How to Offer a Free Gift With Purchase on Shopify

To offer a free gift with purchase on Shopify, choose a low-cost item with no size or colour to pick, set a cart value above your typical order that unlocks it, and use a discount that Shopify itself applies so the gift shows at zero in checkout. The gift must also leave the cart, or return to full price, if the shopper drops back below the threshold. This guide covers choosing the gift, setting the threshold, auto-add versus choice, stock, and the checks to run before launch.

What makes a good free gift?

Something that costs you little, looks like it costs more, and needs no decision from the shopper.

• Low landed cost. The gift is paid for out of the margin on the extra spending, so its cost sets how high the threshold has to be.
• High perceived value. A travel size of a product you sell, a branded accessory or a sample of a new line reads as worth more than it costs you.
• No size, no variant. A gift that asks 'which size?' adds a step and a way to get it wrong. Pick one-size items.
• Small and light. It should fit in the parcel you were already sending without moving it into a higher shipping band.
• Related to the order. A gift that goes with what you sell introduces the shopper to something they may buy next time.

Where should the gift threshold sit?

Above your median order, by enough that the margin on the gap covers the gift. The sum is the gift's landed cost divided by your contribution margin rate.

Here is an example with made-up figures. Say the gift costs you $4 delivered to your warehouse and packed, and your contribution margin is 60 percent. The gap has to earn more than $4, so it must be wider than $4 ÷ 0.60, or about $6.70. With a median order of $48, a threshold of $55 would only just pay; $65 leaves room for the shoppers who would have spent that much anyway and now receive a gift for nothing.

If the gift tops a longer ladder of rewards, cost it with the tiers below it, as set out in our guide to a tiered rewards bar.

Should the gift be added automatically?

Yes, when there is one gift. The shopper crosses the threshold, the gift appears in the cart as a line marked free, and nothing more is asked of them. That is the version with the fewest ways to fail.

Shopify's own automatic discounts can make an item free when a condition is met, but on a standard theme the shopper generally has to put that item in the cart for the discount to apply. Auto-adding is the job of the cart: the theme, custom code or an app.

Offer a choice only when you have a reason: two or three gifts for different tastes, or a gift that cannot avoid a variant.

In both cases let the shopper remove the gift. Some people do not want it, and a line they cannot delete looks like a mistake.

What should happen if the cart drops below the threshold?

The gift must stop being free, and the shopper must be told. There are two ways this goes wrong:

• The gift stays free. The shopper adds an item, collects the gift, removes the item and checks out. You have given the gift away.
• The gift stays and silently becomes full price. The shopper finds a charge at checkout they did not agree to. That is worse than the first.

The right behaviour is for the gift to be removed, or clearly shown at its normal price with a message saying how much more unlocks it again. Test every route below the line: removing an item, lowering a quantity, and applying a discount code that reduces the subtotal.

What happens when the gift runs out?

The offer has to end when the stock does. Set the gift up as a real product with tracked inventory, so it cannot be added once it is gone.

• Decide in advance on a fallback gift, or on switching the offer off.
• Do not let the progress bar keep promising a gift the warehouse no longer has.

How should the gift appear at checkout?

As its own line, with its normal price shown and a discount taking it to zero. That presentation does two things: the shopper sees what the gift is worth, and the order record shows your team that it was a gift and not a paid item.

This only holds if Shopify applied the discount. A cart that paints a zero next to the gift while checkout charges for it has made the mismatch problem described in why the cart total does not match checkout. The dependable route is a discount function, which runs inside Shopify's checkout; Shopify Functions explained for merchants covers how that works. Marka Cart Drawer applies free gifts this way on its paid plans, with the gift unlocked by cart value on the rewards bar.

What about returns?

Decide your policy before the first order ships. If a customer returns the items that earned the gift, you need a position on the gift: returned with them, kept, or charged for. Write it into your returns policy in plain words. What you may require differs by market, so check the rules where you sell.

A short checklist

1. Pick a gift with a low landed cost, no variants and a small parcel footprint.
2. Divide its cost by your margin rate to find the minimum gap above your median order.
3. Auto-add a single gift; offer a short choice only if you must.
4. Test that the gift stops being free when the cart falls below the threshold.
5. Track the gift's inventory and plan what happens at zero.
6. Place a test order and confirm checkout shows the gift at zero.
7. State what happens to the gift when the order is returned.

A gift is one of several things a cart can offer; our cart drawer guide sets out the others and the order to add them in. To run a gift that unlocks by cart value and is priced by Shopify at checkout, see Marka Cart Drawer.