I’m a website designer helping my customer set up her shop. She sells printed quilt patterns that get shipped, but would also like to offer a PDF file variation of some of them. I have installed the Digital Downloads app but a) cannot locate instructions on how to set up the variant and b) from what I’ve read here on the support forum, it seems that it may not be possible to offer both physical paper product and PDF version on the same product page? She will need to set up a separate section of PDF-only products? Thanks for any tips. Ideally there would be a dropdown menu (variations) allowing the customer to select one or the other but it seems the shipping option gets messy.
Hey, @HollyKnott !
My name is Lizzy and I’m from the support team at Shopify.
Using the Digital Downloads app, you’ll be able to assign files to a specific variant on a product. I made this quick video that shows the process for doing that within the app. You will need to make sure that the variant already exists to be able to do this.
You can also adjust product shipping settings on a variant level, so the variant you choose to link to the file can be set to not require shipping. This way it won’t affect the shipping costs at all. This shows how to do that.
Depending on your settings within Digital Downloads customers will either see a link at checkout, receive and email or both. This page here explains more about the app!
Please let me know if you run into any issues while trying to set this up!
Thank you,
Lizzy
Hi Lizzy,
Thanks for your detailed reply on setting up our PDF files as variants. I’m
still facing the same issues as before and think I may be stuck on the
variants setup.
My screens don’t look like your screenshots. I can see the PDF file has been
added but it still displays as just a paper product to be shipped.
I am an admin on her account, helping her set it up. Do I need to call
Shopify to walk me through this? Will they speak to me if I am not the site
owner?
Thanks,
Holly Knott
Hi, Holly.
You’re welcome!
You will need to have the two variants set up before hand. So within the product you’ll just need to create a variant for the paper version and a variant for the PDF. This page from our help docs explains how to set up a variant. Very likely once you have that set up your pages will look a bit more like the ones I shared above.
After the product has these two variants you should be able to attached the file to the correct one. As long as you only attach it to the PDF variant it will only be attached to that one. You can adjust the shipping settings either before or after connecting the download file.
You will need to be a staff member on the account to be able to speak to our support team about the specifics of the account. If you’re already set up as one, you’ll be fine. If not, you can follow this guide or request that the account owner do so, to create yourself a staff account. Also, you can call in anytime to ask a general question, even if you didn’t have a store!
I’m very happy to help if you have any other questions. Let me know!
Lizzy
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Thanks again, Lizzy. I figured it out. My variant setup was incorrect but
once I got that, it worked flawlessly. Thank you so much!
Holly
You’re very welcome!
I’m glad to hear you were able to get this set up.
Lizzy
is there a way to sell a bundle of both physical and digital variants, with the digital variant fulfilled immediately and the physical variant going in as an order that still needs to be fulfilled?
Examples: a book/ebook or a quilt/design or downloaded song/CD
Yes there is, however there are catches.
If you use only the Digital Downloads app to do it, you would need to create a third variant of the product and then go to the product in your shopify admin, select add digital attachments, upload your ebook file to the new bundle variant, and then click on the little settings cog in the upper right hand corner of the variant. There, you will select ‘Manually create fulfillments’. The downside here is blatant: the download will not send until the item is marked fulfilled (so, until you ship the book). So this is not immediately as they place the order, which will not fully accomplish what you want but it is the closest you can get with just the digital downloads app.
However, if you use an app which bundles your products together so that each product variant can be selected and added to the cart, this will work more effectively. This is how we set up our bundles. We use an app called Selly United to accomplish this (along with many other things). But you can use whatever bundle app or feature you want. So long as both variant items are added to the cart rather than having a bundle product or bundle variant, the download would then be sent instantly via the digital downloads app and they would then receive the book later as you ship it.
We are a bookstore that sells physical and digital books. Personally, we don’t set it up as a bundle, but rather an upsale. If a customer adds a book to cart of which we have an eBook for, they get an offer to purchase the eBook as well at a discounted price (we do $1). You can see an example of how ours works here: https://store.ihopkc.org/collections/forerunner-publishing/products/inheritanceclinging
Give me a like if this is helpful!
4 Likes
super helpful, thanks mate! What’s the app that you use for the upsell? That looks sharp!
We use an app called Selly United (they should pay me for as often as I recommend them!).
Here is the link:
https://apps.shopify.com/selly
We use Selly to accomplish alot of things in our store, from running sales, to creating bundles, to creating upsells, to running our bulk discount and wholesale programs, to offering free shipping for orders over a certain amount (and displaying a motivator), and for postsale. They also have a built in loyalty program and product recommendations. Great app for the money, though I will say it takes some setting up. But we have seen a very noticeable increase in sales since we started using it a few months ago. Because there are rules you can set up, we have also used it to accomplish other use cases as well (such as offering in store pick up options). We only have 3 paid apps at the moment and Selly is one of them and worth the money.
Their support usually responds by next day and is pretty good at helping solve the problem and we have been in contact with them quite a bit about different use cases.
1 Like
My variants/options are not showing up separately so that I can make one digital and the other physical. Has something changed? I watched the videos and followed the links and it isn’t giving me separate options, only combining them into the same bundle. If I add an option, it adds it to the existing variants. If I add a variant it adds it to all the options.
It sounds like other shops have figured it out and I see another shop doing what I need to do.
Hey,
You can use LinkIT to sell a physical+digital bundle on Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/link-it-sell-secret-url?utm_source=community.shopify.com&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=2023_04_01_524749
Simply select your product inside LinkIT’s interface and everytime somebody buys the product, they will receive the digital version as well.
LinkIT allows you to sell digital products with tools you already know, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Facebook, Youtube, … This makes it easier to get started to sell digital products online. LinkIT also offers customization of email and SMS to fit your brand.
Full disclosure: I am the developer of this app. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any question.
Nice way to spam an old thread lol.