Offering free shipping can be very attractive to potential customers and help drive additional sales in your Store. You have several options outlined below for adding a free shipping option to your store. Use the option best suited to your business needs.

• free shipping on select products
• free shipping on orders over a certain amount
• free shipping with a coupon

Free Shipping on Select/All Products

You can offer free shipping to your customers using the "Need-Ship" Variable. By setting this variable to no, customers will not be billed for shipping and will be taken directly to the Billing page in checkout (if your store has no active coupons). Using the need-ship variable also has implications for merchants collecting tax.

Note: Using the "need-ship" variable to set free shipping will not collect a shipping address. As such this option will not work if buyers need to specify a different shipping and billing address. You will need to use a different method of offering free shipping.

Tip: If you are using this method to set certain products to have free shipping you may wish to consider adding some disclaimer text if your free shipping option applies only to certain types of shipping such as Ground or 2nd Day Air. Otherwise, customers may select expensive overnight options which you may have to honor. If you are limiting free shipping to certain shipping options you may wish to consider the Coupon option outlined below.

To set all products to free shipping:

1. Sign in to your account and go to the Store Editor.
2. Click the "Variables" button in the Editor toolbar. (The Variables page loads.)
3. Select "No" from the "Need-ship" drop down menu.
4. Click "Update".
5. Return to the home page and click "Publish" in the Editor toolbar to publish your changes.

If you are going to offer free shipping on just select products, you would follow these steps for any products on which you want free shipping:

To offer free shipping on select products

1. Go to the item page in the editor, and click the "Edit" button.
2. Click "Override Variable", choose the variable "Need-Ship" from the drop-down menu, and click "Update".
3. Set the "Need-Ship" field to "No" in the drop down menu.
4. Click "Update".
5. Return to the home page and click "Publish" in the Editor toolbar to publish your changes.

Note: Using the need-ship variable will bypass collection of the shipping address. Tax rules require a shipping address in order to determine if there are applicable tax rules. Thus, if your store is required to collect tax, using need-ship will prevent your tax rules from applying at checkout. If your store collects tax, you should use one of the alternate methods for free shipping listed below.

Free Shipping on Orders over a Certain Amount

If you want to offer free shipping when customers order over a certain amount, you can create a shipping table that does that.

To create a shipping table for free shipping on orders over a certain amount:

1. From the Store Manager, click the "Shipping Manager" link under the "Order Settings" column.
2. Click "Shipping Rates".
3. Click "Add Rule".
4. Complete the steps to set up a rule:
   1. select a location to which free shipping will apply (e.g. inside US) and click [Next].
   2. select the shipping rate to match the rule and click "Next".(You can select any or one specific method. If you select a specific method you will need to add text your checkout page alerting customers that they must select that option to get free shipping.)
   3. select the "rate table" option and click [Next\.
   4. select a "based on" amount from the drop down menu to decide whether you are calculating free shipping on tax or non-taxable total.
   5. enter a shipping charge for orders under your free shipping total to the "add" field; enter the amount at which you wish to grant free shipping into the "from" field (e.g. if you offered free shipping on orders above $100 then you would enter "100.01" in this field*. (learn more about rate tables)
   6. Click "Next".
   7. Click "Done".
5. Click "Publish Order Settings" to publish these changes to your checkout pages.

*Tip: Use the Shipping and Tax Test in the Shipping Manager to determine if you have set your free shipping options correctly before publishing your order settings. You could lose orders or money if you fail to display correct shipping charges at checkout.

Learn more about creating shipping rates and rules.

Free Shipping with Coupon

Offering free shipping with a coupon is one popular way to promote sales during the holiday season or for any type of promotional period. Note however that Coupon Manager is only available with Merchant Standard and Professional packages--not Merchant Starter. Note: It is not currently possible to select target items for offering free shipping. Free shipping coupons can only apply to all items.

To offer free shipping with a coupon:

1. From the Store Manager, click "Coupon Manager" under the "Promote" column.
2. Enter your security key to continue.
3. Enter a coupon code for your customers to use. You could use something easy to remember like "free shipping" or numbers and letters.)
4. Select the "Free Shipping for" option in the Good For section and select the shipping options which apply (ctrl + click to select multiple).
5. Select if this applies to orders over a certain amount or if there is an expiration date.
6. Click "Update" when ready.
7. Click "Publish Order Settings" to publish these changes to your site.
8. Provide customers with the coupon code by whatever means you choose including:
   • posting the code on your home, item, or checkout pages
   • sending out the coupon code as part of a newsletter or email campaign
   • posting the coupon code on an online coupon site
   • any other means

Customers must then enter the coupon code during checkout for your store to apply the necessary credit. Keep in mind that coupon codes may be distributed widely by customers. This can be good if you are using this as a promotion to drive sales and limiting to ground or other inexpensive shipping option. This also can be costly if you are trying to distribute a special coupon to select special customers such as free overnight shipping. If you are running such a campaign you may wish to make the code difficult to guess and/or with a limited expiration date.