Average Order Value: 8 Ways to Get Customers to Spend More Per Purchase

Reviewed June 2026. Every native lever here — free-shipping thresholds, specific-price quantity tiers, Cart Rules, the Accessories block — exists in PrestaShop 1.7, 8 and 9. Menu labels shift slightly between versions; the locations don't.

Here is the arithmetic that makes average order value worth your attention before almost anything else: getting more traffic is expensive and slow, but getting more out of the traffic you already have is mostly a matter of configuration. If 100 visitors buy today and the average basket is €50, that is €5,000. Nudge the average to €60 — ten euros more per order — and you have €6,000. Same visitors, same conversion rate, same ad spend, 20% more revenue. AOV is the only lever in that chain you can pull entirely from your PrestaShop back office without touching your marketing budget.

This guide is specifically about the AOV mechanics PrestaShop gives you — Cart Rules, specific prices, free-shipping thresholds, the order-summary blocks — and how to wire them up. The neighbouring tactics each have their own home: the why does €4.99 beat €5 psychology lives in the psychology of pricing, and the art of which product to suggest sits in cross-selling and upselling. This post is the plumbing: where the settings are, what they do, and which native limits push you toward a module.

First, know your real number — and where PrestaShop hides it

Before you change anything, find your current AOV so you can tell whether a change worked. PrestaShop has this built in and most merchants never look at it. Go to Dashboard (the home of your back office): the Forecast and Your shop panels show average cart value for the selected period. For the proper view, open Stats → Best-selling products and Stats → Sales and orders, where you can read average order value and items per order over a date range you control. Pick a 30-day baseline window and write the number down. Everything below is judged against it.

One honest caveat: PrestaShop's native stats are tax-inclusive and lump in shipping unless you filter. If you want a clean "products only" AOV, GA4 e-commerce reporting is the better scoreboard — more on measurement at the end.

1. Free-shipping thresholds (the highest-return setting you already own)

This is the simplest, most effective AOV booster and it is already in PrestaShop — no module required for the basic version. The psychology is well documented: paying €8 for shipping feels like money wasted, but spending €14 more on an actual product feels like getting value, even though the customer's card is charged more in the second case. They perceive a win.

To set it natively: Shipping → Preferences, field Free shipping starts at (price) — set it roughly 25–35% above your current AOV. If your average basket is €45, a €59 threshold gives most customers a reachable reason to add one more item rather than abandon. Crucially, also confirm under Shipping → Carriers that your carrier's Free shipping ranges don't silently override the global setting; PrestaShop evaluates carrier-level ranges first.

The native limitation is visibility. PrestaShop will apply free shipping at the threshold, but it does not, out of the box, show a live progress bar like "You are €14 away from free shipping!" on every page — and that running nudge is where most of the uplift actually comes from. A static line in the cart helps; a live, updating bar in the header or cart that recalculates as items are added helps more. This is the single most common reason merchants reach for a cart-incentive module: the threshold logic is native, but the persuasive feedback loop is not.

2. Quantity discounts via specific prices (fully native)

"Buy 2, save 10%. Buy 5, save 20%." PrestaShop builds this in through specific prices with a quantity trigger. On any product, open the Pricing tab → Specific prices → Add a specific price rule, set From quantity to 2 (or 5, or 10), and apply a percentage or fixed reduction. PrestaShop will render a volume-discount table on the product page automatically when these rules exist, so the customer sees "buy more, pay less per unit" without you building anything.

Two settings make or break this. First, Shop Parameters → Product Settings → Display available quantities and the Display "add to cart" options affect how aggressively the tiers show. Second, for store-wide tiers across a category rather than one product, use Catalog → Discounts → Catalog Price Rules instead — these apply by condition (category, currency, country, quantity) without editing each product. Catalog price rules are the underused native tool here: one rule can put a quantity break on an entire range.

Where native specific prices run out of road is scheduling and dynamics — running a tier only on weekends, ramping a discount as stock ages, or stacking time-boxed promotions cleanly. If your AOV plan leans on recurring or scheduled tiers, our Smart Dynamic & Scheduled Discounts module manages tiered and time-windowed discounts that display on the product page, so you set the calendar once instead of editing specific prices by hand every Friday. The benefit, plainly: the promotion runs itself and ends itself, instead of becoming a recurring task you forget to switch off.

3. Threshold-triggered perks with Cart Rules

Free shipping is one threshold perk; PrestaShop's Cart Rules engine lets you build many more from Catalog → Discounts → New cart rule. The pattern that lifts AOV: set Conditions → Minimum amount to a value just above your AOV, then under Actions grant something other than a price cut so you're not training people to wait for sales:

• Free gift — Actions tab, "Send a free gift", attach a low-cost product. "Free sample pack on orders over €50."
• Free shipping — toggled per-rule, so you can run "free shipping over €75 this week" without changing the global setting.
• A modest percentage — kept for cases where a value-add isn't practical.

Two operational notes from running these: set the Priority field deliberately when multiple rules can apply, and configure cart-rule compatibility so only the intended rules can combine, and tick Highlight so the rule surfaces a suggestion in the cart ("Spend €X more to get…"). Also decide on Partial use for voucher-type rules — leaving it on lets a customer split a voucher across orders, which can quietly erode the AOV effect you were after.

4. Bundles — the native way and the honest caveat

A bundle combines related products at a small saving: a shaving kit (razor + cream + aftershave) for €35 instead of €42 bought separately. The customer saves €7 and you move three SKUs in one order. PrestaShop supports a native Pack product type: when creating a product, set Type to Pack of products, then add the component products and quantities. You control whether stock is decremented from the pack, the components, or both via Pack quantities options.

The honest caveat: native packs are static. They're a fixed list at a fixed price, and they don't do "pick any 3 for €25" mix-and-match, nor do they let a customer swap a component. For straightforward curated kits, packs are genuinely all you need and cost nothing. For configurable bundles, that's where you either reach for a dedicated bundle module or model the choices as product combinations and variants — worth reading before you decide, because combinations solve some "choose your options" cases without a bundle at all.

5. Cross-sell and upsell placement on the product page

"Customers also bought" and "Frequently bought together" lift AOV when the suggestion is relevant — a case with a phone, not a random product. PrestaShop ships an Accessories field (Product page → Associations tab → Accessories) that renders a related-products block on the front office with zero modules — it's core.

You attach the accessories per product in the back office; the front-office block is driven by your theme template. In the default Classic theme it's the product_accessories block in themes/classic/templates/catalog/product.tpl, which loops over the {$accessories} array PrestaShop passes to the product page:

{block name='product_accessories'}
  {if $accessories}
    <section class="product-accessories clearfix">
      <p class="h5 text-uppercase">{l s='You might also like' d='Shop.Theme.Catalog'}</p>
      <div class="products row">
        {foreach from=$accessories item="product_accessory" key="position"}
          {block name='product_miniature'}
            {include file='catalog/_partials/miniatures/product.tpl'
                     product=$product_accessory position=$position}
          {/block}
        {/foreach}
      </div>
    </section>
  {/if}
{/block}

If accessories you've attached aren't showing, the cause is almost always this block missing from a custom theme rather than the data — the association is set, but the template never renders {$accessories}. Add the block back (or check your child theme override) and the related products appear. For a "Customers also bought" cross-sell block you can add the native ps_crossselling module, and the optional ps_categoryproducts module shows other items from the same category; both give you a starting point before you reach for anything paid.

The mechanics of placement — product page versus cart, how many to show, where on the page — and the editorial judgment of which product to recommend are a topic of their own; we cover the whole thing in cross-selling and upselling. The one AOV-specific point worth keeping here: a clean, on-page presentation of those suggestions converts better than a buried block. If you're already organising product information into tabs, our Product Extra Info Tabs module can present related items in a tidy tabbed layout beside the description rather than pushing them below the fold — and the broader case for tabbed product content is in product tabs.

6. Loyalty points that reward bigger baskets

Accelerating point-earning at higher spend nudges customers to consolidate into fewer, larger orders rather than several small ones: "1 point per €1, but 2 points per €1 on orders over €100." PrestaShop's own Loyalty and rewards module (ps_loyalty, if installed) handles flat earning but not tiered acceleration. For spend-tiered rewards that actually reward the bigger basket, our Loyalty Discounts System supports tiered structures so the incentive scales with order size. The business effect to keep in view: you're buying repeat orders and larger ones with margin you'd otherwise have spent on discounts that erode brand perception.

7. Post-purchase, one-click add-ons

The lowest-friction upsell happens after the order is placed — on the confirmation page or in the order-confirmation email — because the payment and shipping are already settled. "Add [complementary product] to your order for €9.90, shipped together." In PrestaShop terms this lives on the order-confirmation controller and the order_conf mail template; the native theme leaves that real estate mostly empty, which is exactly the opportunity. A post-purchase offer doesn't risk the checkout itself — the order is already won — so it's the safest place to ask for more. (Anything that touches the checkout flow proper is a different, more delicate exercise; treat the confirmation step as the safe upsell surface.)

8. Make the cart itself do the selling

The cart and order-summary page is where AOV is won or lost, because it's the one screen showing the running total. Three native-or-near-native moves: surface the distance-to-free-shipping message in the cart; keep a cross-sell block ("you may also like") in the cart where your theme or a cross-sell module supports it, rather than assuming it as default behaviour; and make sure the cart shows the quantity-discount tiers so a customer one unit short of a price break sees it. Each is a small thing; together they turn a passive basket into an active suggestion engine. This is also why merchants who care about AOV invest in the merchandising of the product page that feeds the cart — the upstream case is in PrestaShop product page design.

What not to do

Don't be pushy. Aggressive pop-ups, fake countdown timers, and "you're missing out!" messaging can spike AOV this week and dent trust for months. The store-trust signals that quietly underpin every one of these tactics are worth respecting — see design signals that build or break confidence.

Don't lean on straight discounts. If your AOV strategy is just "spend more, get a price cut," you're training customers to wait for the cut. Prefer value-adds — free shipping, a gift, accelerated points — over price reductions wherever the maths allows. This is the practical reason Cart Rules' "free gift" action beats a percentage in most cases.

Don't suggest irrelevant products. One off-topic cross-sell and customers learn to ignore your recommendations entirely, which costs you the relevant ones too. Relevance is the whole game; the editorial side of it is in cross-selling and upselling.

How to measure whether it worked

Don't trust a gut feeling, and don't trust three days of data. Record your baseline before changing anything, then compare over at least 30 days and a meaningful order count so you're reading a trend and not week-to-week noise. The four numbers that matter:

• Average order value over time — from PrestaShop Stats → Sales and orders, or GA4 for a products-only figure.
• Items per order — the cleanest signal that bundles and quantity tiers are working.
• Free-shipping threshold attach rate — what share of orders land just above the threshold? A cluster at €60 against a €59 threshold means the nudge is doing its job.
• Revenue per visitor — the metric that combines traffic, conversion and AOV, so you can see whether an AOV win quietly cost you conversions.

For the e-commerce reporting itself, GA4 gives you the granular view PrestaShop's native stats can't — connect it via Google Analytics GA4 and watch AOV and items-per-order as a pair, because a threshold that lifts AOV while suppressing conversion is a net loss you'd miss looking at AOV alone.

The through-line: average order value is the rare growth lever that lives almost entirely inside your back office. PrestaShop already gives you free-shipping thresholds, specific-price quantity tiers, Cart Rules, native packs and an accessories block — and the places those run short (live progress bars, scheduled tiers, configurable bundles, spend-tiered loyalty) are exactly where a focused module earns its keep. Set your baseline, change one thing at a time, and measure over a real month. Ten euros more per order, compounded across every customer you already have, is the cheapest revenue you'll ever add.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I set a free-shipping threshold in PrestaShop?

Under Shipping → Preferences, in the Free shipping starts at (price) field. Set it roughly 25–35% above your current AOV so most customers have a reachable reason to add one more item. One catch: check Shipping → Carriers too — a carrier's own Free shipping ranges are evaluated first and can silently override the global setting.

Why doesn't PrestaShop show a "you're €14 from free shipping" bar?

Because the threshold logic is native but the persuasive feedback loop isn't. Out of the box PrestaShop applies free shipping at the threshold but doesn't render a live, recalculating progress bar across every page — and that running nudge is where most of the uplift comes from. A static line in the cart helps; a live bar in the header or cart helps more. This is the most common reason merchants reach for a cart-incentive module.

How do I show "buy more, save more" tiers on a product page?

On the product's Pricing tab, add a Specific price with From quantity set to 2 (or 5, or 10) and a percentage or fixed reduction. PrestaShop renders a volume-discount table on the product page automatically when these rules exist. For the same tier across a whole category without editing each product, use Catalog → Discounts → Catalog Price Rules instead — one rule, applied by condition.

I attached accessories but the related-products block is empty. What's wrong?

Almost always the theme, not the data. The association lives in Associations → Accessories, but the front-office block is rendered by the product_accessories block in your product template. A custom or child theme that dropped or overrode that block will show nothing even though the accessories are set. Restore the block that loops over {$accessories} (shown above) and they'll appear.

Should I use a price cut or a free gift to lift AOV with Cart Rules?

Prefer the value-add. In a Cart Rule, setting a Minimum amount condition and a free gift or free shipping action (rather than a percentage off) lifts the basket without training customers to wait for a discount. If you do run percentage rules, set the Priority field and the "compatible with other rules" toggles deliberately, and watch Partial use on voucher-type rules — leaving it on lets a customer split a voucher across orders, eroding the AOV effect you were after.