Do you know that 50% of the buyers abandon their carts when shipping is too expensive or unexpected? To solve this, you just need to change the behavior of your customers by changing the way they perceive things in your store. By adding a free shipping criterion, you can trigger your customers to meet your specific threshold and buy their favorite item. This flexibility makes them satisfied and encourages them to return to your store more often.
A free shipping threshold is the minimum amount a customer needs to purchase to get free shipping. Free shipping notification in PrestaShop is not just an alert; it can work like a simple strategy that provides customers the value they need and, in return, increases the overall average order value.
In this article, we will help you understand why adding a free shipping threshold is important and how you can make the right decisions while offering this flexibility to your customers.
Before we talk about the strategies, it’s very important to know the client’s perspective about free shipping counters in PrestaShop. Here we have listed some factual information that can help you know about the psychology behind customers’ choices:
a. The Fear of Losing Something
Have you ever heard about the loss aversion principle? It suggests that the pain of losing something is stronger than the pleasure of earning something of equal value. The free shipping bar in PrestaShop triggers a thought in customers’ minds about losing the benefit by not qualifying the threshold. So, they simply view the progress bar and get motivated to buy more and avail the benefit as soon as they can.
b. Setting a Specific Goal for Shopping
Free shipping promotion strategies in PrestaShop allow customers to set a goal for shopping. This means that if they are $5 away from free shipping, then they will look for an extra item to add to their cart. This creates a win-win situation as customers feel like they have a good deal, and shop managers will gain the opportunity to sell more products.
c. Pain of Paying Shipping Cost
Most of the time when we shop online, we add multiple products into the cart, and when shipping is exposed to us at checkout, we prefer abandoning the cart within a second. This is because while shopping online, users usually feel the pain of spending some money, and when it is increased in the form of shipping, they leave. This is where free shipping increases conversion rate optimization in PrestaShop.
d. A Usual Expectation
Before 2025, free shipping was not always provided to the customer, and it felt like a luxury back then. But now e-commerce is evolving, and providing free shipping counters has become a strategy. This is why customers usually expect stores to provide free shipping at a certain amount.
How to Add Free Shipping Counter for Your PrestaShop Store
To add free shipping promotion strategies in PrestaShop, you need to select a module that provides the functionality of adding a shipping counter. There are numerous modules out there; you can select one of them, but make sure it is reliable and provides advanced features. Here, as an example, we are using PrestaShop’s Free Shipping Amount Counter by Addify.
About the Module: Free Shipping Amount Counter
The module allows you to display a free shipping progress bar on multiple pages of your PrestaShop store. You can simply restrict free shipping for desired products, categories, and user roles. As customers shop from your store, the progress updates in real time and encourage users to add items until the cart value reaches its threshold. You can display the shipping bar on product, cart, checkout, and home pages to create awareness. Admins can also customize the font size, color, style of the displayed prices and the success message to make a lasting impact.
Features of the Module
- Display shipping progress bar on multiple pages of your store
- Display remaining amount as customer adds items to the cart
- Enable free shipping for specific products, categories, and user roles
- Use interesting icons to motivate customers to add more to their cart
- Add targeted and location-specific free shipping offers
Benefits of Adding a Free Shipping Counter in PrestaShop
Here we have listed some benefits of adding PrestaShop free shipping thresholds:
a. Reduces Friction
High shipping cost featured at checkout leads to cart abandonment and frustrated customers. Free shipping counters reduce this friction and encourage customers to add more to their cart and avail shipping offers. In this way, they get the value they need while increasing the overall average order value.
b. Encourage repeated Purchases
PrestaShop promotions and discounts for free shipping allow customers to frequently visit your store. When buyers know that they can save delivery, they are more likely to make repeated purchases from the same store. This helps you attract more potential customers and build a long-term relationship with them.
c. Improves Customer Satisfaction
Free shipping notification in PrestaShop creates an impact on customers, making them feel satisfied with their purchase. Buyers believe that they are getting a better deal while your store benefits from more conversions and sales.
d. Increases Average Order Value
The free shipping bar motivates customers to increase cart size, which directly increases average order value and boosts sales.
Common Mistakes to Avoid While Setting a Free Shipping Threshold
While offering a free shipping bar many shop managers make common mistakes that prevent them from getting complete benefits of this strategy. Here we have listed solutions along with each problem so that you can create a better strategy according to your specific business needs:
a. Not Adding Entire Cost
Sometimes, shop managers only consider direct shipping charges, neglecting the entire product cost, along with its packaging and other expenses. This leads them towards reduced profit margins. To solve this, you must calculate the entire cost, including the item’s size, material, packaging, and handling time. So, in this way, you can include the total cost in the shipping threshold and maintain the existing cost margins.
b. Not Communicating Clearly
Admins usually do not clearly communicate with the audience about the shipping threshold, which leaves them frustrated once the shipping appears at checkout. To solve this, you must clearly display the shipping message as a header on each page and add a cart value progress bar in PrestaShop.
c. Focus on Geographic Challenges
Sometimes specific locations require high shipping costs, such as international locations or distant places. So, always make sure to calculate the shipping threshold according to specific regions.
d. Setting Shipping Threshold Too High
If your shipping threshold will be too high to reach, then customers will simply ignore your store and switch towards other competitors. So, try to add shipping criteria that are filled by one or two lower-priced items.
Smart Tips to Encourage Customers to Buy More with Free Shipping Thresholds
Here we have listed some tips and tricks that you can follow while offering PrestaShop free shipping discounts:
1. Add free Shipping during Peak Seasons
You can add free shipping threshold during peak shopping seasons like christmas, halloween, New Year, easter, etc. This strategy encourages bigger carts in PrestaShop and leaves customers feeling satisfied with their spend.
2. Set Realistic Thresholds
Try to include shipping thresholds that are easy to reach and contain a proper value that customer seeks. For suppose, if a customer purchases an item of $10, then you can add a threshold of $15. In this way, you can motivate customers to add one more smaller item to the cart and increase overall sales.
3. Highlight Shipping Bar Clearly
You must display free shipping progress bar clearly on header or footer of your website, so that customer knows about the threshold. You can also use above-mentioned module to display progress bar on multiple pages. It provides updates in real time and persuades customers to add more to their cart until they get the shipping.
4. Combine with limited-time offers
You can choose to combine free shipping threshold with limited-time deals and encourage customers to buy more and boost your overall average order value. For example, you can add free shipping criteria during black Friday, clearance, or promotional sales, and create FOMO to encourage bulk purchases.
Conclusion
This guide will help you learn about free shipping threshold and ways to add it to your PrestaShop store. By offering this type of convenience, you can encourage customers to add more items to their cart and increase the overall conversion rate. By combining free shipping threshold with multiple strategies, you can easily maximize sales and build stronger relationships with your customers.
FAQ’s
Q1. What is PrestaShop free shipping counter?
Free shipping counter is a bar that shows how much amount a customer has to spend in order to get free shipping. You can display it on any page of your store and encourage customer to add more to their cart.
Q2. How to add free shipping threshold in PrestaShop?
To add this feature, you can use the PrestaShop Free Shipping Amount Counter Module. It allows you to display a shipping bar on multiple pages. You can also restrict free shipping to specific products, categories, and user roles.
Q3. Is it necessary to add the PrestaShop free shipping progress bar?
No, it’s not. But if you want to add PrestaShop promotions and discounts, then adding free shipping can help you in so many ways. It encourages customers to add more to their cart, increase customer loyalty, and drive conversions for your store.
Q4. How does free shipping threshold help in driving conversions?
A free Shipping threshold triggers customers to purchase enough to get free shipping benefit. In this way, admins can reduce cart abandonment and increase the chances of purchase, which ultimately boosts conversions and sales.
