this has been an issue for years now and it is bothering me that Shopify still doesn’t have a solution for this:
Shipping Discounts - not free shipping. Shipping costs are so high (starting from around 11$ in Australia) that it’s a big difference between FREE and FULL shipping rates Shopify offers. We want to allow one off shipping discounts for new customers as the free shipping threshold (59 $) could be quite high for customers that don’t know the brand and products. Lowering/Free shipping for all is not an option for us as the shipping costs are 80 % of the retail price of our cheapest product. With the shipping discount we would basically make the first order an at cost order, free shipping would even cost us money in this setting.
We tried to work around this by giving an “order discount” and call it “Shipping Discount” so that it’s clear what it’s meant for. Problem is that if customers get close to the free shipping cart value, this coupon can make it even more expensive for them, as the discount is applied to the cart value instead of reducing the shipping rate. The result is that the regular shipping rate is applied at checkout even though they have a discount code AND would otherwise meet the free shipping threshold.
Not sure if shipping is so cheap in Canada that shopify doesn’t care about it, but it’s a big problem in other regions. Shopify is gloating about how shop owners need to carefully consider shipping rates as it significantly affects consumer behavior, yet here we are having to choose between running an economical suicide mission or missing out on engaging new customers.
If you want to offer a shipping discount rather than free shipping in your Shopify store, you can set up shipping rates that reflect the discounted amount. Here’s a general guide on how to do this:
From your Shopify admin, go to “Settings” and select “Shipping and delivery.”
Under the “Shipping profiles” section, click on the profile you want to edit or create a new one if needed.
In the shipping profile, scroll down to the “Shipping rates” section.
Create a new shipping rate or edit an existing one to reflect the discounted shipping cost. You can set a flat rate or create a weight-based, price-based, or location-based rate, depending on your requirements.
Enter the discounted shipping rate in the “Rate” field, ensuring it reflects the desired discount amount.
Save the changes to update the shipping rates for your store.
By adjusting the shipping rates to include the discount, your customers will see the reduced shipping cost during the checkout process.
thank you for your answer. The described procedure is not what we want to do. It would allow all customers to get the reduced shipping rate. We want to do this with a discount code which allows audience targeting, in our case reduced shipping rates for new customers only.
Apply automatic discount on shipping price at checkout by various conditions, like cart total, or specific collection items in the cart or customer tag,
@marvic
For anybody curious about the original post, it’s now possible to discount shipping rates by a percentage (rather than free) using Advanced Free Shipping.
You can even choose which rates to discount, whilst leaving others as per normal.
Problem solved.