don't discount. Find ways to incentivize without taking away. We've now, Jon has already told you, you can no longer subtract. Now, you have to get creative and find out how you add to add value.

Jon:
Yes.

Ryan:
No more subtracting. Elevate your personalization of product recommendations. This is just going deeper with your customer, if you can find ways to really be that Nordstrom personal shopper for them. Avoid cart abandonment by offering free shipping. So this is, free shipping can be such a powerful lever when done right, and it might take some time and testing to make it actually what's going to work for you. But there's almost all of you listening can make an improvement to what you're doing with shipping.
Limited time offers, you can create some urgency. Think about McDonald's McRib. It's just limited. There's no countdown timer. There's no gimmick. It's just, "We have this much of them and it's limited." And make it specialized for your company.
And then post-purchase, make sure you're taking advantage of that high. Once they've clicked buy, you now have a very excited human with a lot of those fun dopamine things running through their brain. You can get them to push another button and complete the order. That's going to actually make them happier, or it should make them enjoy your products more, but take advantage of that, and there's some easy plugins that can do that, no matter what platform you're on.

Jon:
Awesome. Great recap. Thank you.

Ryan:
Yeah. That was the cool one, Jon. It's something we definitely hadn't hit on enough, I think, in what we talked through.

Jon:
Awesome. Well, I'm glad that you found some value in it, and I appreciate you chatting with me about it today.

Ryan:
Yeah. And somebody should send us an example of one of these they implement and the AOV increase, because I'd love to see some examples of one of these or two of these implemented on a site and the data they got out of that.

Jon:
That would be amazing. Yeah. We'll talk about it too.

Ryan:
Yeah. We'll call you out on the podcast.

Jon:
Boom. Perfect. Thank you, Ryan.

Ryan:
Thanks Jon.

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