Using a Discount for Local Pickup

Discounts are a great way to reward your most devoted customers. Did you know you can take things one step further and use discounts to offer free pickup for your local customers?

If you have a physical retail location or participate in craft fairs, this is a perfect way to get more people through the door, and you get a little face time with your supporters. If that's not enough to convince you, local pickup also saves you the time and expense of dealing with the post office.

Adding a local pickup discount allows you to offer “free” shipping, without adjusting your standard shipping charges for everyone else. When used, it’ll be listed on the order details under Discount. An added bonus is that this gives you and your customer a quick way to confirm on the receipt that their order won’t be shipped.

Getting started

Since you probably have shipping charges set up for your products, you’ll need to use a discount code to offer free pickup. Don’t sweat, it’s easy!

You can set up a discount code by going to Promote > Discounts in your shop’s admin. Make the discount specific - something like LOCALSONLY or LOCALPICKUP. You want to make sure you can still talk about it on your site, but customers from far away won't try to use it, so you might even include your city in the name. Once you create that code, promote it on social media and on product pages so locals can get in on the deal.

Looking for a way to combine free local pickup with another discount code? Right now your checkout can only accomodate one code per purchase, but Shipping Profiles are another way to offer Pickup, Standard, and Expedited shipping options (or whatever fits your business) while leaving the discount area free for that awesome 20% off sale.

Now's the perfect time to give this a try - a break on shipping could lead to more orders placed in your shop and a stronger local following. At the very least, it'll mean more happy customers, and that's always a good thing.

Article header image created by illustrator Yuko Okabe.