Free Shipping Woes? How to Tame Your Shopify Discounts for B2B and Retail Customers

Decoding Free Shipping for Different Customer Groups on Shopify

Hey everyone! It's a classic Shopify challenge: you want to offer free shipping, but the rules are different for your B2B (wholesale) customers versus your regular retail shoppers. I saw a great discussion about this in the Shopify Community recently, and it sparked some really helpful ideas. Let's dive into how you can make this work smoothly.

The original poster, gmuletr, was using the WSH Wholesale Pricing app and wanted B2B customers to get free shipping over 250€, while retail customers would get it over 50€. The tricky part? Guest customers. It's easy enough to set up different rules for logged-in users, but how do you handle those who checkout as guests?

The Challenge: Guest Customers and Conflicting Rules

gmuletr pointed out the core issue: "The only way I know of applying the 50€ free shipping to guests is from the shopify shipping rates section, but then again this would also apply to signed in regular customers as well as B2B customers (don’t want the latter)." It's a real head-scratcher!

Solutions from the Community

Let's break down the potential solutions offered and how to implement them.

Option 1: Shipping Zones

Anthony_David_1 suggested using shipping zones. This is a solid, built-in Shopify feature. Here's how you could potentially use it:

1. Create Customer Segments: Tag your B2B customers. You can do this manually or using an app like mentioned below.
2. Shipping Zones: Create different shipping zones based on customer tags. However, Shopify's built-in shipping zones don't directly recognize customer tags. So this solution is not applicable.

Option 2: A Free Gifts App with Customer Tag Functionality

Ellie-BOGOS recommended the BOGOS: Free Gift Bundle Upsell app. This approach looks promising because it leverages customer tags to trigger different free shipping offers. Here's how it works, according to Ellie:

• If your customers don’t log in to your store + spend over 50€ → get freeshipping
• If your customers log in and aren’t B2B customers + spend over 50€ → get freeshipping
• If your customers log in and are B2B customers + spend over 250€ → get freeshipping

Here are the detailed steps, as provided by Ellie:

Step 1: Tag Your B2B Customers

First, you need to make sure your B2B customers have a specific tag in Shopify. Ellie suggests using "B2B" as the tag. Here's a helpful guide from Shopify on how to add customer tags:

the guide

Here's what the tag setup looks like:

Step 2: Configure the BOGOS App

Next, you'll create two separate free shipping offers within the BOGOS app:

Offer 1: Wholesale (B2B)

1. Install BOGOS: Free Gift Bundle Upsell
2. Create a gift offer with Spend X amount to get gift(s) template
3. Set the minimum cart value condition to 250 and apply it to any products

4. Add sub condition > Customer tag > fill in “B2B” (the tag you set for B2B customers)

5. Select shipping discount as gift

Offer 2: Regular Customers

Create a second offer similar to the first, but with these key differences:

1. Set the minimum cart value to 50€.
2. In the sub condition part, enable these 2 options:
   

Wrapping Up

So, while Shopify's built-in shipping zones might not directly solve the guest customer issue with differing B2B and retail free shipping thresholds, a dedicated app like BOGOS, leveraging customer tags, seems to offer a more flexible solution. It allows you to create specific rules based on customer type, even for those who haven't logged in. Remember to carefully tag your customers and configure the app according to your desired thresholds. Hope this helps you conquer those free shipping challenges!