Use free shipping to increase sales in your store

This question may have occurred to you before: Do I add free shipping offers to my deals or lower prices? Which one would be more beneficial in terms of profit and gaining new customers? In this article, we will discuss this question together. We may not reach a definitive conclusion, and I will not hide from you that this article is a form of thinking out loud, but we will explain the benefits of each method, perhaps it will help you make the right decision at the right time.

Free Shipping Why would you offer free shipping to your customers even though you bear the shipping costs? The returns of free shipping are not hidden from a merchant, no matter how small his store is. Free shipping encourages customers to buy and thus increases your sales. Free shipping works to enhance the average order value. That is, when you set a condition for obtaining free shipping that the value of purchases be above a certain limit, the customer is affected and increases the value of the order to reach this limit in order to obtain free shipping, and you both benefit. This strengthens the bond of loyalty between you and your customer. Free shipping makes the customer happy and affects his purchasing behavior, as 9 out of 10 people consider it the primary motivator for ordering online, so do not miss exploiting this point to your advantage.

When you offer free shipping, do not expect the answer to be a specific date, for example, or a specific occasion. This is entirely due to the nature of your company, the status of your sales, your profit index, what your competitors are doing, etc. However, you can choose specific conditions that will benefit you to offer free shipping, such as offering free shipping when purchasing a certain number of products, or when shipping a certain weight, and this is what we will explain in detail during the practical part through an add-on that supports free shipping options. You must take into consideration the cases in which you cannot offer free shipping offers, so you can reduce the shipping value for the customer, so as not to pay it in full. Therefore, the customer sees that a product worth $5 is paid $2 in shipping value and not $6, for example. You may not have to pay any actual shipping costs and offer free shipping offers. How so?

By influencing customer behavior and making the product, which is priced at $5 and shipped at $4, priced at $9 with free shipping. This is of course a clever move from the store owner, but it is not always offered. He offers real offers from time to time. WooCommerce's many and varied add-ons always help in facilitating decision-making and not worrying about what comes after the decision is made, as they facilitate its implementation. If you want to offer free shipping or offer discount coupons, add-ons are here to solve the problem. Next, we will discuss two main add-ons that are useful in this topic, which are the Advanced coupons add-on and the Advanced free shipping add-on.

Practical explanation 

WooCommerce offers good options in the field of coupons, but you must enable the coupons option for customers first, through (woocommerce) and then click on (Settings) in the general settings. Move your mouse down to discover all the options. You will find the option (Enable Coupons) and it is surrounded by a check box. Click on it to activate the feature for you. Then the (coupons) option will appear in the side menu on the main panel, and its options are limited, so if you want wider options you have to install an add-on for that, and the add-ons are many, but we chose for you the Advanced Coupons for WooCommerce Coupons add-on, which has been installed by +10,000 sites, for its wonderful free options. In this illustration, the coupon options appear before installing the add-on:

On the home page of the WordPress control panel, click on (Add-ons), then click on (Add New). Then we search for the add-on in the keyword search box or by its full name, and then it will appear to you quickly. Notice the word (Install Now) appearing next to the add-on. Click on it, then wait a little while, and the word on the box will change to become (Activate). Then click on the Activate button to activate the add-on completely for you, noting the information available on the add-on card, such as the rating, the number of active installations of it, and whether it is compatible with your version of WordPress. After a while, the page will take you to the page displaying all the add-ons you have installed, and you will see a confirmation message that the add-on has been activated.

After activating the add-on, click on the word (setting) below the add-on in the list of installed add-ons, to adjust the settings and customize the coupons as you want. Together, we will notice new additions to the voucher settings after activating the add-on, such as BOGO coupons (buy one, get the second for free). The add-on settings allow you the option of displaying vouchers via a specific link, allocating vouchers to one category of your customers rather than another, and others. There is no need to adjust any general settings, as you do not need any license to use this add-on. As for the BOGO, it is an offer that ends the customer’s hesitation to buy, when he finds an additional advantage for purchasing a specific product. The use of these features is done through the coupon settings, which you can notice the additions to after activating the add-on: It is not difficult to create a new coupon. Start with the coupon code so that you can write it manually as you like, or click on (Create a coupon code) to suggest random codes. The code is the set of letters, numbers, or special symbols used by the customer to obtain Offer, then type a description of the coupon, which is an optional field.

Then we move to the coupon data, choose the type of discount offered, and these are its options, knowing that the BOGO option was added by the add-on. The percentage discount provides a discount of a certain percentage of the total invoice, and the fixed discount for the shopping cart provides a fixed discount on the total invoice, regardless of the value of the total invoice. If you make its value $10, for example, and the first customer buys $50 and the second buys $20, then the first customer’s total bill will be 40, the second $10, and the last option. It offers a fixed discount on the price of a single product and not on the total value of the invoice. After choosing the type of discount you want to offer, specify its value and you can allow or disallow free shipping. Then, if you want to choose the expiration date of the offer, you can do so. You can verify from your store the validity and effectiveness of the coupon, and here we have confirmed that the coupon code is effective: As for the BOGO option (buy one and get the second for free), you can select the product to which you want to add the offer, through the first box entitled (Customer Buys) and add it by clicking on (Add Product).

Search for the product you want to add the offer to by name on your store, then choose the quantity and click (Add). Then we move to the reward part, or what the customer will receive when he purchases the previously specified product. It may be another product completely free, or at a specific discount, and the discount may be at the same old price, i.e. free, or a percentage of the price of the second, or a fixed number, and you can add more than one product, of course. There are additional settings as well, to adjust BOGO deals, so you can choose that the coupon be used only once or can be used multiple times (repeatedly) when it meets the appropriate conditions for it each time.

The customer must be informed of the completion of the deal through the message in the second field, and put the appropriate word to display the deals available to choose from, and the default word is (View deals). Then we will place a link that takes the customer to the location of the deal, which is the link to the product to which you added the discount. Finally, choose the type of notification that you want the customer to know after the process is finished, then save the settings after verifying them. We will move to another part of the addition options, which is (Role Restrictions), which means role restrictions, which is an option to allocate the coupon to a specific category, and not allow it to be used for another category. If you want to allow your store editors to allow Email, or managers using the coupon, you can do this. First, you must activate the feature, by clicking on the check box next to the phrase (Enable role restrictions) and then specify if you want to allow/disallow the category that you will select next using the coupon.

Then select the category and the available options are: In addition to costumer, shop manager and you can choose more than one category of course, and this means allowing these categories to use the coupon, and if they are from a category other than that, it is not allowed, so this must be explained to them when using the coupon through the last field, and you can write the message you want of course: We now move to the URL coupons part, which is simply presenting the coupon to customers when they visit a specific link, so that a unique and special link to the coupon is created and its goal is to encourage customers to use the feature Certain features, such as live chat support, for example.

Activate the feature via the check box, then put the coupon link you want so that this coupon will be applied to all visitors to the link automatically, then select the tab link on which you want the coupon link to take customers, and for the purpose of transparency and giving clarification to the customer, send a message informing him of the success of applying the coupon. As for the rest of the features, they are driven by the addition, so we will skip them, and with this we have finished filling out the coupon data, and what remains is the Shopping Basket Conditions section, which allows you to set conditions for benefiting from the coupons in relation to the total value of the sales basket. They are either common or separate conditions, such that one of them suffices for the purpose, or it can be a compound condition. It is either about the total value of the basket, the number of its items, or conditions about the product or product categories, or about the customer himself and others.

We added a condition for the quantity of items in the basket, so the coupon will only be applied and used if the number of items in the basket is more than 4. As for the second section, it is the exceptional settings. If any of the conditions of the shopping cart are incorrect, WooCommerce sends a logo to the customer about that. Write the text of the message that you want in the first event, then write the text that you want to appear on the logo button, then the link that opens when the button is clicked. Finally, check all the fields, and save the basket settings, and here we have finished adjusting the settings for the Advanced Coupons add-on, which is very rich and full of options.

Now we will move to the second addition, which is the Woocommerce Advanced Free Shipping add-on, which allows you to control the free shipping offers that you want to activate from time to time, as it gives you a wide choice of conditions through which the customer obtains free shipping, such as reaching a certain value of the price of the products to be purchased and other conditions based on the quantity, weight, quantity, shipping category, etc. We first search for the add-on by clicking on (Add-ons), then (Add New), to open the suggested add-ons page. Through the search box, we type the name of the add-on and the first suggestions will appear. We click on the (Install Now) button and wait a while, then click on the (Activate) button. A list will open for us that includes previously installed add-ons, including the new add-on.

Click on the word (setting) or the settings below the extension to start adjusting the settings as you want. When activated, the extension will be added to the woocommerce settings page, specifically the shipping section, so you can access it that way as well. As you can see, the settings are simple and uncomplicated. You can activate/disable free shipping, and you have the option to hide other shipping methods when shipping is free. Therefore, you can add your offers so that your previous offers appear in the table if you were hosting any of them.

Let us click on (Add free shipping rate) to add a new offer, and the following page will appear. Enter the appropriate title for the offer and it will be whatever you want. It is preferable for it to have a meaning that indicates what the offer offers, if it is according to location, for example, or according to quantity, or something else. After setting the appropriate title, we move to the fields of details of the offer conditions. We choose from the first drop-down menu the offer classification, that is, based on what this offer is given, and the options are divided according to the following: 1) The shopping cart, which is: total price with tax, total without tax, taxes, quantity, containing a specific product, coupon, weight, containing a specific shipping category 2) User details, which are: zip code, city, state, country, user condition 3) Product

They are: width, height, length, stock, product position in stock (in stock/out of stock), and classification. The second and third fields change according to the first condition. For example, if you choose the quantity - which is the amount of items in the shopping cart -, you then choose the equation according to which the availability of the offer is determined, and the options are either (equal to / not equal to / greater than or equal to / less than or equal to) and in the last field you put the value in numbers, so the equation is as follows: If the quantity of items in the shopping cart is equal to 15, the shipping will be free, with a mark on it. In the following illustration are other examples of the conditions for free shipping offers, and you can add whatever conditions you like. With the customization you want.

Finally, provide a shipping address, preferably direct in meaning, such as (free shipping). Save the draft and click (Publish) contained in the box at the top left of the screen, after you have confirmed all the settings, and tested them on your site, products, and prices. The window will take you back to your woocommerce shipping settings to see your previous setting saved.

Conclusion After completing the installation of the two add-ons, and explaining their most important features, we return to the question of the article, and we say that there is no specific answer to this question. You may ask yourself more than once with different circumstances, and the answers will be different even if it is the same store, as there is no single strategy that works in all cases and circumstances, so you must study your store well to know all the numbers that help you make the right decision, and we hope that you make correct decisions every time so that your store grows more and more.