Free shipping is a powerful marketing and sales strategy used primarily by online stores and mail-order catalogs to attract customers. This promo action, often visualized with an online banner, can sweeten any online shopping deal.
Customers are required to pay a shipping fee. However, if they can find a product that has a similar price to competitors’ offerings, yet already includes all delivery costs covered, these savings can influence their purchase decision.
By using a free shipping promo, you not only let customers save some money, but you also earn more by boosting your total sales. Shoppers add extra items to reach your free shipping threshold, and this way free shipping influences conversion rates and cart sizes directly.
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Free Shipping with Shopify
Shopify allows merchants to set up and promote a free shipping offering in the store.
You can configure a promo banner to attract shoppers’ attention on the home page and update the order total in real time to encourage customers to add more products and surpass the set threshold. To configure free shipping quickly and accurately, you can turn to an expert Shopify team.
Or follow the steps below to do everything yourself.
Step 1. Plan free shipping
Shipping expenses should be planned in advance to ensure the sustainable operation of your store. It is a bad idea to set the threshold for free shipping by relying only on the gut feeling. Instead, you have to study your current delivery and products’ costs, competitors’ prices, and carefully plan discounts with regard to the shipping distance.
Check these five tips to arrange your promotion.
- Analyze current shipping costs. Look through your fulfilled orders and calculate the average costs of shipping. This will give you an idea of the upcoming expenses of your promo offering.
- Research your most purchased products to figure out their individual margins. When you understand the average profit from your orders, you will know how much you can win with free shipping by encouraging shoppers to increase their order volume.
- Define the price-point higher than your current average order value. Your promo activities should stimulate customers to add one or two extra items than usual. So, to win more than lose on free shipping, unlock free shipping only for the customers who surpass your average order value.
- Determine the price of the most purchased product. If your best-seller is often bought without other products, try to set the threshold just over its price.
- Evaluate the shipping costs to remote destinations. Consider delivery expenses for shipping to distant locations and other countries to define whether you can afford to extend your promo offering worldwide.
Step 2. Set shipping zones
You can set up required shipping zones through the Shopify admin panel, defining where your items can be shipped to. Every zone will have a specific price and rules that will apply when a customer enters their shipping address.
Let’s configure the settings together.
- Go to the Settings section on the Shopify admin.
- Check that the Base rate is on. This fee will be charged if customers do not reach the free shipping threshold.
- Create new price-based rates for orders above and beyond your shipping threshold. Define the minimum as your threshold order total and leave the maximum field blank.
- Check off the Free shipping rate to cut shipping fees for the customers who meet the given order total criteria.
Step 3. Draw attention to the free shipping option
There are several ways to add the Free Shipping banner to a Shopify store:
- Use some of the themes that support active banners.
- Add a visible banner to the top of the page with the apps, like the Welcome Bar by Apptuse or the HelloBar.
- Upload an image with the promo message and add it to your slider in the Shopify theme.
That’s it! Now you should be looking at a nice promo banner attracting the attention of your shoppers to your discount offering.
Final thoughts
Free shipping looks really enticing for many customers. So, by providing such an option, you can convince them to buy more products. However, do not forget about one more important factor—how much time the free delivery takes compared to the paid variants. Customers still can abandon a cart if the available gratis delivery is too time-consuming.