Using free plus shipping offers on your store can be a great way to make sales and acquire customers while still making a profit.
It’s the perfect “tripwire” offer and it pays for itself.
With free plus shipping offers you set the price of your product to “0” and then you only charge shipping and handling. When drop shipping from China, products are usually so cheap that you can easily add a little profit margin to your shipping and handling costs. This way, even if the product is free, you can make money and it works really well.
These types of offers usually convert very well since they are attractive and it’s a powerful frame because everyone loves free stuff. It only works for relatively cheap items, ideally under $4 in value.
I won’t get into detail of how to set up free plus shipping offers with Shopify since I’ve written other posts on this topic in the past.
Today I want to talk about the ratio and visibility of your offers.
Some people have been concerned in the past that customers will be able to see the free plus shipping offers on the store. Now, first of all you obviously want your customers to see your free plus shipping offers. There’s no point in making a great offer and then hiding it.
That being said, if you have too many free plus shipping offers on your store it can be a red flag since it looks fishy and you’ll also lose out on potential profits from customers buying expensive products.
So here’s how to avoid this:
1) Don’t have a store with only free plus shipping offers
Make sure you have a mix between free plus shipping offers and normally priced products. A store with only free plus shipping offers makes no sense strategically and also looks fishy to most people.
2) Keep a decent ratio between your offers
It’s okay to have multiple free plus shipping offers on your store, but you have to do it with some common sense. Make sure you one free plus shipping offer for every 3-10 products to keep a good ratio.
For example, if you have a general store with multiple niches you can have one free plus shipping offer for every niche or category. Use your own gut feeling to find the sweet spot ratio for your store.
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Meghan
Hi, I just started a free plus shipping campaign within my store. Today is the second day of my ad and while it is doing really well, my conversions aren’t great. I have a lot of abandoned checkouts. I have multiple items listed as free as well as other items in my shop. I feel like people are getting turned off by adding a bunch of items to their cart in excitement and then not wanting to pay the “high”shipping.. is this common and should I give it a few days before quitting? I’m
Considering changing the sale to free shipping instead and keeping the prices low but I am worried I won’t get the same amount of traffic. Any feedback would be great! Thank you!