Shockingly, high extra costs/fees are why people abandon shopping carts.
You may not want that to happen with your Shopify store.
The way to avoid this is to offer free shipping on Shopify.
The power of the word – ‘FREE’ is unignorable to marketers. Businesses have been using it for marketing and sales strategies for a long time. It provokes the feeling of being rewarded or benefitted with no harm. Naturally, customers are more likely to purchase a product with no additional cost, even if it is a bit more expensive than other alternatives.
For the customers, $120 + Free Shipping is better than $100 + $20 Shipping Charges
Merchants can set up free shipping on Shopify using the in-built options and get benefitted from it. The platform also facilitates free shipping options based on various conditions and rules. In this post, I will share a complete method to set up free shipping on Shopify.
What’s included?
- Reasons to Offer Free Shipping to Customers
- Different Ways to Offer Free Shipping on Shopify
- How to Set up Free Shipping on Shopify?
- Set up Free Shipping on Shopify Over Certain Amount
- Set up Discount-based Free Shipping on Shopify
- Free Shipping on Shopify: Best Practices
Let’s learn some of the plausible reasons to set up free shipping in Shopify.
Reasons to Offer Free Shipping to Your Customers
Offering free shipping in Shopify benefits your business in multiple ways, such as
- More Conversions: Just like mentioned in the beginning of this article, high extra costs such as shipping is a major cause customers abandon their carts. Offering free shipping in Shopify can help you convert more customers.
- Enhanced Brand Loyalty: Offering free shipping to your customers, you are making it easier for them to purchase the product with apparently no additional costs. This delightful experience can help you build a loyal customer base.
- Competitive Advantage: Today, almost all the online stores are offering free shipping to their customers. Therefore, adding free shipping facilities to Shopify store will help you stay competitive.
Free shipping in Shopify is certainly going to benefit your business if used strategically—it can be an excellent marketing tactic.
Now, let’s learn the different ways to offer free shipping in Shopify briefly.
Different Ways to Offer Free Shipping on Shopify
Mainly, there are two ways you can offer free shipping in Shopify, based on your strategy:
- Default Free Shipping: Set up free shipping from Settings > Shipping and Delivery in Shopify.
- Discount-based Free Shipping: Create a discount code for free shipping in Shopify.
For the default free shipping configuration, you can further set up product, category, and/or customer group-wise free shipping. You can also offer free shipping only above a certain order amount in Shopify.
Let’s see the step-wise method to add free shipping on Shopify.
How to Set up Free Shipping on Shopify?
In order to set up site-wide free shipping on Shopify, you need to remove all the shipping rates. Follow these steps to do this:
- In the Shopify admin, go to Settings > Shipping and Delivery, and click Manage against the respective shipping profile.
- On the following screen, click on Manage against the respective shop.
- Now, a pop-up to remove shipping rates will appear on the screen. Click Done to set up free shipping for the respective shop.
The above steps will remove all the existing shipping rates from the store.
If you want to set up free shipping on Shopify based on conditions, you can use the following alternate methods:
Set up Free Shipping on Shopify Over Certain Amount
Let’s say you already have a flat rate shipping in your Shopify store and want to offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount.
You can do this by setting the minimum & maximum price-based conditions for the shipping rates. Follow these steps to do that:
- In the Manage Shipping Profile section, create a new rate.
- Now, configure the following options:
- Select set up your own rates
- Enter the rate name (“Free Shipping Above 100” for example)
- Keep the price empty
- Set the price-based conditions, and enter the minimum price.
- Click Done to save the settings.
- Similarly, edit the other shipping rate, so that it is applied only on orders valued less than the threshold amount.
Voila..!
You’ve successfully set up Shopify free shipping over amount.
Similarly, you can create weight-based free shipping rates in Shopify per your needs.
Shopify allows you to create country/region-based shipping rates.
You can also specify the applicable products, categories, and customer groups in the shipping profiles.
Set up Discount-based Free Shipping on Shopify
Now, this is an alternate method to set up free shipping on Shopify using discount codes.
In this method, you’ll create discount codes which can be applied by the customers to get the free shipping in Shopify.
Follow these steps to set up discount-based free shipping on Shopify:
- In the Shopify admin, go to Discounts, and click on Create discount.
- Select Free shipping as the discount type.
- Now, on the create shipping discount window, configure the following settings:
- Discount Code: Enter a custom code or generate it.
- Select all or the applicable countries for free shipping.
- Configure other settings per your needs.
- Finally, click Save to create the free shipping discount code.
& that’s it!
You can now share the created discount code with the customers and offer them free shipping.
In the above method, you can also configure the discount code to be valid only on orders over a certain amount, select the specific customer groups, and active dates.
Free Shipping on Shopify: Best Practices
Offering free shipping is an effective strategy for your business. Here are some best practices to follow while offering free shipping in Shopify:
- Display Free Shipping Bar: Tell your customers that you are offering free shipping. Install a Shopify app to display free shipping bar at the prominent places.
- Leverage Free Shipping to Increase AOV: Set up product price or quantity-based free shipping conditions to encourage the customers purchase more.
- Offer Free Shipping to Nearby Customers: Offer free shipping to customers from your city/region by setting the zone-based shipping rates.
- Cover the Shipping Cost in Price: Make sure that the shipping cost does not cut down the profit margin. You can slightly increase the product price to stay profitable.
Now that you know how to set up free shipping on Shopify, it’s time to craft an effective shipping policy. In case you’re looking for a Shopify professional to help you customize the store, you can hire our expert Shopify developers.
