I am going away for a week soon but I do not want to close or pause my store. I would prefer to have notifications somehow on the website and on order confirmation emails that shipping will be delayed a week. Is there an app or easy way to do this?
Thanks,
Gary
Hi, Gary!
This is Ren from the Shopify support team and I can help with some suggestions here. There are a number of ways to convey this message to your customers that include adding a message to your store announcement banner (if this is a feature of your theme), adding a note during the checkout process, editing your email notifications and using a pop-up notification app.
The first option, as mentioned, can be an announcement banner. They are commonly found in the theme editor of most themes, or you can use an app to install a custom banner. The announcement banner is always found at the very top of the page, near the header. Check out the Quick Announcement App to see if these features would be suitable for you.
The next method would be to add a note to your checkout process - which can be done in 2 ways.
Next, scroll down until you find the Shipping Method Notice and add your desired message there.
This is where your message will appear during the checkout process:
The third option would be to edit your order notification templates which can be found by going to Settings > Notifications. I suggest doing this in addition to any of the steps above since this is one of the last messages a customer sees. Here’s our help document for making these changes.
Finally, we have a nice selection of pop-ups apps to choose from that you can install and customize so anyone that lands on your page will see your message and know to expect a longer wait time for their order fulfillment!
Will you be gearing up for Black Friday Cyber Monday when you return?
Let me know if you have any troubles implementing the suggestion above.
Hey Gary!
You can checkout this app
https://apps.shopify.com/unfulfilled-order-notifier
It let’s you to configure a notifier, so that it will send an email to the customers whose orders are unfulfilled for specific days. It has rich-text editor to configure the email messages and also powerful filters (payments status, orders tags etc.). here are glimpse of the gallery.
Thanks for the question, and the suggestions and answers! I ended up adding vacation messaging to different parts of the customer funnel:
I’ve written a blog post about it including all coding details (it is very simple) - I thought it might be useful for others in our situation. Here is the link to it - https://medium.com/@sridhar.rajagopal/how-to-set-up-vacation-messaging-for-your-shopify-store-ef057bdb35e6
Cheers,
Sridhar
Is there a way to preview these changes once you have applied them?
Thank you for sharing this information!
Hello,
If you want to notify your customers about some shipping delay you can try the app Product Warnings on Checkout . This app works perfect for any kinds of warnings on a product page or a checkout. So you don’t need to close or pause your store but your customers would be warned.
Thanks for the great suggestion, Yuliya. It’s definitely a benefit to be able to keep your store open and running and continue to collect orders, while still setting the appropriate time expectations for your customers.
It’s upsetting that we still don’t have a proper vacation mode we can implement by clicking a button. We spending all this time trying to do a workaround for a missing feature that doesn’t really work. All other platforms have a simple solution for this - enable vacation mode! Why doesn’t Shopify want to do this? It creates so anxiety and needless headaches for many of us. We’ve been requesting this feature for several years now.
Hi @SuzChalan ,
I fully understand your frustration here and recognize the need for a quick and easy way to enter a “vacation mode” for your online store.
I do want to clarify that in addition to using your storefront password to temporarily close, that there is an option to Pause a store, which is a great option if you need to take a break from selling. This plan costs $9 USD every 30 days, and is designed for allowing you to close the store to sales which still being able to work on the store and access apps. You can learn more about all of the considerations before pausing a store here.
That being said, if the goal is to take a vacation from fulfilling orders but continue to sell, then the above recommendations are the way to go.
Thank you for taking the time to share you thoughts about this. We appreciate all feedback and behind the scenes, Shopify is always striving to improve the merchant experience. I will be taking your suggestion for a “vacation mode button” and submitting it to the appropriate teams for consideration.
Hi Gary,
Great to hear that you’re planning to keep your store open during your week away! There are a few options you can explore to notify your customers about shipping delays:
Order Notifications: Most ecommerce platforms, including Shopify and WooCommerce, allow you to customize order confirmation emails. You can add a note in these emails informing customers about the expected shipping delay during your absence. You might want to clearly mention the new estimated delivery dates.
Website Banners: Consider adding a temporary banner or pop-up notification on your website’s homepage. This can catch the attention of visitors and let them know about the shipping delay. There are apps available for this purpose in the Shopify App Store, for instance.
Out-of-Office Feature: Some ecommerce platforms offer an “Out-of-Office” or “Vacation Mode” feature. If your platform supports this, you can set it up to automatically display a message on your storefront indicating the delay and when regular shipping will resume.
Apps: There are several apps available in app stores specific to ecommerce platforms that can help you manage this situation. For Shopify, you can explore apps like “Order Deadline,” which allows you to set shipping deadlines and display notifications on your store.
Customer Communication: Lastly, it’s a good practice to clearly communicate the shipping delay on your product pages or in the product descriptions during the week leading up to your absence. This can help set customer expectations.
Remember to keep your customers well-informed and provide a contact method (email or customer support) in case they have questions or concerns about their orders. Transparency and proactive communication can go a long way in maintaining customer satisfaction during such situations.
Safe travels and successful management of your store while you’re away!
Best regards,
Petar
Hi,
#1 and #2 can be previewed right away. You can preview #3 and #4 by creating a dummy test order.
Cheers,
Sridhar
PS - My blog post was for the 1.0 themes. The current 2.0 themes actually make it a little easier - I’ve created code blocks that I can turn on/off as needed in the theme editor.
