13 Guaranteed Ways To Boost Revenue per Visitor (eCommerce)

An eCommerce store is a goldmine but unfortunately, brands don’t know what to optimize for more conversions. Most eCommerce sites have high traffic but convert less.

With the average eCommerce bounce rate of 45.68%, brands need to turn to Revenue per Visitor as a long-term growth metric. 

Shockingly, only 16% of eCommerce brands use RPV as a key business metric. 

And a sizable number of brands want to increase their RPV but don’t know where to start. 

And it's still not too late to fix this (Pinkie promise)

Here are 11 guaranteed ways to boost Revenue per Visitor featuring examples from real brands.

13 Actionable Tips to Grow Your eCommerce RPV

1. Optimize product pages for real conversions

Let’s go through the anatomy of a reader friendly product page from BuiltAthletics. 

Here’s what it gets right — 

✅ Social proof: 88% of customers consider user reviews on par with personal recommendations while 57% of buyers will only buy from a brand having a minimum 4-star rating—social proof does drive revenue per visit

✅ In-stock and ready for shipping: 33% of last-minute shoppers look for options based on how fast they can get them.  

✅ Recently viewed: Engages visitors to go back and take a second look at browsed products—this prevents them from bouncing off. 

✅ CTA: A single CTA that is dominant grabs more attention than two. It also has a floating CTA as the user scrolls down the page using it as a nudge to reinforce the purchase decision. 

Product description: The product description includes specific details such as no amino acid spiking and lists the nutritional information in bullets.

Product images: 75% of customers base their purchase decisions on product images—multi angle photos by Built Athletics ensures shoppers are able to read the labels.

Check out 45 Proven Ways To Increase Product Page Conversions

2. Offer *solid reasons* to buy from you

Making sure you’re able to convert visitors into first-time customers and first-time customers into repeat shoppers is crucial. 

✅ Free shipping 

90% of customers will buy more often if given free shipping. 

The most effective way to do this is to declare a free shipping threshold.

Alternatively, you can offer free shipping along with a discount on quantity purchases (like subscriptions.)

But if you’re a small brand or just starting out, consider flat rate shipping to increase revenue per visit. 

✅ Easy returns 

92% of customers will buy again if returns are easy whereas 67% check the returns policy before making a purchase.

To make your returns easy:

• Use language that’s warm and light for shoppers to read & act on
• Clearly define the window and what’ll happen if someone misses it
• Talk about alternatives if someone wants an exchange etc. 
• Create different terms and conditions for holiday shopping season

✅ Value proposition 

A/B testing the value proposition on the homepage can lead to a 35% increase in CTR. 

A value proposition helps position your business around the buyer’s pain point—and if you can create relatability with the solution, revenue per visitor can see a rise too. 

Squatty Potty conveys its value proposition in a simple way with ‘You were designed to squat’. 

3. Celebrate milestones to engage loyal customers

Given the dozens of options to choose from, 88% of customers opine that it takes two to three purchases to develop brand loyalty. 

Under these circumstances, creating thresholds of rewards for existing customers becomes vital to retain them successfully. 

In order to make your business milestones as well as the personal milestones of the customer count, you can:

✅ Announce exclusive “pre-order” access

This is ideal when you have a brand milestone coming up—let’s say, a product launch on your brand’s third birthday. 

Offering pre-order in this scenario to old customers before the official launch can trigger a range of shopper responses including quantity purchases. 

✅ Create a yearly milestone to celebrate continuous engagement

This is a good idea whether you’re announcing a discount at the end of a year during peak shopping season or offering an exclusive discount on a customer’s birthday. 

✅ Offer incremental benefits for loyalty

Beauty Insider, Sephora’s flagship loyalty program is free for all. For every dollar spent, you earn 1 point. The program has three tiers — Beauty Insider, VIB, and Rouge. 

Customers get special perks like birthday gifts, free standard shipping, and access to brand multiplier events. Experiences include rewards bazaar, same-day unlimited delivery, exclusive and product launches, Sephora gives an opportunity to be part of an elite community. 

The tier system ensures shoppers act on the promise of better benefits. 

4. Make *choosing* bundles easy

Nearly 10-30% of eCommerce revenue comes from product bundling. The problem, however, is that most eCommerce brands aren't creative with these bundling tactics. 

Here are a few bundling experiments you can explore if you’re looking to increase revenue per session:

✅ Make the bundle editable

Chewy, for example, uses radio buttons that can be checked / unchecked in their bundling recommendations:

✅ Make the benefits jump out clearly

This is especially true for quantity bundles—like the ones where there’s two or three of the same product, but a discount is applicable on the higher quantity. 

Vanity Planet, for example, labels the product for shoppers to see why a 1+1 bundle would be the right choice (& increase revenue per visit): 

✅ Highlight how paying up would be easy

Since a bundle makes it necessary for shoppers to pay up more, even if there’s a discount, easy pay options may need extra highlighting. 

Better still, tell your shoppers if a part of the purchase will go towards a “cause”—just like Olaplex does:

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Need help with product bundling? Read 15 product bundling examples that convert (& 10 proven ideas)

5. Make product recommendations smart (omnichannel + browsing activity) 

Product recommendations may not seem significant given it comprises a mere 7% of the search traffic but contributes to 26% of the eCommerce revenue. 

Proven to reduce cart abandonment rates and increase AOV, personalized product recommendations also enhance revenue per visit. 

✅ Make product recommendations using WhatsApp

Using WhatsApp Business to suggest product recommendations or cart abandonment reminders can result in more sales as text messages have an open rate of 98%. 

This can help cross-channel customer interaction go from your website to the customer's smartphone. 

It needn’t even be a new recommendation, but an old one the customer bought once but perhaps didn’t buy again:

✅ Pepper them across strategic places (not only on product pages)

Check out how Casper recommends their bestselling pillows right at the top of their pillow category page:

✅ Recommend brands that you showcase at your store

It’s 2024 and multi-brand environments are seeing more browsing and buying. 

So, if you own a store on these lines, ensure you recommend not just products but also brands:

What’s even better, they use labels like “trending” and prioritize featuring the more searched for brands. 

Explore eCommerce Product Recommendations: Strategies, Examples, Do's/Don'ts

 6. Optimize price display in smarter ways

When you’re trying to increase your eCommerce revenue per visitor, you’ll have to think beyond the usual strikethrough pricing—shoppers are jaded by this after a while and don’t consider the comparative pricing seriously. 

Instead:

✅ Feature % discount comparisons (& label well)

Check out what ASOS does to much effectiveness, using price drop badges:

✅ Use decoy pricing—with more convincing nudges

Making a higher priced product look superior to a lower priced one won’t increase revenue per visit unless you give more reasons to the shopper. 

Built Athletics does this intelligently—along with the most expensive product they also tag a higher product variation count—shoppers see choice abundance justifying the price:

Pure Formulas, on the other hand, ensures the most expensive option carries not only a quantity discount but also free shipping to improve revenue per session:

Become a pro at pricing. Check out Pick the right product price: 8 eCommerce pricing best practices

7. Go beyond guest checkout to reduce drop-offs

Guest checkout is fast—but it’s not everything. 

To increase revenue per visit, you’ll need to offer checkout in faster ways:

✅ Say hello to OTP 

With OTP, customers are less prone to cyber phishing attacks as there is no call or email. 

You can also offer biometrics or QR code scanning for account creation. 

✅ Offer social signups 

77% of customers prefer social login as an ideal solution to account creation since they don’t have to fill in long-form fields to create an account.

With this, you get their email addresses for sending personalized offers and content for your marketing campaigns. 

✅ Incentivize account creation  

There’s nothing a free shipping nudge can’t do. 66% of customers expect free shipping and they will do what it takes to avail the same. 

Case in point, UnderArmour offers free shipping in exchange for creating an account. 

You might like: Guest checkout: Still a good choice? (+16 way BETTER alternatives)

8. Offer real-time urgency alerts

Since it’s not enough to offer price discounts, your stock or view alerts need to fill in to create urgency once a shopper arrives at your store. 

✅ Show them how many are checking out the page

Nordstrom’s view alerts on their product pages nudge shoppers to add to cart faster:

✅ Use a “best before” tag on discounted perishables

Think smoothies, decoctions or even nutritional supplements—on heavily discounted products a “best before” tag helps shoppers consider a product, and can potentially improve revenue per visit—here’s an example from Optimum Nutrition: 

✅ Don’t just feature online stock alerts

Bonne Guele includes options for in-store stock availability too!

This is a strong reinforcement to ensure that customers don’t leave without buying in-store. It's a smart revenue per visitor trick that leverages omnichannel experience. 

85% of customers have been choosing curbside pickup since the onset of the pandemic. The benefit of curbside pickup is placing the order online and picking it up from the store saving shipping costs. 

✅ Use SMS to alert existing customers

Whether there’s a limited time product drop of a flash sale, SMS updates are super accessible for most people even if they’re traveling: 

9.  Make wishlisting an experience 

Sometimes you have to measure revenue per visitor across several sessions. 

And this is why what you do with the wishlisting experience is crucial. 

Here are some ways to make it count:

✅ Pair “drop a hint” with add-to-wishlist

This is especially effective for gift sets or even during gifting season. 

BlackMilk includes a Drop a Hint option for customers to share the products with their friends. 

✅ Let them build “collections”

Instead of a long-running list of wishlisted items, let shoppers build separate collections. 

This reduces cognitive load and enable people to find a product and add it back to their cart, increasing your revenue per visitor along the customer lifecycle. 

Fenty Beauty shows us how:

Another hack that is going to make life easier for customers is the use of filters in wishlists. This will help them sort out product items of different kinds such as clothes, shoes, equipment, etc. 

✅ Add wishlisting prompt above / below / next to low stock alert

Customers normally add products to wishlists when they want options to compare. A low stock alert will goad them into making a purchase. The perceived value is high in case of low stock situations. 

Check out Order Wishlist Page: 9 Ways to boost conversions (and lessons from Amazon)

10. Help them plan the purchase

Your typical eCommerce shoppers goes into calculative mode before they can make a purchase—especially from an otherwise unknown brand. 

In such cases, to improve revenue per visit, offer benefits that the shopper will instantly relate to. 

✅ Remind them about free in-store pickup 

In-store pickup is a great incentive for last-minute shoppers looking to buy products in a hurry— 47% of customers opted for in-store pickup because the shipping costs were high while 25% did so to get the product sooner. 

Anthropologie offers a free in-store pickup option on its product page. 

✅ Take their attention to “ways to save”

Nudges can help shoppers see why buying more quantity, buying sets or increasing the frequency, can be a good thing. 

Ursa Major offers a nudge like this in their primary navigation—what’s even better, they don’t gate their first-time visitor discount and instead, show it on the notification bar:

✅ Highlight when “in stock” products will be delivered 

This is an especially helpful way for local brands to earn more revenue per visitor—because they wouldn’t have as many varying shipping destinations and time windows. 

eCommerce auto parts brand RV Parts Country links to their shipping policy through the microcopy:

11. Use an AOV strategy that’s non-pushy

Take it from us: shoppers are tired of being shown product recommendations at several places across the website. 

However that doesn’t mean they mind adding more to cart, increasing your revenue per visitor alongside—you just got to give them choices and back off. 

✅ Offer more quantity variants (plus the price drop!)

A lot of times shoppers don’t buy more of something (especially food, snacks, drinks etc.) because they have to keep doing +1 in the edit bar. 

However, if you offer multiple “pack options” or even size options, the chances of them buying more increases—It’s Delish shows us how to do this differently, though we would’ve liked it if they did some price anchoring & showed us the differential for higher quantities:

✅ Talk about the free shipping threshold close to the primary CTA

If the product in question is $20 and free shipping starts at $45, your shoppers should know to be able to move towards it—Outstanding Foods uses this practice:

✅ Show an upgrade—but make it relatable

And ensure they can calculate the price difference instantly—LARQ shows us how a simple tweak like this can increase revenue per visitor:

✅ Tie your rewards with the amount of spending—and call it out!

Caraway makes this evident on their homepage itself, inspiring shoppers across the funnel have a go at spending more:

12. Make your cart abandonment email inspire extra spending

And just when you thought your revenue per visitor increase is dependent only on on-site efforts, let us tell you how that’s not the case. 

Your cart abandonment emails, when crafted strategically, can make openers consider more choices than they left in their carts. 

✅ Show them similar product suggestions—and nudge them to think about gifting

Here’s an example—check out how the microcopy “...some of my friends” can potentially make shoppers think about buying an extra pair or two:

✅ Feature popular categories & sections from your site

Alongside the main product(s) that have been left behind—just like this Loeffler Randall email does:

✅ Feature recommendations with high star ratings

Limit them to just two or three choices for shoppers to regard them seriously and consider spending more:

13. Reduce customer hesitation across the site

No matter which part of your funnel shoppers belong from, they’ll either distrust your brand, a new launch, a collaboration or sometimes even a new payment method. 

And this is why you’ll need to pull all stops to reduce customer hesitation to be able to increase revenue per visitor. 

✅ Talk about why shoppers can depend on your brand

Is it because your initial creators were experts or because you use only proven ingredients to make your products and then test them thoroughly? 

Whatever it is, for your revenue per visit to grow, shoppers need to feel a strong sense of confidence in you—Bellroy, a design-led luggage brand, does video storytelling on their homepage to create conviction:

✅ Make social proof more prominent

In-depth reviews are great—but more shoppers need to see them in context to your recommendations, category highlights and even UGC visuals. 

Driving context through social proof can help you increase your eCommerce revenue per visitor—Elvie, a breast pump brand for example, creates call-outs from positive reviews: 

✅ Offer descriptions that answer the most pressing questions 

Another aspect of the on-site experience that can contribute positively to increased revenue per visit is product descriptions. 

Soylent is a brand that links crucial microcopy to a full ingredient list and nutritional information on their product pages: 

Revenue per Visitor 101 

1. What is Revenue per Visitor?

Revenue per Visitor(RPV) is the measurement of revenue earned every time a customer visits your eCommerce site. It is calculated by dividing the total revenue for a period by the number of customers for the corresponding period. It gives the revenue each individual customer brings in. 

For instance, let’s say your total revenue for December was $12,000 and the number of visitors was1500, your RPV would be $8. 

2. Why is RPV important? 

RPV is a metric that measures the revenue every single visitor brings into the store. It’s a metric that gives a clear picture of the eCommerce store’s health. It helps analyze how well the sales efforts are coming through and what needs to be done to bring it on track. 

3. What is the visitor rate?

Visitor rate is the traffic your site receives on a daily, weekly, and monthly period. The visitor rate includes important metrics such as the number of sessions per user, pages per session, average session duration, and bounce rate. 

It tracks new and returning visitors, session duration buckets(0-10 seconds to 1801+ seconds) pageviews, and User-ID status. 

Concluding, it refers to the percentage of visitors who left the site without making any purchase after spending significant time on the website.

We recommend you to read: 27 Practical Ways To Reduce eCommerce Bounce Rate

4. How do you calculate average revenue per session? 

The average revenue per session (ARPS) is the average amount of money earned by each unique session on the website. ARPS is calculated by dividing the total revenue earned in a specific time frame by the number of unique website visits. 

Calculating ARPS can help identify the gaps and weaknesses that are hindering conversions. An incline in the trend means more high-intent customers are buying while a declining trend means high visitors and fewer conversions. 

You might also like: 24 Scientific Strategies to Increase your eCommerce Conversion Rate

5. How do you calculate revenue per conversion? 

Revenue by conversion (RPC) is calculated by dividing the average revenue generated by visitors who bought because of an experience by the number of conversions. 

6. How is Revenue Per Visitor different from Average Order Value?

White AOV measures the average value a shopper generates every time they place an order. 

RPV, on the other hand, exactly measures how much money every visit by a shopper creates. 

In a way, RPV includes AOV and not the other way around. 

Summing up, an increase in revenue can either happen by converting more visitors into customers or increasing the average spend per person. 

RPV doesn’t overlook any of the anomalies. 

7. What impacts a good revenue per visitor in eCommerce?

A number of factors together can make or break the revenue per visitor your eCommerce store generates. Typically, if it’s low, you will have to look at the following areas and improve them:

- The quality of on-site UX

- How easily a shopper can come to trust your brand & products 

- The kind of value proposition you convey (if it’s not strong, RPV is likely to be low)

- The customer journey map (to make it easy for shoppers across the funnel to engage & shop)

Recommended reading: eCommerce On-site Optimization: 26 Strategies To Boost Conversions

Ace RPV with top-notch UX

98% of visitors who visit an eCommerce site—drop off without buying anything. 

Why: user experience issues that cause friction. 

And this is the problem Convertcart solves to grow your eCommerce revenue per visitor. 

We've helped 500+ eCommerce stores (in the US) improve user experience—and 2X their conversions. 

How we can help you: 

Our conversion experts can audit your site—identify UX issues, and suggest changes to improve conversions. 

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