What is average order value?
Average order value is revenue divided by orders: what the typical checkout is worth. It is the simplest number in DTC and one of the most consequential, because it sets how much you can afford to pay for a customer.
This calculator uses net revenue in the numerator: what customers actually paid after discounts and refunds. That convention matters more than it looks. At the example's $79.67, a gross AOV inflated by 25%-off codes sets your acquisition targets about $27 too high.
One caveat: AOV is a mean, and means hide skew. A handful of $500 gift-sized orders can drag the average well above what a typical customer spends. If the number looks suspiciously high, check your median order value too: offers built for an $80 customer will miss if most carts are really $55.
Worked example
Take the calculator's default numbers: $48,600 in net revenue across 610 orders last month.
$79.67 × 100 = $7,967 revenue per 100 orders
Now hold orders flat and move only the cart. At the same 610 orders, a $10 AOV lift takes revenue from $48,600 to $54,700. That is an extra $6,100, a 12.6% revenue lift with zero additional traffic. A $20 lift reaches $60,800, up $12,200. Slide $10 the other way and the same store does $42,500.
That is the whole argument for AOV work. Every other growth lever, like better ads and better landing pages, requires buying or converting more visitors. AOV compounds on the visitors you already paid for.
Gross or net? Pick one and stay consistent
The orders denominator is unambiguous. The revenue numerator is where teams silently disagree. Discounts, refunds, shipping revenue, and taxes can each be in or out, and every combination produces a different “AOV.”
Our recommendation: net out discounts and refunds, exclude taxes, and decide explicitly on shipping revenue. Net-of-discounts is the honest read: during a sitewide sale, gross AOV can hold steady while the cash landing in your account per order drops 25%.
Whichever definition you choose, write it down and use it everywhere: in this calculator, in your CPA targets, and in your contribution margin math. An AOV that changes definition between meetings is worse than no AOV at all.
Four ways to raise AOV
Bundles: pre-built kits at a small discount to the sum of parts. The customer buys a routine instead of a product, and the cart grows without a second decision at checkout.
Volume discounts: two-pack and three-pack pricing on consumables. Subscription-adjacent categories often see the multi-unit option become the default within a few weeks of testing.
Post-purchase upsells: one-click offers shown after payment. Because they sit downstream of checkout, they add pure AOV with no conversion-rate risk: the order is already won.
Free-shipping threshold: set it 20-30% above your current AOV. That range is directional, not gospel. At the example's $79.67 that is roughly $96 to $104, so a $99 threshold is the natural test. Set it at AOV and you subsidize orders that were happening anyway; set it 50% above and nobody stretches.
AOV feeds every other number
AOV is upstream of nearly every target a media buyer sets. Your CPA ceiling is contribution margin per order, and contribution margin starts from AOV. Your break-even ROAS is AOV divided by that margin. Move AOV $10 and both targets loosen at once: you can pay more per order and tolerate a lower ROAS.
Make it concrete. Say variable costs eat 60% of each order, leaving a 40% contribution margin: $31.87 on the example's $79.67 AOV. That $31.87 is your CPA ceiling, and break-even ROAS sits at 2.5. Add a $10 post-purchase upsell that costs $2 to deliver: margin climbs to $39.87 per order, and break-even ROAS drops to about 2.25. Same store, same traffic, materially cheaper growth.
This is why an AOV lift often beats a conversion-rate lift of the same size. Higher conversion earns more orders at the same economics. Higher AOV improves the economics of every order, including the ones your ads were already winning.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good AOV?
There is no universal benchmark. AOV is a function of your price architecture, so a $40 supplement brand and a $400 furniture brand are both healthy. The useful questions are relative: is AOV trending up, and does it leave enough contribution margin to fund your CPA? Compare against your own trailing 90 days, not someone else's category average.
What is the difference between AOV and LTV?
AOV measures one order; lifetime value measures one customer across every order they ever place. A $79.67 AOV brand whose customers buy four times has roughly $319 in lifetime revenue per customer. AOV sets what you earn today; LTV sets what you can afford to spend to acquire. Brands with strong repeat behavior can run first-order losses that AOV alone would call reckless.
Should discounts be netted out of AOV?
Yes. Use what customers actually paid, not the list price of what they bought. Gross AOV overstates the cash each order brings in, and every downstream number inherits the error: CPA ceiling, break-even ROAS, payback. The one exception: track gross separately if you want to measure how much discounting itself is costing you.
Does raising AOV hurt conversion rate?
It can: higher carts mean more sticker shock at checkout, and aggressive pre-purchase upsells add friction. That is why post-purchase offers are the safest lever: they act after the order is won. Judge any AOV test on revenue per visitor, not on AOV or conversion rate alone, so a bigger cart cannot hide a shrinking funnel.
Should I track AOV by traffic source?
Yes, once you spend meaningfully on more than one channel. Email and returning-customer traffic usually carry higher AOV than cold paid social, so a blended number flatters prospecting. Setting each channel's CPA target from that channel's own AOV keeps you from overbidding on cold traffic with warm-traffic economics.
Where StefanBrain fits
This calculator shows what a bigger cart is worth; getting one is offer and creative work. StefanBrain generates the bundle landing pages, upsell flows, and ad angles that move AOV, then reads results back from Meta to tell you what worked. To see how order value compounds across a customer's lifetime, run your numbers through the LTV Calculator next.