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AOV and post-purchase offer calculator
Your average order value, and what a one-click offer after checkout is actually worth — priced against your margin and your take rate, weighted across every order rather than the flattering subset that converts.
The average order value formula
Average order value is total revenue divided by number of orders in the same period. It matters more than it looks: AOV sets how much of each order the fixed payment fee consumes, how far shipping subsidy goes, and how long acquisition takes to pay back. Raising it is usually cheaper than raising conversion rate, because it changes what an existing buyer does rather than requiring more of them.
Your order value, and the offer.
Prefilled with an illustrative store. The take rate is the one input we will not guess for you — model a pessimistic case and see whether it still pays.
Average order value
$68.00
Rising to $69.92 with the offer — a 2.8% lift.
- Contribution when takenprice − cost − card fee
- $16.30
- Per order placedweighted by take rate, not per conversion
- $1.30
- A month
- $6,522
- A yearat today’s order volume
- $78,259
No new traffic, no new acquisition cost, and no risk to the original order — the offer is presented after payment is captured. That is the entire argument for it.
Why AOV is the cheapest number to move
Three reasons, and the third is the one people miss.
- 1
It needs no new traffic
Conversion work requires volume to test against and moves slowly. AOV work changes what a buyer does at the moment they have already decided to buy.
- 2
It lowers your effective payment cost
The fixed fee per order is charged once whatever the basket is worth. A higher AOV spreads it further, which quietly improves margin on everything — see the fee calculator.
- 3
It shortens acquisition payback
More contribution on order one means the cost of acquiring that customer is recovered sooner — which is a cash outcome, not just a margin one. The payback calculator shows the effect.
The four AOV levers, by what they risk
Ordered by how much they can cost you if they go wrong, cheapest first.
| Lever | Risk | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Post-purchase offer | None to the original order — payment is already captured. | A product relevant to what was just bought, at a price well below the original order. |
| Free-shipping threshold | Low, but a threshold set below your real cost subsidises the wrong orders. | The threshold priced off contribution, not off a round number. |
| Bundles and multi-packs | Medium — a discount that would have been paid at full price. | Incrementality: are you creating a bigger order or discounting one that was coming anyway? |
| Cart upsell | Highest — every extra decision before checkout costs conversion. | Genuine relevance, and measurement against conversion rate, not just AOV. |
The ordering is our judgement from building these, not a measured ranking. No uplift benchmark is prefilled anywhere on this page — the sourced figure lives on the service page with its attribution, where it cannot be mistaken for your take rate. metric to confirm. Reviewed 2026-09-09.
What this does not model
Returns on the offer. An impulse add-on returns more often than a considered purchase. If that is true of yours, lower the contribution figure or run it through the margin calculator with a return rate attached.
Cannibalisation. If the offer is something the customer would have bought next month anyway, some of this is revenue moved rather than revenue created. Post-purchase offers cannibalise less than most levers, but not nothing.
Fatigue. A take rate measured in week one rarely holds after a year of the same offer to repeat buyers.
The app fee. Post-purchase offers usually need an app, priced monthly or as a revenue share. Subtract it before treating the annual figure as profit.
Definitions
- Average order value
- Revenue ÷ orders, over the same period, on a fixed definition.
- Post-purchase offer
- An offer presented after payment is captured, accepted in one click without re-entering payment details.
- Take rate
- The share of buyers who accept the offer. Yours to measure, not ours to supply.
- Contribution per order placed
- Offer contribution weighted by take rate across every order — the honest number for a business case.
- Incrementality
- Whether the revenue was created or merely moved forward from a purchase that was coming anyway.
Questions about AOV
How do I calculate average order value?
Total revenue divided by number of orders, over the same period. Use net revenue after discounts and before shipping charged, and keep the definition fixed — the most common reason an AOV chart moves is that somebody changed what counts, not that customers did anything different.
Why is a post-purchase offer different from an upsell in the cart?
Because it is presented after the payment is captured. A cart upsell risks the order it is attached to — every extra decision before checkout costs conversion — while a post-purchase offer cannot, since the original order is already banked. That is what makes it the cheapest AOV lever available: no conversion risk, no new traffic, and no new acquisition cost.
What take rate should I expect?
We do not supply one, and a calculator that does is guessing on your behalf. Take rate depends on the offer, the price relative to the original order, and how relevant the product is to what was just bought. Model it as a range: run the calculator at a pessimistic rate and an optimistic one and see whether the pessimistic case still justifies building it.
Why is the contribution per order so much lower than the offer price?
Because it is weighted across every order, not just the ones that convert. An offer earning $15 of contribution taken by 8% of buyers is worth $1.20 per order placed. That is the honest number for a business case, and it is the one that gets inflated when people quote the converted-order figure instead.
Does raising AOV help more than raising conversion rate?
Usually it is cheaper. Conversion rate work needs traffic to test against and moves slowly; AOV work changes what an existing buyer does at the moment they are most willing. It also compounds with everything else, because a higher AOV lowers your effective payment cost and shortens acquisition payback.
Do you publish average AOV uplift figures?
The service page cites a sourced figure for post-purchase uplift, with its attribution attached. It is deliberately not a default in this calculator — a benchmark presented as a prefilled input becomes an assumption people forget they inherited.
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