What is Average Transaction Value (ATV)?

Working Out ATV: Formula and Example

The formula is ATV = total sales ÷ number of transactions. Take both numbers from the same dates. First, decide what counts as sales. Include shipping? Tax? Take out refunds? Any choice works if you keep it the same every month.

What ATV Tells You About Revenue

Shops have long used a simple formula: sales = visitors × conversion rate × ATV. It works online too. To grow revenue, you can bring in more people or turn more of them into buyers. Or you can get each buyer to spend more. That's ATV.

The roaster's online shop had 8,000 visits, and 2% of them bought. That's 160 orders. At $60 each, the month made $9,600. Keep the traffic and the 2%, but nudge ATV to $65, and the same month makes $10,400.

If you add bundles or change your free shipping minimum, ATV is where it shows. For ways to lift it, see our guide to raising ATV and AOV on Shopify.

ATV vs AOV: Transactions or Orders?

ATV and average order value (AOV) use the same math. The difference is what you count: AOV counts orders and ATV counts transactions. That word comes from in-store retail, where each sale rung up at the register is one transaction.

In an online store, one order is almost always one transaction, so the two numbers land close together. They can drift apart when your data comes from a payment report. Those reports may list each charge and each refund as its own line. An order paid partly with a gift card might show up twice. If your ATV and AOV don't match, check what each tool calls a transaction before you worry.

Finding ATV in Shopify

For online sales, the closest ready-made number is average order value. In your Shopify admin, go to Analytics > Reports and open Average order value over time. For most online stores, you can read that as your ATV.

If you also sell in person with Shopify POS, work out ATV for each channel on its own. The roaster above shows why. To compare your online number, see these Shopify AOV benchmarks by industry.

Mix Shift: Why ATV Can Drop in a Good Month

A lot of owners see ATV fall and decide customers are spending less. Sometimes that's true. Often, though, the mix of sales just changed.

The same thing can happen inside one channel. A sale week can bring in lots of small first orders and pull the average down. So before you react, split ATV by channel, or by new and returning buyers. Also check how many transactions came in, not just how big they were.

Related Terms

• Order Value: what one customer paid on one order.
• Revenue per Visitor (RPV): conversion rate and average spend in one number.
• Conversion Rate: the share of visits that end in a purchase.
• Cart Value: what's in a shopper's cart before they check out.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV/LTV): what one customer spends with you over time.