For all online business stores, the biggest achievement is making a higher ticket sales than ever before or sell as many small-ticket items as possible in a single transaction.
In essence, merchants strive to make as many sales as possible while putting in as few resources as possible. Every ecommerce store is happy to see Average Order Value grow more and more.
Well, there are many ways to increase AOV, and on-site live chat happens to be one of them. First, let’s define Average Order Value means and why improving it is important.
Average Order Value and why it Matters
In the simplest terms, AOV refers to the average revenue amount a business generates in every transaction.
You can work out your business’s AOV. How? By dividing the revenue generated within a specific time by the number of sales transactions initiated within same sales period.
While this may sound pretty straightforward, here are some things to remember:
- One, the number of items a buyer purchases per transaction does not matter.
- And two; separate purchases by the same customer count as separate transactions.
Why Monitoring AOV Matters
To begin with, know the revenue amount your firm is making per transaction can help you set milestones for the future, determine whether you need to adjust your prices or contrast the brand’s performance to your sector’s average.
AOV can also act as valuable consumer data to gauge your ability to convert prospects to real customers. However, you must do further research to confirm what your current AOV says about your customers.
AOV does not only boost up the revenue amount a business generates in each transaction, but also adds to customer lifetime value. For instance, if a buyer increases their spending from $10 to $15, then their LTV increases over time.
A higher AOV also points to a reduced overall cost per sale in your business. It is easier (and costlier) to get a first timer to buy than have them buy for a second time and moving forward. In the end, you’ll notice you are spending lesser in cost per sale.
Lastly, once you reduce the cost per sale, you will obviously have more money to expand your company or do pretty much any adjustment you deem worthy.
Live Chat Support Benefits: How to Use Live Chat to Increase Your Average Order Value
Having understood why it’s important to keep an eye on your AOV, you must be eager to find out how to keep this important metric in check— and increase it— with live chat.
1. Increase Engagement In Your Live chat Contact Points
Though the dawn of ecommerce has, for the most part, streamlined the shopping and purchase process in many remarkable ways, one downside of online stores in contrast with to physical counterparts is that it is a much more do-it-yourself process.
While in brick-and-mortar stores, customer support staffs are readily available whenever a shopper or client needs assistance, this is not always the case when buying items on the internet; online customers are literally on their own.
Most times, they must actively make an effort to get the attention of a business’s service department if they need help—instead of enjoying proactive service upon landing on the website.
True, live chat customer service improves the situation. This technology allows ecommerce merchants to engage their website visitors actively. Through prospect live chat engagement, a business can benefit in many ways.
First, you show that you are ready to offer support and respond to your shoppers’ queries as they browse your product pages.
Secondly, you are sure you’re capable of providing consumer assistance in the shortest time possible, and without delays—one of the major expectations of today’s customer.
This active form of customer support and services increases a visitor’s confidence and trust in your brand which, in turn, leads to an overall increase in your Average Order Value – and come with many other advantages as well.
Though we can’t directly link proactive prospect and customer engagement to better AOV, we all agree it is one of the major contributors.
2. Personalized Conversations
Apart from enabling you to inform your website visitors that you are willingly available anytime they need you; live chat goes a step further allow you to get in touch with your shoppers and would-be buyers on a human-to-human level.
In essence, live chat customer service powers you to adjust your way of speaking depending on your customer or visitors’ mood. An experienced live chat rep can quickly tell whether a customer is happy and need a more relaxed, cheerful approach or to be more empathetic to a given customer based on their responses.
Furthermore, live chat allows you to customize each engagement. That is to say; it enables you to go beyond a normal conversation and work to fit the needs of each shopper you engage with through live chat.
At the end of the day, this adds up to fostering a great relationship with shoppers. According to statistics by Certona back in 2014, offering personalized conversations and services can lead to a remarkable 50 percent increase in Average Order Value.
3. Upselling and cross-selling
Live chat can influence the Average Order Value directly in the following ways.
Upselling: refers to offering a higher value service to visitors who show interest in purchasing a product/subscribing to service of lower price.
Cross-selling: refers to presenting complementary or additional products/services to a buyer who shows interest in buying a different item.
In a nutshell, you positively influence your Average Order Value either way; whether a customer spends more money on one, upgraded item (upselling), or buys many smaller product items (cross-selling).
Again, though you can automate the above processes in many different ways, live chat powers you to actively personalize your offers for every buyer or prospect.
Closing Up
Live engagement is a proven way to foster a healthy relationship. With nearly anybody that comes visiting your website or purchases items from your eCommerce site. Use it in the above ways to impact your AOV positively. Who knows? It could be the key to the expansion ideas you have been thinking about.
