Documentation Welcome Build a promotional rate
Making a promotional rate
Another common reason merchants use Parcelify is to provide special, promotional shipping rates. Two common promotional rates are as follows:
- Free shipping when the cart is over a certain amount
- Free shipping when a promotional product is in the cart
These kind of rates can entice customers to increase their cart value directly or by pairing a typical order with more expensive products. Now let’s make it happen!
Please keep in mind, these are real shipping rates that will show to your customers. Be careful if you are testing on a live shop.
Basic setup
First, we need to go through some basic setup.
- Go ahead and install Parcelify if you haven’t already
- Open our app. You can find it in your Shopify admin dashboard, under Apps, listed as Shipping Rates by Parcelify
- Add a Location. This is where your products ship from
- Select your newly added Location and click [Add Shipping Zone]
- Give this zone a recognizable name, then click [Add Countries] to tell us where you ship to.
- Click [Save] in the top-right
Now you’re ready to start building rates!
Free shipping over $50
Let’s build a rate that offers free shipping for orders over $50.
- Inside your shipping zone, click [Add shipping rate] or [New shipping rate]
- At the top of the page you will see the current Location and Zone this rate will be created in
- Give the rate a helpful name and description. This is what your customers will actually see at checkout, along with the shipping price
- Since we want to restrict the value of this order to a minimum of $50, go ahead and click Add value restrictions
- Two new text fields will appear. Enter 50 into the minimum value field, then enter an arbitrarily high number into the maximum value field (999999, for example)
- Prices let you design how the shipping cost for a rate should be calculated. Every new rate starts with a flat, free price by default so we’ll simply use that price
- Click [Save] at the top of the rate. You’re all set!
Testing at checkout
After adding or editing a rate we recommend always performing a quick test checkout to make sure everything is working to your satisfaction. You’ll get peace of mind knowing your rate is showing as expected, and you’ll catch any issues (like a misspelling or misplaced decimal) well before it can affect your customers.
Exactly what kind of test you do should be based on how you’ve built your shipping rate. In this example you would perform two tests:
Test one: orders under $50
- Head to your shop and add an item that less than your free shipping amount
- Checkout this cart with an address that matches the zone you set up earlier
- See that the shipping rate does not show
Test two: orders over $50
- Go back to the cart or catalogue page and proceed to add items until the cart total exceeds your free shipping amount
- Checkout this cart with an address that matches the zone you set up earlier
- See your shipping rate at checkout. Awesome!
Free shipping with promotional products
This example assumes you have all of your promotional products tagged ‘promotion.’ If it is easier for you to identify your promotional products by product type, collection, SKU, or product option (variant) - use that instead!
- Inside your shipping zone, click [Add shipping rate] or [New shipping rate]
- At the top of the page you will see the current Location and Zone this rate will be created in
- Give the rate a helpful name and description. This is what your customers will actually see at checkout, along with the shipping price
- Since we want to restrict this rate to only show when a specific product (or set of products) is in the cart, click Add product restriction next to Shipment Product Restrictions
- Two new text fields will appear. This tells us how to identify your promotional products. Select Product tag is from the dropdown, then type promotion in the adjacent text field
- Since we only want to check to make sure this product is in the cart, click the (x) One item must have radio button
- Prices let you design how the shipping cost for a rate should be calculated. Every new rate starts with a flat, free price by default so we’ll simply use that
- Click [Save] at the top of the rate. You’re all set!
Testing at checkout
After adding or editing a rate we recommend always performing a quick test checkout to make sure everything is working to your satisfaction. You’ll get peace of mind knowing your rate is showing as expected, and you’ll catch any issues (like a misspelling or misplaced decimal) well before it can affect your customers.
Exactly what kind of test you do should be based on how you’ve built your shipping rate. In this example you would perform two tests:
Test one: order with no promotional products
- Head to your shop and add your promotional product to the cart
- Checkout this cart with an address that matches the zone you set up earlier
- See that the shipping rate does not show when the promotional product is absent
Test two: order with one or more promotional products
- Go back to the cart or catalogue page and proceed to add at least one promotional product to the cart
- Checkout this cart with an address that matches the zone you set up earlier
- See your shipping rate at checkout. Awesome!
That’s all there is to it. From here you can continue customizing this rate, check out our tutorials, head back to our home page, or continue reading to see how to restrict a product from a shipping area: