Free shipping and personalization ideas to boost sales

July 31, 2023PlaybooksBy Camila Shiratsubaki, Yasmin Gonçalves and Francine Nogueira

If you run an e-commerce business, you know how challenging it can be to communicate free shipping rules effectively. Often, the minimum purchase amount required for users to be eligible for it varies based on the destination.

Free shipping is a highly sought-after perk for online shoppers. Not only it reduces the overall cost of purchases but also adds a sense of value and convenience to the shopping experience. That’s why it can be a powerful perk for boosting sales. Customers are likely to include additional items in their cart to take advantage of this offer.

To maximize the benefits of offering free shipping, implementing a personalized communication strategy on your website is crucial. You can leverage user location and cart value to tailor free shipping experiences to individual customers, enhancing their shopping journey and driving higher sales.

Using targeted communication strategies

One key aspect of personalization is utilizing users’ location. By segmenting your audience based on their geographical location, you can provide relevant information about free shipping eligibility. For example, customers in specific cities or states might have different minimum purchase requirements for free shipping.

Additionally, integrating cart value into your personalization strategy can be highly effective. By analyzing the total value of items in a customer's cart, you can incentivize them to reach the minimum purchase threshold for free shipping.

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A image showing audiences for onboarding

How to create your localized experience

You can create your own experience with two easy steps:

First, create your audience by segmenting your users based on criteria such as geographic location and purchase history.
Next, select the website area in which you want to deliver this information, such as the announcement bar or the cart page.

Audience

With Croct, you can use our Contextual Query Language (CQL) to create segment criteria. This English-based language was tailored to meet the needs of modern digital experiences, with a strong emphasis on personalization, experimentation, and machine learning. It combines the simplicity of natural language with an intuitive syntax that makes it easy for both technical and non-technical users to formulate queries. Read our documentation to learn more.

Segment your audience based on location using their current country, state, or city. Here are some examples of location criteria:

location's city is "New York"
location's city is in ["New York", "Los Angeles"]
location's stateCode is "NY"
location's stateCode is in ["NY", "CA"]

You can also use the cart information to segment users based on their purchase value. Here are some examples of criteria that rely on data from e-commerce events:

cart's total is greater than 100
cart's total is between 100 and 150
count of cart's items is greater than 3
some item in cart's items satisfies item's name matches "iPhone"

So, you could create mixed criteria like this one using the and operator:

location's stateCode is "NY" and cart's total is greater than 100
location's city is "New York" and cart's total is between 100 and 150

Screenshot of Croct's admin. A breadcrumb defines steps for creating an experience. A side drawer shows a form for defining audience name, ID, and criteria. — How to create an audience within an experience in Croct's PMS

To use purchase information, you should track e-commerce events first

Slot

Slots are any personalizable elements of your application.

Promote your free shipping offer on various page sections for maximum impact. Some popular choices are the announcement bar and the home banner. Also, you can personalize the cart and product pages to use this information for a seamless shopping experience.

How to select a slot in an experience within Croct's PMS

Wrapping up

In e-commerce, effective communication of free shipping rules can make all the difference, and a personalized communication strategy is crucial to maximizing the benefits of this perk.

Utilizing users’ location and cart value can significantly enhance the user experience and allows you to provide relevant information about free shipping eligibility tailored to specific cities or states. Besides these ideas, you can also segment customers from visitors or get inspired by some of our examples for e-commerce.

Sign up for a free account today and explore our platform to enhance your content delivery and improve your brand authority. Happy personalizing!