Average Order Value (AOV) is the average revenue captured per individual transaction: total revenue divided by the number of orders. Borrowed from e-commerce, it applies to any app with discrete purchases — a single [[iap]], a currency pack, a one-off unlock — and answers "how much is a typical purchase worth?"
AOV vs ARPPU vs LTV
Three per-revenue metrics, three denominators
| Metric | Denominator | Question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| AOV | Per order / transaction | How much is one purchase worth? |
| [[arppu]] | Per paying user (in a window) | How much does a payer spend? |
| [[ltv]] | Per user (over lifetime) | What is a user worth in total? |
They're related but not interchangeable: a paying user may place several orders, so ARPPU ≈ AOV × orders-per-payer over the window.
Levers to raise AOV: bundling (selling a pack worth more than its parts), upsells and cross-sells at the point of purchase, tiered pricing that nudges toward larger options, and minimum-spend thresholds that unlock a perk. But AOV is only one term in the revenue equation — total revenue is roughly AOV × purchase frequency × number of paying users. Pushing AOV at the expense of purchase frequency (e.g., pricing out smaller buyers) can be net-negative, so it's optimized alongside conversion and frequency, not in isolation.