Shopify has made significant strides in enhancing its functionality, including improvements to its discount offerings. However, when it comes to implementing complex discount strategies like stacking product discounts and tiered free gifts, merchants often find themselves relying on third-party apps to achieve the desired results.Recently, I set out to create a tiered discounting offer that would provide customers with different free gifts based on their cart value. My goal was to offer a small gift for orders over £25, a medium-sized gift for orders over £50, and a premium gift for orders exceeding £75. Additionally, I wanted to implement conventional percentage-off discounts on products across the store, such as 20% and 30% off.
Setting Up Initial Discounts
Initially, setting up discounts in Shopify seemed straightforward. I opted for automatic discounts, but quickly discovered two limitations:- These discounts weren't automatically added to the cart.
- Product prices outside the cart didn't reflect the discount - customers only saw the reduced price once the item was in their cart.
Relying on Third-Party Apps
Free Gift Automation
The first instance where I needed a third-party app was to automatically add free gifts to the cart when customers met specific conditions. This worked flawlessly, and I highly recommend using an app for this purpose rather than attempting custom code, as there are numerous edge cases to consider.
Stacking Discounts
The second, and more crucial, reliance on a third-party app came when trying to stack discounts. While Shopify allows combining product, order, and shipping discounts, it applies only the highest value discount when multiple discounts are available for a single product.
The Unexpected Challenge
During testing, I encountered an unexpected issue: when combining free gift offers with percentage-off product discounts, only one discount would apply. This occurred because the free gift discount, although triggered by cart value, relied on specific products being added to the cart - in my case, only shippable items to avoid customers having to collect their free gifts.Consequently, when a cart contained both an eligible product for the free gift and another product with a percentage discount, only the free gift discount was applied, as it typically had the higher value.
The Solution
To resolve this issue and successfully stack a free gift discount with percentage discounts, I had to abandon Shopify's native discount system and fully utilize the third-party app's discount features. The app provided the specific option to stack these types of discounts, which was exactly what I needed.