Average order value is a comfortable metric. It sits in your dashboard and trends upward gently and makes the trading review feel productive. It is also one of the most misleading numbers in your ecommerce reporting when margin is not sitting directly next to it.
AOV going up while margin per order goes down is not commercial progress. It is a promotional mechanic doing what promotional mechanics do. Discounting a high-ticket item increases the basket value and destroys the margin contribution in the same move. The AOV metric records the success. The margin line absorbs the cost and nobody connects them in the same sentence in the same meeting.
I have been in rooms where AOV improvement was celebrated in the marketing review and the same AOV improvement was driving a margin conversation in the finance review three days later with no cross-reference between the two. The commercial system was measuring the output and the cost in separate rooms with separate people and separate conclusions.
AOV without margin is like measuring how full the till is without checking whether the notes are real. The number looks right. The commercial reality underneath it does not.
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