eCommerce
BFCM AOV lift is mostly a myth: the by-vertical data
Mostly no. During Cyber Week 2025, average order value was about flat overall (+1%) and fell in the categories that discount hardest: computers and electronics dropped 5% and flowers, gifts and food fell 7% (Impact.com). Deep discounting compresses order value even as units rise, so BFCM lift is largely a myth that varies by vertical.
Key Takeaways
- Shopify's blended BFCM cart rose to $114.70 in 2025 from $108.56 in 2024, but that is year-over-year cart growth, not a lift versus a normal-week baseline. A single all-store average also hides categories moving in opposite directions, so it tells you almost nothing about what your vertical did. Source: Shopify BFCM data, 2024-2025.
- Across the categories Impact.com actually breaks out for Cyber Week 2025, AOV was flat-to-negative: about +1% overall, -5% in computers and electronics, and -7% in flowers, gifts, food and drink. The uniform BFCM lift most operators assume does not show up in the data. Source: Impact.com, Cyber Week 2025.
- Electronics is the clearest case: average item value fell 17% and units per order rose 15%, yet net AOV still dropped about 5%. Deep headline-SKU discounts cut average selling price faster than the bigger basket can offset it. Source: Impact.com, Cyber Week 2025.
- Klaviyo brands grew AOV about 3% in 2025 even as the average discount fell from 29.6% to 26.2%, because average selling prices rose 4.8%. Protecting price integrity beat going deeper on the discount. Source: Klaviyo BFCM 2025.
- The lever that protects basket size is structure, not depth. Merchants running bundles saw roughly 52% higher AOV than non-bundle promos, and a free-shipping threshold set 20% to 30% above current AOV typically lifts AOV 14% to 25%. Source: Paxcom BFCM 2025; aggregated best practice.
Most operators walk into Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) assuming more orders automatically means bigger orders, and that the weekend "lifts" average order value across the board. The data does not support that. The blended Shopify cart number creeps up year over year, but the moment you look at the categories any provider actually breaks out, order value is flat-to-negative, not the uniform lift the assumption promises. The decision this drives is simple. Design your BFCM promo mechanics around the outcome you actually want, volume or basket size, because deep discounting and a bigger basket usually pull in opposite directions.
The BFCM AOV lift is mostly a myth
Here is the number everyone quotes. Shopify's blended BFCM average cart value rose from $108.56 in 2024 to $114.70 in 2025, a 5.7% year-over-year bump. On the surface that looks like proof that BFCM lifts AOV.
Two things are wrong with reading that as a "lift." First, it is year-over-year cart growth, the 2025 BFCM versus the 2024 BFCM, not a lift versus a normal, non-promotional week. The honest comparison most operators want, "does my basket get bigger during the sale than the rest of the year," is not what this number measures. Second, it is a Shopify-wide blended average that skews toward DTC and mid-market merchants, so it tells you what "ecommerce" did and nothing about what your category did.
When I talk to founders running a brand in the $5M to $50M range, the BFCM planning conversation almost always starts with the wrong question: "how deep should we go?" The better question is "what do we want a bigger order to look like, and what mechanic gets us there?" Those are not the same problem, and discount depth only answers one of them.
| Year | BFCM avg cart ($) | Constant currency | Global GMV | YoY sales growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | $108.56 | $109.70 | $11.5B | +24% |
| 2025 | $114.70 | $112.29 | $14.6B | +27% |
What AOV actually did by vertical in Cyber Week 2025
Break the blended number apart and the "lift" story collapses. Impact.com, which tracks an affiliate network of more than 250,000 partnerships, published the cleanest public Cyber Week 2025 read on order value by category. Across the whole network, AOV rose just 1%. Average item value actually fell 4% (from about $47 to $45), and basket sizes grew 5%, which roughly cancel out. That is the honest shape of BFCM order value: close to flat, propped up by more cheap items rather than bigger-ticket baskets.
The two categories Impact breaks out at the AOV level both went the wrong way. Computers and electronics saw AOV fall about 5%. Flowers, gifts, food and drink fell about 7%. There is no published category in Impact's Cyber Week data where AOV rose meaningfully. A point of honesty matters here: Impact reports several other categories, but as revenue or order growth, not AOV. Health and beauty and home and garden, for example, grew spend faster than the network average, but that is sales growth driven by more orders, not evidence that baskets got bigger. Reporting those as AOV gains would be exactly the mistake this post is correcting, so they are left out of the chart.
| Segment (Cyber Week 2025) | AOV change YoY | What moved underneath | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| All retail (blended) | +1% | Item value -4%, units/order +5% | Essentially flat; cheaper items, bigger baskets cancel out |
| Computers & electronics | -5% | Item value -17%, units/order +15% | Deep headline-SKU discounting; ASP falls faster than basket grows |
| Flowers, gifts, food & drink | -7% | Transactions -10%, conversion -16% | Softer demand and discounting pulled order value down |
So the defensible benchmark is not "+9% across beauty, apparel and sports." It is "flat overall, and negative in the two categories with a published AOV number." If a vendor hands you a tidy table showing uniform single-day AOV lift by vertical, ask which page it came from, because the public Impact data does not say that.
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The discount-depth trap: why deeper cuts shrink the basket
Electronics is the cleanest cautionary tale in the dataset. During Cyber Week 2025, average item value in electronics fell 17% and units per order rose 15%, which sounds like a healthy trade. But net AOV still dropped about 5%. The math is unforgiving: when the discount on your headline SKU is steep enough, the bigger basket cannot grow fast enough to catch up. The category's revenue still rose, because order count climbed roughly 41%, but it rose on more orders, not bigger ones. You move more boxes and book a smaller average order.
Now look at the other side. Klaviyo's merchant cohort grew AOV about 3% in 2025 even as the average discount rate fell from 29.6% in 2024 to 26.2% in 2025. The lift did not come from more units. It came from average selling prices rising 4.8%, which is what happens when brands protect price integrity and shift the offer toward bundles instead of straight markdowns. Shallower discount, higher basket. That is the inverse of the electronics story, and it is the whole argument in one comparison.
Discount depth and average order value are inversely related in most categories. The brands that protect BFCM basket size are not the ones cutting hardest, they are the ones that restructured the offer so the customer adds items to earn the deal. Deeper is a volume lever. Bundles and thresholds are the basket lever.
When we have watched brands struggle with this, the failure mode is almost always a single flat sitewide percentage applied to a catalog that includes a few hero SKUs. The heroes get hammered, average selling price collapses, and the post-mortem shows record units and disappointing AOV. The fix is rarely a smaller discount. It is a different mechanic.
The mechanics that actually protect AOV during BFCM
If the weekend does not lift AOV on its own, the job is to engineer it. Four mechanics reliably move basket size, and none of them is interchangeable with a flat discount. Treat the figures below as directional vendor benchmarks rather than guarantees, because the exact lift varies by category and baseline.
Bundles. Discovery kits, gift sets, and multi-packs sell more units at a controlled blended discount. This is the single biggest lever in the data, at roughly 52% higher AOV than non-bundle promos. It works best where the customer wants a curated set anyway: beauty, food and beverage, and gifting.
Spend thresholds. Free shipping or a free gift that triggers at a set basket value. Set the threshold about 20% to 30% above your current AOV and you typically lift AOV 14% to 25%. Set it at or below your current AOV and you are giving away margin to people who already cleared the bar.
Tiered gift-with-purchase. Reward higher spend, not any spend. A spend threshold tied to a free gift gives the shopper a concrete reason to add the item that gets them to the next tier, which is the opposite incentive of a flat discount.
Price integrity. The Klaviyo cohort is the proof: holding average selling price up while trimming discount depth is what turned a shallower offer into a higher basket. The merchandising job is to make the bundle or the threshold the easy default, not an upsell the customer has to discover.
| Promo mechanic | AOV effect | Best for | Worst for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat sitewide discount (e.g. 30% off) | Neutral to negative (lowers ASP) | New-customer acquisition; volume | Protecting basket size or margin |
| Product bundle (multi-item + % off) | Strongly positive (~+52% vs non-bundle) | Gifting; beauty; food and beverage | Impulse low-ticket single items |
| Spend threshold + free gift (GWP) | Strongly positive (directional) | Apparel, beauty, home | Very low baseline AOV categories |
| Free shipping threshold (20-30% above AOV) | Moderately positive (+14-25%) | Most categories | Ultra-low-ticket (under $15) |
| Buy-more-save-more (tiered by spend) | Positive (encourages bigger cart) | Apparel, food, supplements | Single hero-SKU catalogs |
For more on setting the markdown itself, our BFCM discount depth benchmarks and bundle pricing strategy breakdowns go deeper on the trade-off between depth and margin.
How to plan your BFCM AOV without believing the lift
You do not need a forecasting model. You need four steps and an honest starting assumption: unless you change the mechanic, BFCM is more likely to hold AOV flat or pull it down than to lift it.
First, start from your Q3 baseline AOV, segmented by product type rather than blended. A blended baseline hides the same divergence the Shopify number does.
Second, decide the outcome. If you need volume and new customers, a flat discount is fine and you should plan for flat-to-down AOV, the way electronics ran in 2025. If you need basket size or margin protection, you reach for bundles, thresholds, and tiered GWP, and you can plan for AOV to hold or rise.
Third, choose the mechanic that matches that outcome, and only then set the discount depth. Depth is the last decision, not the first.
Fourth, back-calculate. Take your revenue target, divide by the AOV your chosen mechanic should realistically produce, and you get the order count you need. If that order count is unrealistic at your traffic, the answer is usually a better basket mechanic, not a deeper discount. The operators who plan this way go into the weekend knowing which number breaks first, instead of finding out in the Monday recap.
One last piece of context. BFCM is not the only AOV story in Q4. Pre-BFCM November tends to run lower as bargain hunters wait, and December gifting often runs higher because the deals thin out and urgency rises. Your BFCM weekend is one act in a longer play, and it is the act where order value is under the most downward pressure.
Related reading. For the discount side of the same math, see our gross-to-net revenue gap benchmarks and the holiday return rate spike benchmarks. For how we plan promo season with brands, see fractional CFO for ecommerce.
Sources and methodology
Shopify BFCM average cart values, 2024 and 2025. The 2024 figure of $108.56 ($109.70 constant currency; $11.5B GMV, +24% YoY) comes from Shopify's BFCM 2024 data; the 2025 figure of $114.70 ($112.29 constant currency; $14.6B GMV, +27% YoY) comes from Shopify's BFCM 2025 data. Earlier years (2022-2023) were dropped because Shopify's per-year pages for them are not retrievable and the figures circulated only as secondary aggregations. "Average cart" is an AOV proxy across the Shopify merchant base, which skews DTC and mid-market and is not the same as all-ecommerce. It is also a year-over-year comparison versus the prior BFCM, not a lift versus a non-promotional baseline.
Impact.com Cyber Week 2025 category data. The overall +1% AOV (item value -4%, units/order +5%), the electronics breakdown (item value -17%, units/order +15%, AOV -5%, order count +41%), and the flowers/gifts/food and drink -7% AOV all come from Impact.com's Black Friday 2025 Spending Trends report, reported as year-over-year percentage change rather than absolute dollars. Impact reports several other categories only as revenue or order growth, not AOV, so those are deliberately excluded from the vertical chart and table to avoid presenting sales growth as basket growth.
Klaviyo BFCM 2025 benchmark. AOV up about 3% while the average discount fell from 29.6% to 26.2% and average selling prices rose 4.8%, from a same-site analysis across Klaviyo-attributed sales during the BFCM weekend. See Klaviyo's BFCM 2025 writeup.
Promo mechanic effects. The roughly 52% bundle premium versus non-bundle promos is from the Paxcom BFCM 2025 strategy guide. The 14-25% free-shipping-threshold range and the tiered-GWP examples are aggregated best-practice figures from vendor case studies, not BFCM-specific controlled trials. Treat all mechanic figures as directional.
Limitations. Public BFCM AOV data is thin by vertical. The only categories with a published Cyber Week 2025 AOV number are computers and electronics and flowers/gifts/food and drink, plus the blended all-retail figure; everything else is reported as revenue or order growth and is not used here as AOV. Clean cross-industry BFCM AOV-by-vertical tables in absolute dollars do not exist in public, which is why this post reports directional change rather than a dollar benchmark by vertical. The Shopify cart figure is a blended proxy, and the promo-mechanic figures are vendor-reported and directional.
Frequently asked questions
does average order value actually go up during black friday or does it drop because of discounts?
Mostly it does not go up the way operators assume. During Cyber Week 2025, blended AOV rose only about 1%, and it fell in the categories that discount hardest. Deep flat discounts cut average selling price even as units rise, while bundles and spend thresholds are what actually protect basket size.
which ecommerce categories saw aov fall during cyber week 2025?
Of the categories Impact.com breaks out, computers and electronics fell about 5% and flowers, gifts, food and drink fell about 7%, while overall AOV rose roughly 1%. Impact reported other categories as revenue or order growth rather than AOV, so those are not directly comparable as basket-size numbers.
why does electronics aov fall even when sales volume goes up on black friday?
Because the discount on headline SKUs overwhelms the bigger basket. During Cyber Week 2025, electronics average item value fell 17% and units per order rose 15%, but net AOV still dropped about 5%. The price cut moves faster than the basket can grow, so revenue rises on more orders, not bigger ones.
if discounting lowers aov, how do some brands grow it during bfcm?
By protecting price integrity instead of cutting deeper. Klaviyo brands grew AOV about 3% in 2025 even as the average discount fell from 29.6% to 26.2%, because average selling prices rose 4.8%. Shallower discount plus a bundle-led offer beat a deeper sitewide markdown.
how do product bundles protect aov during bfcm compared to flat discounts?
A bundle sells more units at a controlled blended discount instead of slashing the price of one hero SKU. Merchants running bundle promos saw roughly 52% higher AOV than non-bundle promos during BFCM. The customer adds items to earn the deal rather than buying a single discounted item.
what free shipping threshold should i set for black friday to lift my aov?
Set it about 20% to 30% above your current AOV. That range typically lifts AOV 14% to 25% because it gives shoppers a concrete reason to add one more item without scaring off single-item buyers. Set it at or below your current AOV and you give margin away to people who already cleared the bar.
what's the shopify bfcm average cart value and is that the same as bfcm lift?
Shopify's blended BFCM cart was $108.56 in 2024 and $114.70 in 2025. That is year-over-year cart growth versus the prior BFCM, not a lift versus a normal-week baseline, and it mixes every vertical together. Compare against your own category behavior, not the blended number.