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Shopify can make a gift free with a Buy X get Y discount, but it won’t put the gift in the cart, so shoppers miss it. For “free gift over $75” or “free pouch with 3 items”, use an app that adds the gift automatically when the cart reaches the tier and removes it when the cart drops below. Choose a gift that costs you less than the discount you’d otherwise give.
Why a gift often beats a discount
A gift’s value to the shopper is its price. Its cost to you is what you paid for it. That gap is why gifts work so well.
Worked example: a store with a $60 average order wants to push orders over $75. Two ways to reward a $75 order:
The gift costs about half as much and sounds bigger. Two conditions: the shopper has to want the gift, and it has to be cheap to ship (light, small, unbreakable).
Pick the threshold
Set the threshold a little above your current average order, not far above it. With a $60 average, $75 is reachable with one more item. $120 isn’t, and the offer becomes wallpaper.
If you’re not sure what your average order is, it’s in Analytics in your Shopify admin, as average order value.
Set up an automatic free gift with Volumo
Volumo is our app. Gifts work on two deal types: Quantity breaks (free pouch with 3 items) and Spend more, save more (free candle over $75). A tier can be a discount and a gift, or a gift only.
- Create the gift as a product in Shopify, with stock. Give it its real price.
- In Volumo, create or open a Quantity breaks or Spend more, save more deal.
- Under the tier, click Add a free gift and pick the gift variant. The tier now shows “Free gift: [product]”.
- Save the deal.
- Turn on the Volumo cart embed: on Volumo’s home page, click Turn on next to the cart embed, then Save in the theme editor. Without the embed, gifts aren’t added.
When the cart reaches the tier, the gift is added at $0. When it drops below, the gift comes out. One gift per tier. With the embed on, the cart also shows progress like “Spend $12.00 more to unlock…”, which is what actually moves people up.
Volumo by Centubo. Free gifts on quantity or spending tiers, added and removed automatically, plus quantity breaks and bundles. Free during launch.
Install on ShopifyThe built-in way, if you’re fine with manual adding
- Go to Discounts > Create discount > Buy X get Y, automatic.
- Under Customer buys, choose Minimum purchase amount and enter $75 (or a minimum quantity).
- Under Customer gets, pick the gift product, quantity 1, and Free. Set uses per order to 1.
- Tell shoppers to add the gift: in the cart, in a banner, on the gift’s own page.
It works, but you’re relying on shoppers reading and acting on a banner. Expect a lot of qualifying orders without the gift, and a few emails asking where it is.
Close the obvious loopholes
- Hide the gift product from your collections and search, so nobody buys it at full price by accident or adds it to get free shipping.
- Watch returns. If someone returns the items that qualified them and keeps the gift, your refund policy should say what happens.
- One gift per order. Don’t let a $300 order collect four gifts unless you mean to.
- Keep the gift in stock. An out-of-stock gift silently disappears from the offer. Shoppers who were promised it will ask.
Questions people ask
Can Shopify add a free gift to the cart automatically?
Not with its built-in discounts. A Buy X get Y discount can make a gift free, but the shopper has to add it to the cart themselves. Automatic adding needs an app that changes the cart.
What happens if the shopper removes items after getting the gift?
With Volumo's cart embed on, the gift is removed when the cart drops below the tier, and added back if it goes over again.
Do I need to create the gift as a product?
Yes. The gift is a normal product variant with stock. Many stores hide it from collections and search so it can't be bought on its own, and set its price to what it's actually worth so the free gift feels real.
What if the gift runs out of stock?
Volumo doesn't add a gift that's out of stock. Shoppers still get the tier's discount, if it has one. Keep an eye on gift stock, or end the offer when it's low.