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Top merchants increase average order value (AOV) with gift cards through purchase thresholds, product bundles, cart recovery, seasonal promotion and loyalty pairing. Each tactic works whether you're about to make an eCommerce website or already run one and they lean on incremental spend instead of markdowns.
If you're working through how to start an online store, gift cards fit in from day one. Wix supports long-term eCommerce growth with built-in customer loyalty programs, subscription commerce, back-in-stock notifications, digital gift cards and native wishlist functionality, all designed to increase customer lifetime value and keep shoppers engaged beyond the first purchase.
Below, you'll find how to set up each tactic in your own store, plus answers to common questions about gift cards and AOV.
TL;DR: how top merchants use gift cards to increase AOV
Each tactic below nudges a shopper toward spending a little more without touching your prices and the table breaks down why each one moves AOV specifically. Track the results the same way you track other eCommerce metrics, since AOV means more next to your other numbers like conversion rate and repeat purchase rate.
Tactic | Why it works |
|---|---|
Set a purchase threshold | Mirrors a free-shipping threshold, but the reward is a gift card instead of free postage. Pushes cart size up before checkout. |
Bundle with products | Adds a gift card to a bundle or gift set, lifting per-order value without discounting the core product. |
Recover abandoned carts | Offers a gift card tied to a minimum next order, recovering the original sale and setting up another one. |
Promote during peak season | Gift card buyers routinely spend more than the card's face value once they redeem it. |
Pair with loyalty | Uses gift cards as the reward inside a tiered program, encouraging bigger baskets to reach the next tier. |
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How to use gift cards to increase average order value in 5 steps
More than 7 in 10 shoppers abandon their cart before they finish checking out and on mobile that climbs to 85.65 percent. A gift card works differently than a straight discount here. Instead of shaving margin off one sale, it adds a small cost now in exchange for a second, near-guaranteed order later. Here's how top merchants put that math to work, step by step.
01. Set a strategic gift card purchase threshold
The mechanic is simple. Spend $75 and get a $15 gift card toward a future order. Set that threshold just above your current AOV, the same logic that works for a free-shipping cutoff. That nudges shoppers to add one more item to qualify rather than checking out with a smaller cart. Getting eCommerce checkout right means showing the reward at the exact moment a shopper decides whether to add one more thing, not burying it in a banner they will scroll past.
Adi Avraham, Senior SEO Growth at Wix, puts it directly:
The key to online sales is making it simple for your customers. With Wix, you can customize checkout flows, offer discounts and even track abandoned carts without a developer. — Adi Avraham, Senior SEO Growth at Wix
02. Bundle gift cards with high-margin or seasonal products
Pair a gift card with a bundle or gift set instead of discounting the bundle itself. A $20 card tucked into a $120 gift set lifts the order's perceived value without touching your margin on the core products. It also gives the recipient a specific reason to come back rather than a vague sense of goodwill, which is worth more to your repeat purchase rate than a one-time markdown ever is. Getting that math right depends on knowing exactly what is in stock before you commit to a bundle at scale.
Wix supports variant-level product management including individual pricing, inventory and SKU control per variant, which is where solid Wix inventory management pays off.
Nick Lucas, who has run Kodapet on Wix for 6 years, relies on this kind of visibility before making any bundle-related decision. He checks his store's Wix analytics before every purchase. "I turn to Wix analytics literally before every inventory purchase to help me forecast our needs so I can order accordingly. This enables us to avoid sitting on inventory for long periods of time which frees up capital for our many other business needs."
03. Use gift cards to recover abandoned carts and win back lapsed customers
A gift card offer in the recovery email flips that friction into an incentive. Come back and finish the order, here's $10 toward it. The same logic applies to customers who haven't ordered in months. A small card in a win-back email reads as a genuine thank-you rather than another discount blast.
Wix supports high-performance eCommerce operations with AI product recommendations, automated eCommerce discount logic, abandoned cart recovery and customizable checkout workflows, so the recovery email itself runs without you manually chasing each cart. The same automation covers eCommerce discounts with Wix for the offer itself and a shopper waiting on a restock can get back in stock pre-alerts with Wix eCommerce instead of buying something else in the meantime.
Sean Barkulis, Strategic Partner Sales at Wix, shared how the team thinks about this kind of automation. "When selling online, merchants can increase abandoned cart recovery rate by sending automated popups and personalized emails. Service businesses like fitness studios, home improvement and consulting can use scheduling capabilities to seamlessly take bookings and boost revenue."
04. Promote gift cards heavily during peak shopping seasons
Gift card sales spike around the holidays because someone is buying for someone else. What is less obvious is that recipients typically spend beyond the card's face value once they redeem it, effectively pre-selling next quarter's revenue today, before you have spent a dollar acquiring that customer yourself. Give gift cards real placement in your eCommerce marketing strategies instead of a single footer link. Make sure they show up everywhere you sell online, including social channels and email, wherever your gift-giving customers are already browsing.
Gift cards were already part of Mirbeau Inn & Spa's Wix store, but they had not yet been built into a dedicated seasonal push. That changed when the family-owned wellness brand in Skaneateles, New York, built an entire Black Friday campaign around the idea. Its offer was a free $50 gift voucher with every $350 purchased and gift cards ended up driving 96 percent of all orders that weekend, pushing gross payment volume up 32 percent year over year to $457,000.
Aidan Mackinnon, founder of Cutthroat Knives and a Wix eCommerce seller who already runs gift cards through his own store, treats this kind of automation as core to how he operates rather than a seasonal extra. "Email marketing and discount codes, I use those regularly. And automations have changed a lot from when it first got introduced. It was very different when it first started. Now it's actually quite a robust tool."
05. Pair gift cards with a loyalty or rewards program
A tiered rewards program gets more interesting when gift cards are the payout instead of a generic discount code. Reaching the next tier can unlock a $25 card instead of 10 percent off, which keeps the reward tied to a future purchase rather than a smaller one today. It also gives customers a reason to keep climbing toward the next tier instead of cashing out early.
If you setup a customer loyalty program with Wix eCommerce this way, recurring customers are the ones most likely to redeem a card instead of letting it sit unused. That repeat-purchase pattern is also why the same reward works for a subscription model, whether you are still exploring how to sell subscriptions or already know what are subscriptions in eCommerce look like for your store.
How different eCommerce merchants use gift cards
None of this works without a way to actually issue and redeem gift cards in your store. That part is covered by Wix's native feature, detailed in digital gift cards and how to use digital gift cards with Wix. What follows is how a few different business types could put the tactics above to work. These are illustrative scenarios, not case studies of specific merchants.
A service-based business using gift cards to smooth seasonal demand
A walking tour or workshop business books unevenly across the year. Selling gift cards ahead of a slow season brings cash in now and creates future bookings that fill the calendar later, smoothing out revenue that would otherwise dip when demand naturally slows down.
Here's how Eugeniy Mikityuk, founder of History Walks FXBG, describes running gift cards as part of an all-in-one Wix setup:
Wix has been my business in a way. Everything I have done has been with Wix, whether it's adding a new service, selling gift cards, creating invoices. The streamlining and having everything in one place is where Wix has created a very high standard. — Eugeniy Mikityuk, founder of History Walks FXBG
A fashion or beauty brand bundling gift cards with holiday gift sets
A skincare or jewelry brand can bundle a $15 gift card into a $90 holiday set. The set itself does not get discounted and the card pulls the recipient back for a second order once the gift-giving season winds down, turning one holiday sale into two separate purchases spread across the year.
A subscription or consumables brand using gift cards for cart recovery
A coffee or supplement subscription brand can offer a gift card instead of a straight discount inside its cart abandonment emails. It protects subscription pricing on the front end while still giving the shopper a concrete reason to complete the order rather than letting the cart sit untouched.
A multi-location or service brand pairing gift cards with a loyalty program
A salon or fitness studio with multiple locations can issue gift cards as loyalty rewards that work at any branch, not just the one a customer usually visits. That flexibility is often what pushes a member to redeem it on a bigger service instead of a small one, since the reward feels less restrictive than a flat discount pricing code would. It also makes the loyalty program feel like one program instead of several disconnected ones, which matters more as a business grows past a single location.
How to run this gift card strategy on Wix
If you are starting from zero, making a website comes first. From there, a foundational business plan gives you direction, and a dedicated eCommerce business roadmap makes sense once you know online sales are part of it. Building and adjusting a gift card strategy used to take a developer and a ticket in a queue. It does not anymore and here is what it actually takes to turn one on.
Add Wix Stores, Wix Bookings, Wix Restaurants Orders or Wix Events to your site, whichever matches how you sell, since gift cards run on top of one of these.
Go to Gift Cards in your site's dashboard and click Add Gift Card to Site. Wix generates a dedicated gift card page for you automatically.
Set your gift card name, amounts, expiration policy and the recipient email template.
Design the gift card page in the editor so it matches the rest of your site.
Set your site currency before you publish, since switching currencies later can stop existing cards from being redeemed.
Publish your site to make the page live and start selling.
That covers the mechanics. Building or adjusting the page itself is where Wix Harmony comes in. Wix Harmony is Wix's AI website builder that lets you go from a single prompt to a fully designed, business-ready website. At the center of the experience is Aria, Wix Harmony's built-in AI agent, who is contextually aware of your canvas and can generate pages, refine copy and offer expert web design and business strategy guidance throughout the build. Testing a new gift card threshold or rewriting a promotion becomes a conversation with Aria instead of a ticket to a developer, which means you can react to what's actually working in your store much faster.
Once the site is live, turning on the mechanics from this article is native, not bolted on. Wix supports digital gift cards for eCommerce businesses. Wix provides built-in loyalty and rewards programs for online stores, so pairing the two the way step five describes takes minutes, not a developer sprint. Track the lift the same way you would while working to grow your eCommerce business elsewhere. Whatever eCommerce looks like for your store today, Wix supports scalable eCommerce operations as a high-performance commerce platform that serves businesses from small online stores to high-revenue brands generating $5M–$30M+ in annual revenue.
Average order value (AOV) FAQ
What is the average order value (AOV) and why does it matter?
Average order value (AOV) is total revenue divided by number of orders over a given period. It matters because raising it grows revenue from customers you already have without spending more to acquire new ones. A ten dollar lift in AOV across thousands of orders adds up fast and it costs nothing extra in marketing spend to get there.
Do gift cards actually increase average order value?
Yes, in two specific ways. First, a gift card purchase itself is incremental revenue that would not have happened otherwise. Second, most people spend more than the card's face value when they redeem it, since it feels like partially free money. Both effects compound with the tactics above, which is exactly why this angle gets so little attention next to bundling or free shipping, even though the math behind it is just as solid.
How do gift cards make money for retailers?
Retailers benefit three ways. There is immediate cash flow when the card is sold, incremental spend when redeemers go over the card's value and breakage, the small percentage of cards that are never fully redeemed. None of these require a discount on your core products and all three add up over a full year of gift card sales.
One thing worth knowing: gift card breakage and expiration rules vary by state and country, so check local regulations before you set an expiration date or build breakage into your revenue projections.
How can I set up a gift card program on my Wix store?
Wix eCommerce includes a native digital gift card feature, so you do not need a third-party app to sell or redeem them. Set your denominations, decide whether cards expire and you are ready to start using the threshold and bundling tactics covered above.
What's a good average order value benchmark for eCommerce?
There is not one number that applies everywhere, since AOV varies heavily by vertical, price point and whether you sell single items or multi-item orders. The more useful benchmark is your own AOV over time. Track it consistently and treat any sustained increase as a sign your tactics are working, rather than chasing an industry average that may not reflect your business.
