It’s no surprise that free shipping is enticing to customers, especially those who are otherwise on the fence about making a purchase. Offering free shipping has been shown to
- reduce shopping cart abandonment (no “surprise” extra charge at checkout)
- make it easier to obtain new customers
- create loyalty and retain existing customers.
It can also be used to encourage customers to purchase more from your store and give you an edge over competitors.
In this post, we will look at what free shipping options you have available to you in Maropost Commerce Cloud, and how to set them up.
Free Pickup
People like to shop locally. They’re supporting their community, and they can often get their products quicker direct from the merchant rather than waiting for delivery. Offering free pickup also means the customer is coming to you, which can lead to impulse buys while in your store.
A free pickup shipping option can be set up through the Shipping Wizard. While the wizard will guide you through the steps involved, you can find detailed instructions here.
You may want to limit the Free Pickup shipping option to certain area, e.g. Sydney Metro. This can be achieved by updating the associated shipping zones of your Free Pickup shipping option. Information on editing shipping zones can be found here.
Free Shipping ALWAYS!
Customers love knowing they can get delivery at ‘no cost’ every time they shop at your store. And you can easily offer this to them. Note that you can still offer other paid shipping options, such as express/next-day delivery, alongside this.
Free Shipping delivery can be set up through the Shipping Wizard. Detailed instructions on setting this up can be found here.
Free Shipping Over A Specific Dollar Amount
Free shipping is great for your customers, but your carriers will still charge you a fee regardless. This means that you can end up losing money on smaller orders. A good way around this is to offer free shipping only when the customer places an order over a specific value.
Additionally, many savvy shoppers will add items to their shopping cart to receive something for free, especially delivery.
Maropost Commerce Cloud allows you to set this up separately on each shipping option you offer. When creating or editing a shipping option, you can use the Shipping Spend Promotion to indicate that the method is Free when the order subtotal is over a specified amount.
Note that you can also set whether the value is calculated based on the order total before or after other discounts are applied.
For example, if you offer free shipping on orders over $100, a customer may have products in their cart totaling $110. This means they will receive free shipping.
If the customer also has a 10% coupon that they apply, the order subtotal will then become $99.00, meaning that they no longer qualify for the free shipping. Losing the free shipping may cause the customer to abandon their cart, especially if the shipping fee is more than the saving from the discount.
Changing the Free Shipping to be calculated and applied before the discount will allow the customer to still use the discount and receive the free shipping. This can be done on the WEBSTORE > Checkout Settings page. In the Shipping Rules section, you can select when the Shipping spend promotion is applied. Your options are Before discounts or After discounts.
Free Shipping as A Targeted or Limited Offer
Free shipping offers can be used to increase sales during specific time frames such as holiday sales or slow periods. You may also be looking to target a specific customer or customer group to entice them to purchase from your store with a special offer of free shipping not available to the general public.
A shipping discount coupon will allow you more control over where and when free shipping is offered while leaving your regular shipping setup to function as normal.
You can set up a new shipping discount coupon under MARKETING > Discount Coupons (click here for details). We have a short video here that shows how to set up a basic shipping discount coupon.
BONUS TIP
Setting the Free Shipping Text
You can choose the text that appears for a shipping method when the shipping cost is free. Rather than having the cost show as $0.00 on free shipping, you can make it more prominent by setting a specific text to be displayed instead.
This text can be set separately for
- orders (and invoices)
- quotes
- webstore checkout
In WEBSTORE > Checkout Settings, the Shipping Rules section contains three fields, you can set the text that appears in place of the shipping price on the checkout for orders.
Let us know in the comments if this helps, or if there are any other parts of the Commerce Cloud you’d like to see a future tip on!
