Average Basket Size: How to Calculate and Increase Units Per Sale

Customers are intentional about where they spend their money, and those decisions affect how many products end up in their shopping cart.

Those consumer choices affect your average basket size, which in turn gives you a glimpse into the health of your business. It’s often confused with revenue metrics, but basket size measures the number of items per transaction. To track dollar amounts, you’ll want to look at average order value (AOV) or average ticket size.

Let’s start with learning how to calculate your average basket size, so you can leverage it to increase sales. 

What is average basket size?

Average basket size (ABS) is the average number of items sold per single transaction. You divide the total number of units sold by the total number of transactions to find your average basket size. 

Basket size matters because it helps you measure your business’ overall performance. 

Average basket size vs. average ticket size

There’s a difference between average basket size and average ticket size (ATS) that makes them useful for distinct sales goals. 

Average basket size. Refers to the average number of products a customer buys per single transaction. This is calculated as the total number of units sold divided by total transactions.

Average basket size = total number of units sold / total number of transactions

Average ticket size. Refers to the average dollar amount a customer spends per visit. To calculate ATS, you divide your total sales revenue by your total number of customers. 

Average ticket size = total sales revenue / total number of customers

The difference lies in what each formula measures. While average ticket size refers to the average amount of dollars a customer spends per transaction, average basket size refers to the average number of products sold per transaction. 

Average basket size makes more sense to measure for retailers that sell small-ticket items that don’t require repeat purchases (think vacation souvenirs as opposed to paper towels). Average ticket size can be a more relevant metric for stores that sell higher-ticket items (think big car parts instead of small hair products). 

Tip: Shopify POS makes it easy to track your store’s daily sales performance. View sales reports to keep tabs on average order value, items per order, net sales, sales per staff, and more. To get started, click Sales reports in Shopify admin.

Importance of basket size

Average basket size is an important business metric in two key ways: it helps you assess your marketing and sales efforts, and it helps you understand your customers better.

Monitor average order value (AOV)

Monitoring your average order value, or the average amount spent each time an order is placed, helps you measure how well your marketing and sales efforts are paying off. However, accurately figuring AOV numbers can be tricky if you aren’t tracking ABS as a supporting metric. 

For example, if your AOV isn’t performing as projected, average basket size can help you understand why. Increasing AOV by offering an upsell or offering useful cross-sell options is the easiest way to instantly increase your sales and your bottom line profits. This can help new and existing businesses increase cash-flow without incurring additional costs related to new products.

Better understand shopper behavior

You can tell a lot about consumer behavior through the numbers, whether shoppers are walking into a brick-and-mortar store or buying online. Accurately tracking consumer behavior is crucial to your store’s growth. The data can help you: 

• Differentiate between types of consumers
• Predict consumer trends and outsell competition
• Make decisions on how to best retain customers
• Add the most relevant products to your shelf 
• Develop better, more targeted marketing strategies

For example, learning your ABS for each quarter can help you understand whether you’re providing your customers with the right products at the right time of the year. Did you rearrange your end caps near the front of your store last quarter? ABS can help you find out whether that change made a noticeable impact on your customers’ shopping habits—and your revenue. 

How to calculate average basket size

Calculating your average basket size is a straightforward process. It begins with a simple formula that takes the total amount of units sold and divides it by the total number of transactions:

Average basket size = total number of units sold / total number of transactions

Let’s take a look at each part of the equation. 

Total units sold

To find your total number of units sold, you count the number of items you sold per transaction. Using a point-of-sale (POS) system with built-in inventory management makes the process of tracking total units sold easier. 

Number of transactions

The second part of the equation is the total number of transactions over the same period that you pulled your total number of units from. This is where automated reporting and analytics retail software can make the tracking process easier. 

Example of calculating average basket size

Say you wanted to figure out your average basket size during a specific sales period. Your company sold a total of 16,000 units across 5,000 transactions. Plug those numbers into your ABS formula and you get an average basket size of 3.2.

3.2 = (16,000 units / 5,000 transactions)

What affects average basket size?

Average basket size is influenced by everything from your product catalog to customer buying habits. If you understand these influences, you can engineer a higher transaction value. 

Pricing and product mix 

Your product assortment is the main driver of basket size. Deloitte’s Q2 2025 retail trends show that retailers are increasingly using assortment planning to remain competitive and manage impacts from tariffs.

Your product assortment shapes how many items end up in a basket. A well-planned mix gives customers more reasons to add one more thing. Offer:

• Premium versus budget options. Offering products at different price points gives customers more opportunities to add to their basket.
• Private label. Prioritize high-margin private labels to hedge against price-sensitive shoppers. Lower-priced private label products can encourage customers to add more units per transaction. 
• Category weighing. What you stock dictates basket size more than foot traffic, and keeping a wide variety of products encourages people to add more items. For example, in 2025, Earnest Analytics found that general merchandise stores saw a 4.1% year-over-year growth in spending, while clothing and food services fell. 

There is also a rise in trade down behavior, where shoppers switch from premium, high-priced brands or items to less expensive alternatives. 2025 research by McKinsey observed that customers are also trading down by purchasing lower quantities of the same product, which impacts basket size. 

Discounts and promotions 

Sales promotions can increase units per order, but risk decreasing total order value if shoppers are only hunting for a deal. People start seeking more value when promo periods are at their peak, which affects basket size. 

PwC’s Holiday Outlook 2025 reported 78% of consumers seeking less expensive alternatives and 65% expecting deeper post-holiday discounts. With this type of behavior, basket sizes can increase as their contents skew toward cheaper substitutes. 

But that’s not always a bad thing. Shopify’s Black Friday Cyber Monday 2025 reporting found that the average shopper spent $114.70 during the retail holiday, above the average card transaction rate of $51.27 cited by Earnest Analytics. Mastercard SpendingPulse also noted a 2.9% jump in in-store sales for late 2025 as shoppers used early promos to build larger, planned baskets.

Seasonality and trends 

Basket metrics vary throughout the year, with some especially shopping-heavy seasons. Months where consumers are giving gifts or shopping for back-to-school supplies come with higher basket sizes. 

Store layout and merchandising

Your store layout and shelf arrangements direct how customers move, what they ignore, and what they drop into their baskets. 

A 2025 study in Applied Soft Computing highlights that planograms—the specific placement of products—strongly influence the likelihood that a shopper chooses one item over another. When items are grouped logically, store navigation becomes intuitive, making it easier for a customer to grab one more thing.

The journey toward a larger basket begins before the customer even enters the store. Research published by MDPI in 2025 shows that exterior merchandising—including lighting, window displays, and entrance design—shapes purchase decisions. These prime shoppers’ intent to buy, and engagement with your full store layout improves the chances of increasing average basket size. 

What is a good average basket size?

A good average basket size depends on your industry and sales channels.

MikMak’s 2024 data found that the average online shopper had 6.1 items in their cart, though this varies significantly by category. The average units per transaction were: 

• Beauty: 7.3 
• Alcohol: 7.1
• Grocery: 6.1
• Personal care: 6.2
• Fashion and apparel: 2.3
• Electronics: 1.4

Why there’s no universal benchmark

There isn’t a universal benchmark for average basket sizes because shopping behavior varies widely across shopping categories and channels. Knowing your average basket size as a jewelry store owner is useful; comparing that size to a convenience store’s is not. 

How to set an internal benchmark by channel or category

Rather than look to competitors for benchmarks, look at your own history to determine a good average basket size. Take the following steps:

• Split your data by channel. Keep in-store, online, and social commerce data separate. Shopping behavior changes across channels, which leads them to add different numbers of items to their cart. 
• Consider a device benchmark. If the majority of your traffic comes from mobile devices, set a goal for mobile basket size. Optimize for one-click upsells to help shoppers build bigger carts faster. 
• Compare basket sizes by season. Rather than comparing December data to March data, look at a running eight-week average against the same window as last year. It’ll account for any seasonal fluctuations and promo events. 

How to increase average basket size

• Cross-selling and upselling
• Offer free shipping
• Product bundling
• Leverage store layout
• Reduce stockouts
• Personalize recommendations
• Improve product discovery
• Offer BOPIS and curbside pickup to drive add-on purchases
• Streamline checkout and expand payment options

Your average basket size might not be where you want it. The following retail strategies can help you increase the number of items shoppers are placing in their carts. 

Cross-selling and upselling

Cross-selling and upselling increase average basket size by giving customers a reason to add more items, as long as the suggestions are relevant to what they’re already buying. 

Here are a few upsell inducements you can offer pre- and post-purchase: 

• Offer a free gift to customers who purchase an additional product
• Suggest complementary products based on what’s in their cart to get customers to add one more item
• Use customer purchase history from your POS system to suggest additional products based on what they’ve bought before
• Offer a complimentary service (if it makes sense for your store) if an additional item is added to their purchase

Tip: Try using apps to upsell and cross-sell more effectively. Apps like Marsello and Frequently Bought Together integrate with Shopify POS and recommend products to store staff based on what they’ve added to a customer’s cart, making it easier than ever to suggest relevant products, and increase basket sizes and order value.

Offer free shipping

Brands like POPFLEX, an international workout wear and equipment brand, leverage the power of offering free shipping to entice customers to add one more thing to their carts. Jen-AI Notman, POPFLEX’s director of marketing, explains how the brand increase ABS by offering free perks: 

“We offer free domestic shipping on orders over $100. Qualifying for free shipping is a gentle nudge that persuades customers to add more items to their cart.”

Product bundling

A product bundle is a group of items that cost less purchased together than if they were purchased individually. Leveraging this selling strategy does a few things:

• It increases the perceived value of a purchase.
• You sell more items while decreasing marketing, warehouse, and distribution costs.
• It increases your average order value or AOV.
• You can leverage it to sell stagnant items that are not selling.

Take Glossier’s Super Pack bundle, a trio of serums. Instead of buying each serum separately, you can buy them as a set for $88 vs. $102 and save 14%.

This moves more units per order (three products sold at once), and it incentivizes shoppers to add more because the discount creates clear perceived value.You can do the same in your store once you identify items that would sell well together. 

Leverage store layout

Store layout matters for consumer decisions. Take wholesale retailer Costco: It moves items around the store constantly to simulate a “treasure hunt” experience that gets customers to roam more, encounter more products, and ultimately end up buying more. 

Take a note from large retailers and leverage your store layout by:

• Stocking your end caps with your best deals or best-selling items
• Adding a loss leader near the back of your store so customers encounter more products on their way there, thus increasing the chances of additional purchases
• Rearranging where your items are located in the store regularly

Reduce stockouts

Stockouts are a frustrating experience for shoppers that cause them to abandon carts and make them less likely to become repeat shoppers. Reducing stockouts increases the chances of customers finding more items to add to their order, which in turn increases your ABS. So how can you ensure you end up with stockouts less often?

• Tighten up your inventory management with automation to reduce human error
• Apply anti-shrinkage strategies
• Implement a demand forecasting strategy for each quarter
• Create a safety stock backup of your bestselling items

Personalize recommendations

Customers are more likely to shop with brands that recommend offers that are relevant to them. Create personalized shopping experiences that are targeted to your customers’ history and preferences to increase the number of items they buy in a typical shopping trip. 

In 2026, stores are using the power of augmented reality to retain consumer attention. With AR, a personalized experience can do things like stage an item into an image of your home to help you visualize how it would look. 

Consider offering:

• Promotions and special deals that align with your customers’ needs due to seasonal changes, world events, or personal demographics 
• Customer loyalty programs that offer personalized in-store gifts after a certain number of purchases
• A mobile app where consumers can open personal accounts that cater to their specified preferences
• A better try-on experience with a team member that can help ease the process of picking out sizes
• A mix-and-match bundle allowing customers to choose a combination of products for a discounted rate
• Personalized coupons based on previous purchase history found in your POS system’s customer profiles

Improve product discovery

According to The State of Ecommerce 2025, a survey of more than 1,500 consumers by Constructor and Shopify, 68% of shoppers say site search needs a major upgrade. And 66% of customers will leave your site for Amazon the moment your search results fail them.

If a customer can’t find a product, they can’t buy it. A clunky search experience makes shoppers work for a product through re-typing queries and hitting the back button. A simple search experience can multiply your basket size as they can easily find shoes, matching socks, and a cleaning kit all in one go, for example. 

Use the Shopify Search and Discovery app to tweak your search logic and create guided paths using custom filters and featured product recommendations. Set up high-intent filters, such as size, material, or compatibility, so shoppers can find specific add-ons without leaving the collection page.

Offer BOPIS and curbside pickup to drive add-on purchases

The State of Ecommerce report also found that 62% of shoppers abandon their carts because of high shipping costs. Shipping fees reduce conversion rates and prevent shoppers from adding just one more thing to their basket. 

Alternative fulfillment options like buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup make life more convenient for shoppers. They remove shipping fees and give you the opportunity to upsell once the customer is in-store. They may even grab an impulse purchase near the counter. 

It’s easy to offer these options from your Shopify admin. Simply turn on local pickup as a delivery method to win over price-sensitive shoppers.

Streamline checkout and expand payment options 

2025 findings from the Federal Reserve show that mobile phones now handle 45% of all remote payments. At the same time, 64% of shoppers say that one-click or accelerated checkout is somewhat or very important for their shopping experience.

The harder it is to pay, the more time a shopper has to look at their cart and start removing those nice-to-have items. If you don’t offer the payment methods they use, like digital wallets or buy now, pay later (BNPL), you might lose the sale or see smaller baskets.

With Shopify Payments, you can accept payments from all major card networks and digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. It also gives you access to Shop Pay, which has been shown to lift conversions by 50% relative to guest checkout and outpace other accelerated checkouts by at least 10%. 

“Shop Pay is definitely our most popular payment method. It’s a faster user experience and it’s all contained within the checkout flow so customers aren’t being redirected anywhere else,” says Marisa Delatorre, Juiced Bikes’ director of ecommerce. “It’s even better if customers have an account already as the two-factor authentication gets you checked out in no time.”

Measure your store’s average basket size

Average basket size offers clear signals about what’s working in your store. You can drive growth, stay relevant in a competitive market, know which products sell best, and increase your revenue quarter after quarter.

Tracking daily customer transactions is easy with the help of POS software. The more consistently you track them, the more clearly you can see where to make adjustments that can increase sales.