Should I bake shipping cost into products so i can offer "free shipping"?

[sjanet8]

Thoughts on this strategy?

[Niki_K]

Hi @sjanet8,

A good question! I think it’s important to look at the advantages and disadvantages of this strategy and answer some questions such as:

• What kind of products are you selling? How many products does an average order consist? — How large a package is then?
• How much is the average shipping?
• What countries are you delivering to?
• What delivery partner will you be using?
• Do they offet some better prices for businesses?
• What the final price will be when you add the shipping? 
• Will you add an average shipping costs to the product price? Or the most expensive? Will it make sense?
• What are the prices of your competitors?
• Do your competitors use this strategy?
• ….etc

Free Shipping is, in my opinion, a great strategy. When a potential customer comes to your website and chooses a product to buy, they immediately know the final price. If the shipping is calculated by the checkout, they might leave because they change their mind when they see the shipping costs.

Plus, it’s very easily communicated and you can use it in your marketing strategy.

However, be sure to answer the above mentioned question and make sure it makes sense for your business!

[kjproweb]

Click to expand...

The simple answer is, yes. Always. Free shipping helps decrease your 'abandon cart' rate.

[Nick]

Hi @sjanet8,

Really good question! 

It can definiltey help you with having people follow through on a purchase and removing potential abandoned carts when it gets to the shipping aspect of the checkout. If you can find a way to add the shipping cost to your product and it not be too expensive and remove any visual shipping cost for customers then I would say it's definitley worth trying to see if it can help increase sales. Either way you'll have learnt how to work the shipping settings in Shopify and should you ever need to set them up in the future you can do so. 

If anything, it could be worth organising the shipping sections now, but setting the rates to $0 for free shipping so you have that part set up, should you need to set up rates at some stage. 

What are you selling and how have you found using Shopify so far? 

[iCart]

Yes, you should bake Shipping cost into products to offer free Shipping. Here is one app I know iCart Cart Drawer Cart Upsell, in which you can offer Free Shipping based on items number in cart or on total cart amount. Hope that this app can help you to boost your Average Order Value.