Acobot increases your sales by reducing cart abandonment and boosting online conversion using free shipping offers. It automatically generates the right messages and shows them to the right customers at the right time based on your shipping fee rules. All you need to do is enable the free shipping feature with a single click. 

 79% of Shoppers Expect Free Shipping 

 Amazon is shaping the expectations of your customers. Consider 95 million Amazon Prime members, which are almost a third of the US population. Now they are used to free shipping.

You might hesitate to offer free shipping because shipping is not free at all to you and waiving shipping fees may erode your gross margin. However, 79% of U.S. online shoppers said they expect free shipping when they shop online, according to Walker Sands.

If you do not offer free shipping, you will lose sales because many customers would abandon their carts because of extra fees. According to Baymard Institute, extra cost is the top reason for cart abandonments during checking out, cited by 50% of consumers, and shipping fee is the top extra cost.

With well-designed free shipping offers, you may expect less cart abandonements and more orders. You can even increase the average amount of orders using the free shipping offers. You will not lose money because of paying for shipping. Instead, you will make more money for it.

Developing Your Own  Free Shipping Offers 

When you design your own free shipping offers, keep in mind it is all about psychological impact on the consumer behavior. The best choice is to offer unconditional free shipping, which is simple and attractive.

Free shipping for all orders sounds risky but you can easily cover the cost by adding the shipping fees to the product prices. If most of your orders are above $100, you may consider to offer free shipping without tweaking product prices because the increased orders may cover the cost. Free shipping for all orders is actually common among the small e-commerce business. According to our research in 2020, 23% of Shopify stores offer free shipping unconditionally.

If you receive many orders of small amounts below to $100, consider to offer free shipping with order amount threshold applied. In fact 35% of Shopify stores offer free shipping with a threshold.

The free shipping with a threshold, if well-designed and properly implemented, can not only ensure you will not lose money for tiny orders but also enable you to increase the average order value. Displaying a message like "Add one more product for free shipping" will do the trick.

If the shipping costs vary for your target markets, you can define different thresholds for different markets.

 Implementing Free Shipping 

This involves two steps.

1. Setting up your online store for free shipping.

2. Offering free shipping to customers.

 Setting Up Free Shipping 

 Shopify Stores 

You can set up free shipping by adding zero shipping rates to any shipping zone so customers don't pay anything for shipping at checkout. You may offer free shipping on either all orders or only orders over a certain value.

1. Log in to your store as Shopify admin, go to Settings - Shipping and delivery.
   

2. Next to the shipping profile where you want to add a free shipping rate, click Manage rates.
   

3. Next to the zone where you want to add a free shipping rate, click Add rate.
   

4. Enter the name for the rate.
   

5. Make sure that the value of the Price field is 0.
   

6. Optional: Add value-based conditions.
   a. Click Add conditions.
   b. Select order value based condition.
   c. Enter the minimum value for the condition.

7. Click Done, and then click Save.
   

Note: Shopify allows weight based free shipping condition. However we do not recommend you choose that option. Value is more intuitive than weight. Value based condition is simpler and easier to understand.

 Offering Free Shipping 

When you have set up free shipping, your store will remove the shipping fee item for the qualified orders. However, there is a problem, the customers do not know whether their orders are eligible for free shipping until they start checking out. Many of them would abandon their carts before they check out.

To address the issue, you should inform customers about them at an early stage, typically as soon as they land on your website. Typically this can be done using a banner on your web pages, which tells customer about your free shipping offers and motivates them to shop and check out without needing to worry about shipping fees.

If you want to get even more from your free shipping offers, you need something more advanced than a static banner. Just to name a few:

• Giving personalized free shipping offers by their location.
  

• Telling customers if the product they are looking at is eligible for free shipping.
  

• Encouraging customers to add more products to their carts for free shipping.
  

• Encouraging customers to check out when their orders are eligible for free shipping.
  

It sounds daunting but Acobot has included all free shipping functionalities you may need. It further automates your free shipping offers with the following automations.

• Creating banner messages based on your shipping rules.
  

• Displaying the right messages to the right shoppers at the right time.
  

• Optimizing the messages through continuous A/B tests.
  

• Updating the messages when you have changed your shipping policies.
  

To start boosting your sales with smart free shipping offers, all you need to do is enable it with a single click.

1. Log in to your Acobot account at https://acobot.ai./

2. Choose a store if you have multiple stores.

3. Click toggle for Free Shipping to enable it.

Note you need to set up free shipping for your store using Shopify admin UIs before you can enable Acobot free shipping feature.

 Bonus Infographic