A free gift with purchase is an old department store move: buy the moisturiser, take home the travel-size cleanser. It works online too, and often better than a discount, because a gift has a value the shopper can see and hold.
This guide explains when a gift beats money off, what Shopify can and cannot do on its own, and how to set up a gift that adds itself to the cart.
Why a gift often beats money off
Compare two offers on a $70 order:
- 10% off. The shopper saves $7. It costs you $7.
- A free lip balm. The balm sells for $7 in your store and costs you maybe $1.50 to make and pack.
For a shopper who wants the balm, the gift is worth about the same as $7 off, at a fraction of the cost. On top of that, the gift introduces a product the customer has not tried yet. If they like it, the next order may include a full-price one.
The gift has to be something people want, though. A branded keyring is worth $7 to nobody. Pick a product from your own range that is cheap to make and has a real shelf price: a mini size, a sample set, a refill, an accessory.
What Shopify covers natively
Shopify's Buy X Get Y discount can make a gift free. You set the condition (a minimum spend or a number of items) and the gift product at 100% off.
The catch is that the discount only applies once the gift is already in the cart. Shopify does not put it there. The shopper has to know about the offer, go and find the gift product, and add it themselves. Many never do, and the ones who try often find a product page they were not meant to browse.
That is the main thing an app adds: the shopper does not have to go and find the gift. Bundlex Bundles adds it together with the qualifying offer on the product page. Bundlex Cart can add it by itself when the cart reaches a threshold. Both take a gift back out on the cart changes they support, but test removal in your own theme, and test discount codes entered in the cart and at checkout.
Product page or cart?
There are two places to offer a gift, and they answer different goals.
- On the product page, tied to a tier. "Buy 3 creams, get a free lip balm." Use this when you want shoppers to buy more units of one product. The gift shows next to the tier that earns it.
- In the cart, tied to a spend. "Spend $75, get a free lip balm." Use this when you want a bigger cart overall, whatever is in it. A progress bar shows how far away the gift is.
You can run both. They come from different apps in our case, Bundlex Bundles on the product page and Bundlex Cart in the drawer, and they are built to work side by side.
A gift on the product page with Bundlex Bundles
- Open the offer that should earn the gift, for example "Buy 3, save 20%".
- Click Gift at the bottom of the offer and choose the gift product and its variants.
- Set the quantity and title. A title like "Free {{product_title}}" fills in the gift's real name on the storefront.
- Decide when it shows. Tick "Show only when this offer is selected" to reveal the gift as a reward for picking that tier. Leave it off to tease the gift before they pick.
- Publish and test from an empty cart: add the tier and check that the gift is a separate line at $0.00.
Full steps are in how to add a free gift to an offer. If you want gifts that unlock one by one as the shopper moves up your tiers, look at progressive gifts. The free gift feature page shows both on a demo product.
A gift in the cart drawer with Bundlex Cart
- Turn on the rewards bar in the cart editor.
- Add a Free gift reward and set the minimum cart value, for example $75.
- Pick the gift products, tick which variants may be free and set each gift's quantity.
- Choose how it arrives. Added automatically puts every configured gift in the cart as soon as the shopper crosses the line. Shopper chooses adds a row under the bar that opens a gift picker, so they can choose, for example, between two flavours. To allow one gift in total, set the free units per shopper to 1.
- Save and activate the cart. Saving a design that is not active does not publish the reward.
- Test below and above the threshold. At $75 the gift should arrive, or the picker row should appear. Drop below $75 in the drawer and the gift should leave again. A code first entered at checkout can leave a gift free below the threshold, so do not treat the tier as a strict minimum after codes.
The cart free gift guide has a full example. A gift tier works well as the middle step of a ladder, after free shipping and before an order discount. Our guide to the free shipping bar shows how to build one. See the drawer live on the Bundlex Cart page.
Setting up the gift product
Most gift problems come from the gift product itself, not the offer. Three rules prevent nearly all of them:
- Keep its normal price. Do not set the gift to $0.00 in Shopify. The app makes it free with a discount when the shopper qualifies. A product already priced at zero gets no discount, and the app can treat it as a gift that did not qualify and remove it.
- Publish it to the Online Store channel. Shopify refuses to add an unpublished product to a cart, gift or not. You can still keep it out of your menus and collections.
- Keep it in stock. Shopify can refuse a sold-out gift, and the main product may then go into the cart without it. Allow selling when out of stock only if you can really ship the gift.
If a gift still does not show up, the troubleshooting article the free gift isn't added to the cart walks through the checks.
Mistakes to avoid
- A threshold everyone already reaches. If your average order is $80, a gift at $50 is a cost, not an incentive. Set it above the typical cart.
- A gift with no shelf price. Shoppers value what they can see priced in your store. Unbranded freebies feel like packaging.
- Hiding the offer. A gift that appears only at checkout surprises people but changes nothing they bought. Show it on the product page or in the cart, before the decision.
- Skipping the below-threshold test. Remove items after the gift arrives and check that it leaves. Then check checkout.
For "buy two, get a third of the same product free", you want a BOGO offer instead. See how to set up BOGO on Shopify.
