How To Increase Your Average Basket Value and Encourage Impulse Purchases

This is the story of how I “accidentally” spent £11.96 at Graze.com.

I was casually browsing Facebook one evening, and I saw an advert for Graze.com. I had heard of Graze before as I had seen their flyers in packages I’d received from other online stores quite a while ago. The flyers had offered a free Graze box, but I got as far as entering my email address into their online form before I decided I didn’t want the hassle of giving them my debit card details and then having to remember to cancel my subscription with them. So I didn’t complete the transaction back then, which may have put me on one of their remarketing lists.

Anyway, there I was looking at this Graze advert which had appeared on my Facebook news feed. It was offering six little punnets of ‘Salted Fudge & Peanut Cookie’ for £1. Bargain! Looked tasty, and it was in line with my vague desire to eat less chocolate and to at least attempt to be a bit healthier. No mention of a subscription. Curious, I clicked on the ad and was taken to the Graze website. The product looked good, and it turned out Graze don’t just offer subscription boxes anymore – you can buy whatever you want on their online store. Even better. I added the punnet pack to my basket.

And that’s when Graze told me I could have free delivery if I spent £10. So, no free delivery otherwise? Well of course, they’d be making a loss on a £1 product if they didn’t charge for the delivery. Still… I don’t like paying for delivery. Maybe the likes of Amazon have made free delivery feel like the norm, but surely buying a couple of extra items is better value for money because you get to enjoy more tasty snacks and you get them sent to you for free? So I explored the website, found some other food that looked nice, and added it all to my basket. Over £10 worth of tasty treats were heading my way, with free delivery.

So to summarise, I saw an advert for something that cost a measly £1 and could have just bought that (plus £2.80 for delivery), but instead I spent £11.96 on food, that just twenty minutes prior I’d had no intention of purchasing.

Oh, I see what you did there, Graze... and I'm okay with it.

So the formula is:

Facebook Advertising or Remarketing + Loss Leader + Free Delivery Threshold = Profit

And what a winning formula it must be for Graze.com, because I can’t be the only person who gets sucked in by these marketing tactics. And I was fully aware – I knew exactly what was happening, how they hooked me in, and how they got me to spend more than I had intended. I’m certainly not complaining; I got six punnets and four bags of snacks to enjoy, which also stops me munching on Cadbury’s Dairy Milk while I’m at work, and the experience also gave me an interesting topic to blog about. There were no tricks involved, there's no funny business going on - they offered me something extra if I spent a little extra, and I came out of it feeling like I'd had a good deal. That's the way to increase your average basket value while keeping the customer happy.

There is no reason why other businesses can’t follow a similar formula and encourage customers to make impulse purchases. And Facebook is a great place to grab people – they are often whiling away their time and aren’t particularly busy looking for other things. Is there a better time to offer them something great?

There are so many great things Graze are doing – they have very appealing products; offers to draw people in; a user friendly and attractive website; a strong brand; and of course a smart marketing strategy. All of this needs to be included in a magic formula to create conversions, and if a business falls down at any of these points they are at risk of not fulfilling their potential. There is little point in embarking on a paid advertising campaign if your landing pages or product pages aren’t up to scratch, for example. But combine great products with a well-designed website and appealing offers if they spend a little more, and you could create your very own winning formula.