SYS/DEF
AOV
Average order value: revenue per order, not per visitor.
Definition
AOV is order revenue divided by the number of orders. It is not revenue per visitor (RPV), and it is not the rounded “average basket” from a marketing slide. If 200 orders make €14,000, AOV is €70.
It is a continuous metric. Its variance comes from how spread out baskets are — a few €800 orders next to a stream of €25 — and that variance, not the conversion rate, sizes a test on AOV.
When it matters
You watch it when the lever acts on basket contents: upsell, shipping, bundling, checkout. A test that only moves click-through into the funnel should be read as conversion or RPV, not AOV.
Before launch, baseline AOV and its standard deviation feed the continuous sample-size tool. Without σ, the n you invent is a wish.
Pitfalls
Mixing AOV and RPV is the shortcut that wrecks post-tests: RPV already includes conversion. Optimising AOV after dropping €0 orders “to keep it clean” truncates the distribution. Another trap: testing AOV with the two-proportion formula — the variance model is not the same.
Related terms
Related tool
Sizing a test on average order value needs mean, standard deviation and MDE, not a rate: Open sample size (continuous).