How to Find Your Average Order Value in Google Analytics (2 Ways)

Conversion rate tells you how often visitors buy. It doesn’t tell you what they spend when they do.

Two stores can convert at the same rate and still bring in very different amounts of money. What separates them is how much lands in each order.

Average order value is that number — what a single order brings in, on average. It’s what tells you whether a channel sending fewer buyers is the one actually worth more.

Google Analytics already collects both numbers behind that average — your revenue and your order count — but it doesn’t put the finished number in any of its pre-made reports. The closest card it offers divides revenue by users rather than by orders, which answers a different question.

So you build it yourself — or, if your store runs on WordPress, read it from a report that already has it.

In This Article:

What Average Order Value Tells You About Your Store

Average order value tells two kinds of growth apart: a store that grew because more people bought, and a store that grew because each buyer spent more. Those two stories call for different fixes, and your order count on its own can’t separate them.

Average order value (AOV) is the average value of an eCommerce transaction in your online store. Put simply, it’s how much revenue each order brings in, on average.

The calculation is a single division: average order value = purchase revenue ÷ transactions.

Both halves of that division have a precise meaning in Google Analytics. Purchase revenue is what your purchases brought in, minus any revenue you refunded, and transactions are the completed purchases on your site.

So a refund pulls your average order value down after the fact, and a cart that was abandoned before checkout never enters the calculation at all.

Why Average Order Value Changes How You Rank Your Traffic

Your traffic sources are not equally valuable, and average order value can change which ones come out on top.

Judge a channel on conversion rate alone and you’re ranking it by how many people buy. Add average order value and you’re ranking it by how much money it brings in. Those two rankings can disagree.

The same number sets a ceiling on what it’s worth spending to win a customer. A store whose average order is worth twice as much can justify twice the effort — or twice the ad spend — to earn one.

There’s one condition on all of this, and it’s easy to miss. Revenue is your average order value multiplied by your number of orders, so lifting average order value raises revenue only as long as your order count holds.

That’s the thing to watch whenever you test a tactic that pushes carts higher — the value of each order can rise while the number of orders quietly falls.

What You Need Before Average Order Value Will Show Up

An average order value that reads zero is worth a tracking check before you read anything into it. So is one that looks nothing like what your store actually made — checking first is what keeps you from making decisions on incomplete data.

Average order value only exists once purchase events are reaching Google Analytics. Three things have to be in place for that to happen:

• A store plugin that sends purchase events. WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads both do this, and membership and course plugins like MemberPress and LifterLMS can report sales the same way. Our guide to WooCommerce conversion tracking covers getting those purchase events firing.
• A Google Analytics property connected to your site, with its measurement ID (the G- code that identifies your property) in place and firing on every page, including your order confirmation page.
• Enough time for the data to process. Google Analytics doesn’t surface a purchase the moment it happens.

That last point is worth spelling out, because incomplete data can make a new store’s numbers look broken.

Google Analytics processes your data in stages. Realtime numbers appear within minutes, intraday data lands in roughly two to six hours, and the complete numbers for the previous day arrive later the same day.

Google notes that processing can take up to 24–48 hours, and your numbers may still shift inside that window. So give a new store a couple of days before you read much into its average order value.

One piece of that timing matters for this tutorial in particular. Google says yesterday’s data is typically ready in Explore by 11:30 am and in the standard reports by 3:30 pm, both in your property’s own time zone, though it doesn’t guarantee either.

So the exploration you’ll build in the next section can show yesterday’s average order value before the pre-made reports do.

How to Build an Average Order Value Report in Google Analytics

None of the pre-made eCommerce reports carries average order value, which is why this route starts with a blank screen. The Monetization overview comes closest, and its nearest average divides revenue by users rather than by orders.

Building your own takes a free-form exploration and a handful of clicks, and it lets you choose what to slice the number by.

In the left menu of Google Analytics, click Explore, then choose Blank to start an empty exploration. Blank sits alongside the Free form, Funnel exploration and Path exploration templates.

Free form is the layout a blank exploration opens in, and it’s the one this report needs. If you want the funnel version of the same screen later, our guide on GA4 funnel exploration reports walks through it.

Give the exploration a name you’ll still recognize next week. Average purchase revenue works, since that’s the metric doing the work.

Next, click the plus icon beside Dimensions in the Variables panel to choose what you’ll slice the number by. Session source / medium is the one this walkthrough uses, and the search box at the top of the picker finds it faster than scrolling.

Check the box beside it, then click Confirm.

Now for the metric. Click the plus icon beside Metrics and search for average purchase, and the picker returns two results.

Average purchase revenue divides revenue by purchases, which is average order value. Average purchase revenue per active user divides the same revenue by active users, including the ones who never bought, so it answers a different question.

Check Average purchase revenue and click Confirm.

Both now sit in the Variables panel on the left, waiting to be placed in the table.

Drag Session source / medium from Variables into the Rows box in Tab Settings, then drag Average purchase revenue into the Values box below it.

The table redraws as soon as the metric lands. You get one row per source and medium, plus a Totals row, with average purchase revenue in the right-hand column.

Swapping the dimension in Rows for Device category, City or Session campaign gives you the same number cut a different way. Our guide to which Google Analytics traffic sources convert best covers the conversion side of the same comparison.

That exploration stays in your Explore list, so you can reopen it whenever you want the number. If your store runs on WordPress, the same number is also available without building anything.

How to See Your Average Order Value in Your WordPress Dashboard

Your average order value can also sit on a report screen in your WordPress dashboard, next to the conversion rate for the same date range.

Seeing both numbers at once is what catches a channel that looks weak but pays well.

MonsterInsights, the WordPress analytics plugin, puts that number there along with your transaction count and revenue for the same date range.

Reading it takes the eCommerce addon, which is available on Pro and above. If you’re starting from a fresh install, our guide to adding Google Analytics to WordPress covers the connection step first.

With the plugin installed and connected, open your WordPress dashboard and go to Insights » Addons. On Pro and above, find the eCommerce card and switch its toggle on.

Tracking starts on its own from there, with nothing else to set up in MonsterInsights or in your Google Analytics settings.

The card carries a PRO badge, and its own copy names WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, LifterLMS and MemberPress. The addon documentation adds MemberMouse, Charitable, WishList Member, Restrict Content Pro and GiveWP to that list.

Once the toggle is on, the reports fill in as orders come through.

To read the number, go to Insights » Reports, click eCommerce in the report navigation, and choose Overview.

The number you want is labeled Avg. Order Value, in the four-across stat row alongside Conversion Rate, Transactions and Revenue. That card is your store-wide average for the date range you picked — revenue divided by transactions, to the cent.

Top Products and Top Conversion Sources sit underneath, and our guide to tracking your top selling products in Google Analytics goes deeper on the product side of the same report.

How to Read Your Average Order Value by Source, Device, and Location

A single store-wide average hides the variation underneath it, because one order worth $200 and nine worth $20 average out to the same number as ten worth $38. That’s why splitting it up is useful — each split answers a question the average on its own can’t:

• Which traffic is worth more than its conversion rate suggests? Split by source and medium. A channel whose average order value is double another’s brings in twice the revenue per order, which can outweigh a lower conversion rate.
• Is your mobile checkout losing you money? Split by device. A mobile average sitting well below desktop’s points there, before you write off mobile traffic altogether.
• Where do your most valuable orders come from? Split by location. The place that sends the most orders and the place that sends the most valuable ones aren’t always the same, and shipping costs, currency and product mix can all pull them apart.

Source, medium and device come from the exploration you built earlier. Two more of these splits are already built for you in your WordPress dashboard, on Pro and above with the eCommerce addon switched on.

Click eCommerce in the MonsterInsights report navigation and choose Orders by Location.

The panel that opens is headed Purchases by Geography, and it lists transactions, revenue and an Avg. Order Value column for each place. A control above the table switches the breakdown between country, state and city.

The timing version of the same read sits one item further down the same menu.

Choose Spend by Day and the Spending by Day of Week panel breaks items sold, transactions and revenue out by day. Each day gets its own Avg. Order Value.

The comparison worth making there is between your busiest day and your highest-value day. A promotion timed to the first can be worth less than the same promotion timed to the second.

One thing to watch in either table: the Totals row averages the rows above it, so it isn’t your store-wide average. For that, read the Avg. Order Value card on the eCommerce overview.

Our guide on multi-channel attribution in GA4 takes the same comparison across every touchpoint before the sale.

What to Do When Your Average Order Value Is Lower Than You Want

When average order value comes in lower than you want, the levers are mostly on the store itself rather than in how you bring people to it. You’re changing what a single checkout is worth, not how many people arrive.

Three tactics are worth testing, and all three work by adding to a basket that’s already being filled:

• Recommend popular or related products on your product and cart pages — our guide to displaying your best selling products in WooCommerce covers the setup.
• Upsell at checkout, where the buyer has already decided to spend and one more decision is a small one. Our roundup of ways to earn more from your existing traffic walks through the cross-sell and upsell versions.
• Set a minimum order value that unlocks free shipping, so the shipping line becomes a reason to add rather than a reason to leave.

It’s worth watching your order count alongside your average order value while you test any of them. A free-shipping minimum that raises the value of each order and costs you a few orders can leave your revenue exactly where it started.

Video Tutorial: Finding Your Average Order Value

The walkthrough below builds the same average order value report on screen, if you’d rather watch the steps than read them.

FAQs About Average Order Value in Google Analytics

Does Google Analytics have an average order value metric?

No. There’s no metric named average order value in Google Analytics, and none of the pre-made eCommerce reports surface one. The closest pre-made card, Average purchase revenue per active user, divides revenue by users rather than by orders. To get average order value, you either build a free-form exploration on the Average purchase revenue metric or read it in a WordPress dashboard report.

What’s the difference between average purchase revenue and average purchase revenue per active user?

Average purchase revenue divides purchase revenue by the number of purchases, which is average order value. Average purchase revenue per active user divides the same revenue by active users, and active users include everyone who visited without buying. Because that denominator is larger, the per-user number comes out smaller. Use it as a revenue-per-visitor read, not as an order value.

Why is my average order value different in Google Analytics and WooCommerce?

The two systems are counting slightly different things. Purchase revenue in Google Analytics subtracts the revenue you’ve refunded, while your store’s own order total may still include those orders. Tracking gaps widen the difference too, since a blocked script or a declined consent choice can stop a purchase event from reaching Google Analytics at all. Treat your store as the source of truth for accounting, and Google Analytics as the source for comparing channels against each other.

How long before my average order value appears?

Realtime numbers appear within minutes, intraday data in roughly two to six hours, and the previous day’s complete numbers later the same day. Google notes that processing can take up to 24–48 hours and that your numbers may shift inside that window. Daily data reaches Explore earlier in the day than it reaches the standard reports, so an exploration can show yesterday’s average order value first.

Can I see average order value without leaving WordPress?

Yes. On MonsterInsights Pro and above with the eCommerce addon enabled, the eCommerce report shows Avg. Order Value in your WordPress dashboard beside conversion rate, transactions and revenue. The Orders by Location and Spend by Day reports in the same menu each carry an Avg. Order Value column as well.

I hope this article helped you find your average order value in Google Analytics — and decide what to do with the number once you have it. If you liked this article, check out the following beginner-friendly guides:

• WooCommerce Refund Tracking: The Metrics Most Stores Miss
• Top eCommerce Metrics & KPIs to Track in Google Analytics 4
• eCommerce Conversion Funnel: Beginner’s Guide
• eCommerce Customer Journey Analytics: WordPress Guide
• eCommerce Customer Retention: 6 Strategies to Keep Customers Coming Back
• How to Email WooCommerce Reports (Best Way)

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