At a time when online shopping is at its peak, a Magento free shipping offer is one of the best ways to reduce cart abandonment, encourage customers to buy more, and increase sales.
A lot of Magento stores actively use this marketing technique, along with other shipping methods, as one of the greatest ways to attract customers. All because free shipping may be applied to a certain kind of product, items total, or a particular group of items.
In this article, you’re going to learn how to set up and optimize Magento 2 free shipping promotions. We'll also share helpful tips to make your shipping strategy even more effective.
Let's begin.
Why Free Shipping in Magento Matters?
Shoppers often hesitate when finishing the checkout when they see unexpected shipping costs in their carts. Yet, if you remove or modify this burden, you can unlock a wide range of advantages.
Boost in conversions
Don't be surprised to hear that free shipping is an effective strategy to encourage customers to buy more. No hidden costs always result in more purchases.
Customers often feel like they are getting a better deal if there is nothing unexpected waiting around the corner.
Stronger competitive position
In today's highly competitive e-commerce world, people rarely buy anything without visiting different stores to compare prices.
Very often, free shipping becomes a decision-making factor. Customers tend to choose the store which offers the best overall value rather than the lowest product price.
Reduced cart abandonment
According to the Baymard Institute research, about 39% of online shopping carts end up abandoned when customers see unexpected charges like shipping costs, tax, and fees.
Consequently, if you remove the shipping fees or communicate your free shipping policy upfront, people won't get "stuck" at the checkout. They are much more likely to complete their purchase.
Improved customer loyalty
Magento free shipping also helps encourage customers to come back. People always appreciate good service — everyone loves to be cared for.
You can offer free shipping to welcome new customers, or reward repeated customers to appreciate their loyalty. These small gestures will help you build strong relationships.
Promotional effectiveness
Try adding free shipping to make your promotion campaign more effective. This is a well-known trick to attract even more attention and encourage people to buy.
You can use it when launching new products or during your seasonal sales. Moreover, try to pair free shipping with coupon codes for urgency and better tracking.
Rise in purchase value
Setting a minimum order threshold encourages customers to add extra products to their shopping carts to meet the free shipping conditions.
Therefore, a simple notification like "Free shipping over $50" can be a powerful engine for driving higher average order value.
Types of Magento Free Shipping
As you have already noticed, free shipping can be used as an effective tool to enhance your store performance.
Depending on your sales strategy and promotion goals, Magento gives you the flexibility to offer free shipping in multiple ways.
Free shipping for all orders
This type of free shipping is simple and attractive. There are no special rules or conditions. No matter how much money your customers spend and what they buy, they get free shipping.
You can use this kind of Magento free shipping during your promotional periods.
e.g. the time-limited campaigns, like "Free Shipping Weekend", "Free Shipping Week", or "Free Shipping Month", can boost sales.
However, there are some stores that offer free shipping on a regular basis. Their strategy is to include the shipping cost in their product pricing.
Free shipping for specific products or categories
Instead of applying free shipping to all products, this method helps promote a specific product or category, making the defined items grab more attention.
This is especially helpful when your goal is to introduce new arrivals, push seasonal items, or clear out old stock. The Magento 2 cart price rules free shipping will take care of everything you need.
Free shipping for specific customer groups
This approach allows you to limit the benefit of free shipping to certain customer groups, such as new customers, most loyal customers, VIPs, subscribers, etc. In this case, you need to make sure your customers know they are qualified for free shipping on Magento.
e.g. you can do so by pop-ups, banners, and promotional messages, like, "As a VIP member, you get free shipping on all orders", "Welcome Gift: Free shipping on your first order!".
Free shipping over a certain cart total
This is one of the most popular and effective methods to increase sales in your store. Your task here is to consider carefully the threshold amount, ensuring it's not too high and not too low.
e.g. due to this type, the notifications, like "Free shipping on orders over $50" or "You are $10 away from free shipping", encourage customers to add more items to the cart.
Moreover, you can recommend bundle deals, cross-sells, or upsells to help them reach the threshold.
Free shipping with coupon codes
By this method, free shipping is only applied if your customer enters a specific coupon code during checkout.
e.g. messages like "Use code FREESHIP25 — valid only this weekend" encourage customers to act.
At the same time, you can easily track and analyze how many people have used this option and see how effective your campaign was.
Free shipping based on shipping destinations
When limiting free shipping to specific geographic areas, you can keep your margin safe while still rewarding loyal customers.
You can also use this approach when running regional promotions.
e.g. the banners, such as "Free shipping across ENGLAND — ONLY THIS MONTH!" will help you grab attention quickly and target the audience within your reach.
Now, it's time to understand how to apply these types of Magento free shipping in your online store.
How to Configure Magento Free Shipping?
There are two ways to help you apply Magento free shipping: through delivery methods or by creating special cart price rules for free shipping. Let's see how to configure free shipping using both.
Method 1: Set up Magento 2 free shipping via delivery methods
Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Sales > Delivery Methods and open the Free Shipping section.
Enable the free shipping method and fill in the following information:
- Title: The label your customers see at checkout. Make sure it's written in a clear and friendly manner, e.g., "Free Shipping", "Enjoy Free Shipping", "Free Shipping Today", etc.
- Method Name: The internal name of the shipping method. It's usually the same as the title and is mainly used by your admin or developer to identify shipping methods.
- Minimum Order Amount: The minimum order amount your customer needs to reach to qualify for free shipping. Consequently, free shipping won't be applied if their order is below the defined amount.
- Include Tax to Amount: Defines whether to include taxes in the order total or not. If you choose Yes, the tax amount will be added to the order total, which will help customers qualify for free shipping more quickly.
- Displayed Error Message: The message your customers will see if they don't qualify for free shipping, e.g., "Add more items to get free shipping!", "Your order total must reach $50 for free shipping", etc.
- Ship to Applicable Countries: Choose whether you want to offer the Magento free shipping method to All Allowed Countries or Specific Countries in the Ship to Applicable Countries select box.
- Ship to Specific Countries: Select the countries you want to offer free shipping to.
- Show Method if Not Applicable: Shows or hides the shipping method according to defined conditions. Set to Yes to show the free shipping method during checkout, even if the customer doesn't qualify. Set to No, if you don't want to show unavailable options.
- Sort Order: defines where it is displayed in the list of shipping methods. Enter 0 or 1 if you want to place Free Shipping at the top and encourage customers to use it.
Having finished, don't forget to Save the settings.
Method 2: Set up Magento 2 free shipping rule
Once created, the Magento free shipping method will be displayed according to your settings.
Yet, if you want to show it in more precise terms, you can resort to the Magento cart price rules. Here is one of the possible ways to set a Magento free shipping rule for specific items only.
Go to Marketing > Cart Price Rules and press the Add New Rule button. Fill out the general Rule Information and specify the Conditions under which the free shipping should be applied.
Unfold the Actions section and choose the For matching items only option in the Free Shipping field.
Save your rule and check how it works in your store:
Of course, this is just one way. You can adjust the conditions and actions as much as you need to find a perfect option. Adjust your Magento 2 shipping rules as much as you need.
Magento Free Shipping Rule: Common Pitfalls
When applying Magento free shipping rule, you may encounter a few common issues. It usually happens when the rule conditions are not set right or the shipping settings are missing something. Here is what to watch out for.
Free shipping method is not enabled
Even if your cart price rule is set up correctly, you need to enable the free shipping method in Magento settings. If it's off, free shipping just won't show up during checkout.
To turn the option on, go to Stores > Configuration > Sales > Shipping Methods > Free Shipping and set Enable to Yes.
Missing or incorrect conditions
The cart price rule conditions always define when the rule should apply. If they are not set correctly or something is missing, the rule won't trigger at checkout.
So, always double-check that the minimum order amount, customer group (guest, general, or wholesale), website, store view, and shipping region match both your store's conditions and your cart price rule settings.
e.g. if you don't check the "Not Logged In" group, your guests won't be able to get free shipping even when they meet all the conditions.
This may lead to confusion or cart abandonment.
Incorrect action settings
By the Action tab of your cart price rule, Magento allows you to control how the free shipping is applied. Here, you can define whether to apply free shipping to the whole order or only to specific products matching the rule conditions.
e.g. if your rule grants free shipping only on specific products, but you set free shipping "For the whole order", Magento will show nothing at checkout.
Conflict with other rules
When there are several active cart price rules in your store, Magento will process them based on their priority and conditions.
e.g. supposing you had a rule with the highest priority that offers "10% off for orders over $200". In this case, if the free shipping promotion — "Free shipping for orders over $200" — has a lower priority, it will not be applied to or even shown at all.
Unfortunately, Magento doesn't warn you when there is a rule conflict like this. Therefore, you should always test your promotions to verify whether the rules apply as expected.
Cache not refreshed
When saving the free shipping rule, Magento updates the backend, however, the frontend may still show old information. This often leads to time-consuming troubleshooting, while the actual issue is an expired cache.
Pro tip: a good rule of thumb is to refresh the cache whenever you make changes in Magento, especially when updating cart price rules or any configurations.
How to Set Up Magento 2 Free Shipping Bar?
Last but not least, you need to notify your customers about the free shipping option. It influences the purchasing decision and encourages them to buy more. There are two possible ways to make it happen.
One option to display a free shipping offer is to use the extension. All you need to do is to create the CMS blocks, and set the time, customer group, and conditions you want the Free Shipping banner to be displayed under.
Correspondingly, this block will be added and removed from your website based on the rule settings. You cut down on manual work and prioritize other important tasks instead.
Another way to promote free shipping is to use our extension. It will definitely drive customers' attention to the items you need to highlight.
To add a product label about free shipping, go to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Product Labels and fill out the basic settings.
After configuring the label position, its text and colour, or adding an image to show free shipping, don't forget to define where to display them. And that's it.
Offering Magento free shipping may not seem to be something significant. But it is. Small things like this make your store more customer-friendly and increase the chances of people buying from you.
With all the Magento free shipping options we've just discussed, you can now choose the one that suits your store best.
Just keep in mind that free shipping is not the only way to boost sales and engagement. It's only on of the Magento marketing strategies to explore to make the most of the platform features.
